El Dorado DA’s caseload not typical of rural counties
By Chelsea Phua, Sacramento Bee
Moments before stepping inside an El Dorado Hills coffee shop, Vern Pierson pecked away at his BlackBerry. He was sending an e-mail message to his secretary about the caseload handled by a prosecutor.
It was only 8:30am, and Pierson, El Dorado County’s district attorney, already had his plate full. He confessed he is a workaholic.
Vern Pierson
“My wife will tell you this,” Pierson quipped.
As the district attorney of a rural county of about 178,000 people, Pierson runs a small shop, with 22 prosecutors.
But his office has 11 pending homicide cases, nearly four times as many as neighboring Placer County, which has nearly double the number of prosecutors and population of El Dorado County.