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.
El Dorado hasn’t actually been a “rural” county for almost 30 years. It’s been suburban at best. And with HWY 50 running right through it to Stateline, even back 30 years ago it had more crime than its next door neighboring counties because of the direct route to Nevada’s casinos.
Dogwoman, while El Dorado County might be described as suburban with the two ends being suburbia next to Sacramento County and the So. Lake Tahoe area there is a vast rural area in the middle where attitudes, interests, political beliefs, schools, business activity, ctiminal activity, etc. are very different from those found in the suburban areas. It is extremely difficult to assign a simple definition to El Dorado County. Maybe it should be officially called “ruralsuburb”
Imagine what would happen if the office was flooded with minor marijuana offenses.