Stephan Thomas believes in redemption. He has to — he found it himself after a difficult childhood in the South Side of Chicago that led to gang involvement, addiction and arrest. Thomas had an out, a grandmother who — when things got bad — put him on a plane to visit her in California.
“I know the thing that set me apart wasn't because I was some amazing individual who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, but the fact that I had privilege and opportunity. And it begs the question: Why doesn't everyone have that?” Thomas said. “Why doesn't everyone have access to the things that I had, that helped me to heal from my trauma, get a great education and move forward with my life?”
Thomas wants to hear more stories like his, which is why he’s running to replace King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg. Satterberg announced in January that he would not run for reelection, creating a void in a powerful office tasked with prosecuting felonies. He’s doing so at a time when there is a large backlog of court cases, and fresh off a City Attorney election in Seattle where voters, given the choice between an abolitionist and more conservative candidate who promised to prosecute certain misdemeanors, turned right.
But Thomas, who has worked in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office earlier in his career, is undeterred. He believes that his own life experience and work building relationships with community are key to better outcomes for King County residents.
“People are looking for real, concrete solutions. And I believe that those solutions exist with the people who have been most impacted,” Thomas said.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Real Change: Why do you want to run for Prosecuting Attorney? And would you have done so if Dan Satterberg hadn't announced that he was not going to be running again?
Stephan Thomas: I, to be honest with you, am looking to have a lot more amazing stories come out of our system. Right now, it seems it's like it's constant stories about revolving doors and "Seattle is Dying." And wouldn't it be amazing if there were much more stories about transformation and redemption? And the reason why that's near and dear to me is because of my own redemption story. I'm from the South Side of Chicago. [I] grew up in a home where my dad was an activist on the outside, but at home, he was abusive, verbally and physically. He would call me stupid, and he would beat me with his shoe. He left my family when I was 6, and my mom did everything that she could to love me and care for me and provide for me a wonderful, amazing life. But she couldn't protect me from getting beat up and bullied and taken advantage of in my neighborhood. And so, when I was 13, I joined a gang, and I did all of the things, like selling drugs, carrying guns, getting into fights. I got arrested seven times. I went to four different high schools and almost lost my life in that space.
But there was one thing that brought me out, and that was opportunity. And that opportunity came from when some things went down in Chicago, and I needed to get out. I was able to get on a plane because I had a grandmother who's German who lives in California, and she was able to get me out. That led to me reconnecting with my dad, reconciling with him, going to rehab — twice — going to college. And those things are what allow me to be here today. And so, I'm running because I want to see stories like mine be the norm instead of what we have right now.
RC: When you say that your grandmother was able to get you out, what does that mean?
ST: Practically speaking, it means that it's two parts to my story, right? There is this part of it that this kid grew up on the South Side of Chicago. There's also this German family that I was raised in as well. And that meant I would go on from the South Side of Chicago to taking trips to Europe to visit my family in Hamburg, Germany, or in the summertime, I go visit my grandmother and I take sailing lessons and rock-climbing lessons and live in a completely different world than the friends that I grew up with. And so, what my grandmother was able to do was when I needed an out, I was able to call her and say, "I need to get out of this situation." She had me on a plane. The next day, I was flying to California. For so many of my friends — and so many people who have to make different set of choices because they don't have that privilege — oftentimes those tough choices result in them either harming someone or being harmed themselves, which means a lot of times people end up dead or they end up in prison or jail.
I know the thing that set me apart wasn't because I was some amazing individual who pulled himself up by the bootstraps, but the fact that I had privilege and opportunity. And it begs the question: Why doesn't everyone have that? Why doesn't everyone have access to the things that I had, that helped me to heal from my trauma, get a great education and move forward with my life?
RC: Why did you decide to become an attorney?
ST: After I reconciled with my dad, we went through a restorative process where we met with a therapist, and so I was able to hear his stories of his trauma growing up with an incarcerated parent… So that reconciliation process led me to go into school where I was like, "Oh, my God, I have purpose. I have meaning, right? I want to do something with my life." And I grew up in an activist household, always had a passion for social justice, and I started to explore what are careers, what are opportunities that would allow me to do that? And the law just seemed like the right fit.
And so, I went forward and ended up getting into Seattle University School of Law. But right before that — the amazing thing that was a big confirmation for me that I was on the right path — is that my mom gave me a call one day, and she said, "My guy Stephan, I met this girl. She reminds me of you. She's biracial. She went to similar colleges as you. She's also studying for the [Law School Admissions Test] to go to law school." And this wonderful, amazing woman, we met, fell in love and one year later we were married, and we moved up to Seattle University one week after we got married, and we started law school together at SU. And we literally had every single class together our first year of law school, which I would not suggest to anyone for long-term marriage stability, but it definitely was a great story. Fourteen years later, we are still married.
RC: What about your previous experience with the criminal justice system? How has that influenced the way that you approach or have approached being a prosecutor? And how do you square those two things, working within that system and having the experience of it?
ST: It is kind of like the secret sauce that makes me who I am today and why I can see the folks who are coming through that system with the lens of compassion, of understanding. Why when someone is victimized, I'm not just thinking about that in theory, but I know what it's like to be anxious that someone is going to harm you, and you're constantly looking over your shoulder. I know what it's like to be riding on the train, and someone beats you up for no reason. I know what it's like to come home and your home has been burglarized, and someone stole your Nintendo and your TV. I know what not having a lack of safety, what it feels like, right? And when you can feel it, like you feel it on a kind of visceral, gut level, it creates this sense of real sense of compassion and urgency to address these issues in a meaningful way. And it also allows you to see that the answers don't exist in the halls of power, with bureaucrats, with people with high degrees. But oftentimes, more often than not, the answers exist with those who are actually impacted by the issues.
It allows me to understand that's where I need to go to get the answers. And then, when I'm there, to be able to have the trust and rapport, to be able to build the relationships that are necessary in order to find out what the answers are, and then build new ways of addressing harm in our community. Because that's really what I'm about. I'm really about building new ways of addressing harm. That's what I think people are longing for right now. No one wants to go back to the mass incarceration era of the 80s and 90s, and no one's longing for the status quo where it feels like you just abandoned people. People are looking for real, concrete solutions. And I believe that those solutions exist with the people who have been most impacted.
RC: What is your experience creating those relationships, and what is it going to take to build up community organizations that have those trust to implement some of the solutions you're talking about?
ST: This idea that we don't know what works, that's a total misnomer. It has been very, very clear that restorative justice works to heal harm. That treatment on demand is the way to go. That housing first is the way that we begin to address homelessness in a much more meaningful way. So, it's not that we don't know the answers, it is that we've kind of propped up some small, little programs as examples, but then never scaled them out, countywide.
Let's take [Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD)], for example. When we [started] that program, that was mostly centered in Belltown. But what about Auburn and Federal Way? What about South Seattle? And so, there's a need for us to massively invest in these new, innovative initiatives, and we just haven't done that. And one reason is we just have not had the political will and courage to really make it happen. It comes back to that heart of compassion that you get when you have a nexus to it, when you can really see it's not just a theory. It's not something I'm reading in a book, but something I experienced.
And when you've experienced restorative justice, like I have in my own life, you begin to say, "Ah ha, well, how do we implement that here and now in a meaningful way?" And we talk a good game about wanting to have community voices at the table. But oftentimes when those community voices are there, they are tokenized, and the menu is already set for them. And we more so want to do that because we think it's the right thing, but we actually don't want to meaningfully share power. And that is what's needed. They actually need to be helping to influence our policymaking decisions... That includes your small business owners. That includes your union workers. That includes your homeless advocates. It includes people who are sleeping on the street, people who are former drug addicts, folks who are currently or formerly incarcerated. All of those folks need to be involved in this conversation.
When I was a prosecutor, I had a case where a gentleman was homeless and mentally ill when he came into the system. I prosecuted him. I got the highest sentence I possibly could. He was released, and then shortly thereafter, he was in a Burger King in Bellevue, he pulled out a knife and stabbed someone to death. And the homicide unit of my office reached out to me. And the only question that they wanted to know was whether or not I asked for the highest possible. They didn't ask me if I actually tried to address this, the root causes of what brought that guy to the system in the first place, just that I use this blunt tool of incarceration. After that experience, I was just fundamentally broken and knew that this system just did not work. And so, I began to look for other solutions, and I began to look what else was out there. And our office had this budding relationship with Choose 180, and I began to volunteer for them.
And the first time I was there, I was supposed to kind of give a little speech about the role of the prosecutor, how much of a benefit it would be for them to be able to participate in this program, because it meant that charges would never be filed. But instead of doing the traditional kind of speech, I went in there and I really was vulnerable and opened myself up and shared with them my life story and my journey of redemption. And when I did that, man, I was gifted with all these amazing relationships from the community, whether it be Doug Wheeler or Dominique Davis or Donnie Griffin — people who are invested in that work. And they began to help me build relationships with folks in the community that I didn't have. It's people that I grew up with in Chicago, but now I'm beginning to build some of those same relationships in Seattle.
And then from there, I kept volunteering with Choose 180. I kept building those relationships, and eventually advocating for different changes in the office around our bail policies, created a criminal justice reform committee so we can address some of the internal issues with the office, I was speaking up against racial disproportionality and our caseload, just doing things that prosecutors don't do, like breaking ranks and going to Dan Satterberg when I should have went to my supervisor, calling him out for not being consistent with the rhetoric that was spoken out in the public, but then I'm seeing something different on my caseload. And that led to me being appointed to Dan's executive team, where I was the director of Community Justice Initiatives, where my sole task was to build relationships with community-based organizations and build new restorative justice initiatives. And so for two years, my whole life was committed to doing that.
RC: What do you see as the strengths and limitations of leading this office in terms of making changes that you want to see? What levers of power do you feel that the prosecuting attorney could have or does have? And I guess what do you want to change about the way the office is run?
ST: Well, the first thing I think is to redefine what it means to be successful. When you would win a trial, they would string a banner outside of your office that said, "Congratulations," not really knowing whether the victim had really received the healing that they needed, or whether or not the person who was just convicted really understood and was held accountable for their actions and was equipped with the skills they needed so they would never cause that harm again. And so, looking at success metrics around reducing recidivism, whether or not there's actually victim participation within the system, looking at things like whether or not we are diversifying the office, not just at the lowest levels, but at every single level of the office so that it reflects the community that it serves. Those are the types of success metrics we can build in on day one and move us away from this, where everyone is applauding everyone just for trial wins. So that's one major thing that you can do without having to do anything.
I think the limitations is that one this has to be done in collaboration. The Prosecuting Attorney's Office by itself can't address the homeless epidemic that we have right now, but at least they should be more present on the issue. The Prosecutor's Office has been completely absent in that conversation, when we know that so many people who come into the system are homeless. They come in homeless and they leave homeless again, and, oftentimes, that leads to more harm either to that person themselves or to someone else. And so, you want someone who's going to be a relentless advocate for what actually does work, but you can't do that in a silo. I think it's looking for ways that we can partner with the city and the county [executive] and the mayor's office to be able to really push forward what are some concrete, real solutions to the multitudes of problems that we have. I think if there's a limitation, it's the way that government is set up, right? There's checks and balances, and it requires collaboration and being able to work with a multitude of actors. And I am committed to doing that work.
RC: How do you approach those relationships with people who have run on the desire to clean up the streets and the parks and to go after misdemeanors and that sort of thing?
ST: I think the reality is that there is a lot of common ground that we have. Everyone I talk to wants safety. I can't think of a community that doesn't want that. We all want it because safety is the foundation of having a prosperous, healthy and thriving community. The question that we need to ask ourselves and wrestle with is how do we actually achieve that? And my commitment is that I'm going to follow research, science and data. And the research, science and data tells us that jail does not work, that it destabilizes people. I'm going to preach that from the rooftops. I'm going to be a relentless advocate for the things that [do] work.
That doesn't mean that if [...] you're into child porn or if you've murdered someone, you're not going to get a "time out." Absolutely. That is always, I think, going to be the case. But there's a lot of places where I think that we can find a lot of agreement on. And so, I'm hoping that folks will be open to that and not just say, well, jail is the only option.
Jail is the most expensive, blunt force tool that we have in our tool belt. And I know that people are hungry for other options. And so one thing I can say about the City Attorney's Office is I'm glad that the criminal division chief is a woman by the name of Natalie Walton-Anderson. And her experience before coming there was running LEAD from the prosecutor's office. That means she has a lens and an understanding around harm reduction. She understands that jail is not the only answer, and that's not the way. And so that's definitely someone that we want to be able to collaborate with, build with and move forward in a good way.
I think what people don't want to see is just an approach of where we do nothing. That, I think, is where people don't have any patience for, and in the absence of doing nothing, they'll choose jail. But I'm going to tell them that there is absolutely another way. And I'm going to tell them from my experience, traveling the country, training prosecutors I work for an organization called Prosecutor Impact where we facilitate experiential learning opportunities. I saw what works in places like Brooklyn that has real restorative justice with this organization called Common Justice.
I've observed those things with my own eyes, and so I know it's possible. You have to have someone who's willing to push, who's willing to have the tough conversations, who's willing to be public and open and honest about what works and what does not work. And I'm going to be that guy.
RC: What can we do to improve those systems, diverting people out of them? I'm hearing you say that you do believe there are reasons that people should go into [jail or prison]. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?
ST: The reality is we do not have an infrastructure for what do we do for a 45-year-old man who strangles his wife to death? What is the response in the community to that? And right now, prison is the option. And the question that I'm asking myself, what does prison look like? What are those conditions? And are people actually getting the skills that they need to come out better?
When I was training prosecutors, I went to prisons all over the country in Ohio and California. I've been to prisons all over Washington state. And when I meet people there and I see that, man, you can literally spend the vast majority of your day in your cell watching television. That is an option instead of really saying are we providing people with trade skills? Are we providing people with culinary art skills? Are we providing folks with what they need to heal from trauma? Are they getting access to education? I have a good friend of mine that I grew up with in Chicago who's in prison in Illinois, and I'm helping him to get a paralegal course. He's been working in the prison law library for years, and he's about to get out.
He's been there for about 20 years. He's about to get out in about two years. And he's like, "I want to get out. I want to get my paralegal certificate." But that's not provided for him on the inside. We have to help facilitate that for them. And so it's really like bringing back the idea that prison actually should be a place for rehabilitation instead of warehousing people. And the folks who I have known who have come out of prison, man, I have met so many remarkable people in prison. They tell me that they were able to transform and evolve not because of but in spite of the circumstances they experienced in prison. And so what prison conditions look like is something that is near and dear to my heart, because if I'm really going to be serious about public safety, then it has to be about people coming home, ready to engage in society, be able to be prosperous, get a job, support their family. Again, like I led with that's the type of stories I want to hear. I don't want to hear the stories of a revolving door of people coming in and going into prison and using drugs and harming one another and so on and so forth.
So, prison conditions are huge for me. And then the reentry plan — what happens, what's the community support look like when you come back home? And there's some amazing organizations in Seattle and King County, like Weld, who are working on those issues. Well, let's invest in that... Let's make it the norm.
RC: One of the things that I've heard a lot about recently and I've seen discussed in other places is the case backlog that happened predominantly, it seems, as a result of COVID and safety issues around that. How do you want to approach that? Is it something that is a concern to you?
ST: There's a couple of different concerns. One, there's been a lot of just fearmongering about the backlog, just talking about it as a backlog, as if it's a monolith and not really providing us with a thorough audit of what is in the backlog, because is this 6,000 cases of serious violent offenses where small children are being harmed? Is that what we're talking about? Is that 1,000 other cases, and 5,000 of them are property crimes? We really don't know, and we deserve to have those details in order to find out how we move forward. My top priority would be focusing on crimes that involve victims who are vulnerable and marginalized. That's going to be my number one, top priority. The second thing — and it is probably coupled with that — is people who are currently incarcerated in King County jail. Just this past week, [King County] Public Defense [Department] and the [King County Corrections Guild] teamed up to be able to ask for changes to the conditions are in jail because there's been multiple COVID outbreaks. The jail is understaffed, and they're not equipped to be able to safely house the people who are currently in the jail.
So there has to be new ways of thinking. I mean, we have to begin to think about other options outside of the jail as this pandemic continues. And so once you have dealt with the serious violence, once you have dealt with folks who are inside, then we begin to look at what are the rest of the cases that we have left. I want to make sure that we're maximizing all of our alternatives.
That should always be the first thing. We're maximizing drug court. We're maximizing places like Choose 180. We're maximizing LEAD and all the other kind of alternatives that we have. And then, for what is left over, we're going to have to make some tough decisions. Some of those cases are probably going to need to be dismissed without prejudice, meaning that you can dismiss them. But if the person comes back again, that case can be resurrected, and then you can go forth from there. It's really trying to look at it as a multi-tiered approach. I need to know what's in the backlog. It's just not enough to say there's a backlog without having a serious, thorough audit of what's there is.
That not something that the Prosecuting Attorney's Office does.
In general, all the reporting about it has been just this. “We got some really bad cases. We have some really bad individuals, and we need money and resources in order to address that.” What has not been done is that just a year later, in 2020, everyone admitted the King County Superior Court put out a letter saying that the system had a history of racism. But then when the pandemic and the backlog came about, no one did any analysis as to whether putting all these cases through the system that has this history of racism is going to be the best option for our community, the best option for bringing healing and wholeness and prosperity to our community.
And I think we need to have done that tough work. I think that's extremely important. And we could have done that in conjunction with being able to try to resolve some of the really serious cases involving harmful individuals. ... All cases are so unique and so different. And just telling me that you have just a bunch of violent cases without any details about them tells me really nothing.
RC: You worked in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office before. First of all, why did you want to leave? And what are some of the changes specifically that you want to do and if you are elected?
ST: I left for both personal and professional reasons. The professional reason is I was advocating and pushing for changes that the office just wasn't ready for. I mean, one of my jobs was to connect with community-based organizations and to really build relationships with them. And in doing that, they would inevitably say, “Well, Stephan, here's an example of a young person where we can do something radically different and creative.” And I would bring that back to my office and it would be a relentless fight. And once you have fought those battles time and time again, it begins to take a toll on you. That's number one.
Secondly, I had a string of deaths in my family. My dad died; both my parents died. This was the beginning of my mom's Alzheimer's journey. My wife also had a miscarriage that lasted for nine months. And I was just burnt out after all of that. And my wife and I decided to take a sabbatical. And so we quit our jobs. We sold our house. We bought one-way tickets to Asia to really reconnect with what is our purpose, what are we all about and what's the change that you want to make in the world?
RC: Why did you choose Asia? And what part?
ST: Yes. I don't know. I think it was just places we always dreamed of. Right. We went to Japan, Korea, spent a month in Bali, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore — just places that we had longed to see and that we wanted to cross off our bucket list.
RC: What was it like going places other than the United States with traditions of racism that we don't have? Did you find some relief there?
ST: I have traveled all over the world, even before this. I mean, I've spent significant time in New Zealand where I was able to spend time with the Māori folks there and really got to observe real community, restorative, justice, their spiritual practices, which are really powerful. I spent time in India. My stepdad is from the northeast of India in a place called Nagaland. [I] observed how they live life totally different, much more communal and intergenerational, where they're caring for one another. I got to spend some time in Morocco and all over Europe.
And then in my experience, again, traveling in the summertime to Hamburg, Germany, to visit my family, just let me know, like, man, there are different ways of structuring society, of supporting one another that is different than what we have here, where it seems to be the rugged individualism and every man for himself and not a sense of collective prosperity and responsibility. And one of the many issues that I think that allows us to have our current crisis is that we're kind of all siloed, and it's every man for themselves. And I think we have to begin to think about how do we collectively prosper, how do we collectively build healthy and thriving communities?
And so, my travels have definitely influenced my thinking around what's possible, because when you go to a place like New Zealand and you see that they don't have our same murder rates, and they don't have our same homelessness crisis, they don't have mass incarceration. Well, they also have free education and health care and other systems that help to support people, and we don't have those here. And that is one of the root causes of why we have our current crises.
RC: One question from the top of the conversation that I'm not sure I heard an answer to is, do you think that you would have run for this office if Dan Satterberg hadn't announced that he was stepping down?
ST: It is definitely a different calculation running against an incumbent, for sure. It's kind of hard to say, because it's not what happened. But part of me wants to say that, yes, I would have run against Dan Satterberg had I had the opportunity to.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Feb. 9-15, 2022 issue.