By Shannon Edmonds
TDCAA Executive Director in Austin
Nobody told me there’d be days like these / Strange days indeed / Most peculiar, mama
—Lyrics from “Nobody Told Me,” John Lennon (1977)
‘The Rupture’
“The Rupture.” That’s my nickname for that roughly six-month span from March to September 2020 when the world turned upside down. (And yes, it’s a word play on “The Rapture.”) Even now, five years later, when I get asked when something happened that I cannot specifically recall, I may use “pre-Rupture” or “post-Rupture” as a shorthand reference, especially in regard to a time when things seemed “normal.”
Before the global pandemic.
Before the stock market crashed and the economy went into recession.
Before George Floyd’s killing and the resulting protests and riots.
Before school doors stayed locked.
Before paralysis hit courthouses throughout the state.
Strange days indeed.
Today, even though many of us have tried our best to return to something that feels normal, we still suffer from the fallout of The Rupture, especially when it comes to the recruitment and retention of high-caliber public servants to serve our local communities. In the following columns, I’d like to focus on how we all might work together to recover from it.
The damage
At the macro level, The Rupture resulted in—or at a minimum, greatly contributed to—an erosion of cultural and political norms and an increase in the distrust of core institutions in our country. For example, there has been a dramatic decrease in the public’s favorable opinion of the courts after The Rupture. Between 2020 and 2024, national confidence in our judicial system dropped 24 percentage points, from 59 percent to 35 percent.[1] And among Texans, the favorability rating for the courts and the criminal justice system went from roughly even (36 favorable / 39 unfavorable) to a net –22 percent (26 favorable / 48 unfavorable).[2]
Within our profession, we also heard frustration and dissatisfaction with changing work conditions at the micro level, first from a loss of office camaraderie and connection when people had to socially distance themselves in the office or work from home (WFH), and again when some who came to enjoy the WFH lifestyle were asked to return to the office on a regular basis. But hey, I’m not telling most of you anything you don’t already know, right? We all lived through it. The question is: Where do we go now?
The repair
At its core, your local criminal justice system is a three-legged stool that remains in balance only when all three legs are strong. Those legs are you (prosecutors), the defense bar, and judges. And of those three legs, prosecution is by far the most communal, especially in suburban and urban jurisdictions operated by more than just one elected prosecutor and a small staff. That larger model was the type of office in which I cut my prosecutor teeth, and I still have fond memories (and lifelong friends) from my first job out of law school. Serving my larger (geographic) community as part of a team that was its own smaller (professional) community within the courthouse was not just rewarding, it was sustaining—it helped me cope with bad outcomes and overcome challenges both inside and outside the office.
Experts who have analyzed the current post-Rupture malaise often cite personal loneliness and lack of community as two of primary drivers behind people’s current unhappiness. To restore the attractiveness of our profession—both for those considering joining it and for those already in it who are deciding if they want to stay—we need to restore the positive sense of community and esprit de corps within our offices that used to exist before The Rupture. Having a shared sense of mission—and working within an office culture in which the employees are aligned from top to bottom in a way that accomplishes that mission—is something unique to prosecution in our courthouses, and it can be attractive to those who lack that in their private or professional lives. Great friendships are also formed in the crucible of the courtroom because shared burdens bind people together in positive ways that can last a lifetime.[3] And one silver lining to The Rupture’s unanticipated disruption is that it gave offices that previously had a negative or non-affirming culture an opportunity to start anew and create something that makes people want to work there.
But how?
But how does a prosecutor’s office make that obvious to potential employees in a manner that draws them in? Re-establishing the good aspects of prosecutor office life that were lost in The Rupture sounds easy in theory but may prove harder in practice. Many of us entered the profession with that kind of culture and community already in place, so we were not privy to how it was originally formed. This is where I’d like to ask for your help to crowdsource successful ideas to share with others.
What has your office done to improve morale and esprit de corps internally? What have you done to shape your community’s external view of your office in a positive way? If you’d like to share things that have worked—or missteps to be avoided—please send them my way so I can spread that good advice among your peer offices and strengthen our profession as a whole.
Recognition
One way to support our profession is to recognize those who go above and beyond the public’s expectations for prosecutors, and TDCAA can help with that. At its most recent meeting in June, TDCAA’s Board of Directors confirmed the following award recipients for 2025:
Prosecutor of the Year: Tonya Ahlschwede, 452nd Judicial District Attorney, Mason
Lone Star Award: Jacquelyn Johnson, Asst. County & District Attorney, Rockport
Kepple Award: Mike West, Asst. Criminal District Attorney, Tyler
C. Chris Marshall Training Award: Glen Fitzmartin, Asst. Criminal District Attorney, Dallas
These awards will be presented at the opening reception of our Annual Conference in September. I hope you can join us to celebrate these prosecutors and their well-deserved recognitions!
Looking ahead
I hope to have some good tips to share with everyone on that front in our next issue. Meanwhile, we here at TDCAA continue in our mission to equip you to better serve your communities, both geographic and professional, by sharing the experiences of others in our profession. As the Good Book says, “Iron is sharpened by iron; one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
In that spirit, we are pleased to offer you a plethora of iron-sharpening articles in this issue, ranging from an overview of a prosecutor’s successful domestic violence diversion court (page 12), to tips on topics ranging from oral arguments (page 39) to checking jurors’ criminal history backgrounds (page 45), to some humorous-yet-thought-provoking rules for practicing law as a government attorney. And we kick off all of that (and more) with a cover story on a topic that is always at the top of the “I need help with” list from our conference attendees: time management. So please, set aside some of your precious time to review this issue, and hopefully you will discover things that will improve your ability to serve your community.
[1] Gallup, December 2024; https://news.gallup.com/poll/653897/americans-pass-judgment-courts.aspx.
[2] Texas Politics Project, June 2022; https://texaspolitics .utexas.edu/set/courtscriminal-justice-system-favorability-june-2022.
[3] For an interesting post-Rupture reflection on this phenomenon in general, see “The magic of your first work friends,” The New York Times; www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/business/work-friends.html.