District Attorney Mike Anderton hopes to bring “stability” to his office

To read our interview with Bill Veitch, Mike Anderton’s opponent in the Republican primary for district attorney, click here.

Photo courtesy of the Mike Anderton campaign Facebook page.

Mike Anderton has been the district attorney for Jefferson County for just under six months, and he says he provides some stability for an office that’s been through several leadership changes in the past two years.

Anderton was appointed to the position by Gov. Kay Ivey in November, after Charles Todd Henderson, who was elected to the office in 2016, was convicted of first-degree perjury and prevented from taking office. (Anderton replaced interim D.A. Danny Carr, who held the office for just under a year and is currently seeking the Democratic nomination for the office.)

His career with the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office started in 1984; before that, he was an assistant district attorney in Alexander City. He has served with the county’s Vertical Prosecution Unit — designed to tackle child abuse cases — and prior to last year’s appointment had served as a division chief for the office.

Anderton is now running to keep his seat; he faces challenger Bill Veitch in June 5’s Republican primary.

Jefferson County Journal: You were appointed as district attorney by Gov. Kay Ivey in November, which means you’ve been in the office for close to six months. What have you learned from your experience so far?

Mike Anderton: This job is completely different than what I’ve been doing for the last 36 years. What makes me know that this job is mine is the fact that, over the course of the last 36 years, while I haven’t been sitting on this side of the desk, I’ve seen the decisions made on that side of the desk. Some of them I agreed with, some of them I didn’t agree with, with a variety of different personalities as district attorney.

I worked for a [D.A.] down in Alexander City. I came up here and worked for a man who was [head of the Jefferson County office]. He then got defeated, and the new guy came in and I worked with him. I then worked with his replacement, and during the course of all of that, I’ve seen what I consider to be good decisions, great decisions, bad decisions, and poor decisions. I don’t want to relive any of the bad and poor decisions. I think there’s a level of experience that you get from being in the wings, if you will, kind of as a backup quarterback. You learn a lot by watching. You learn a lot by sitting back. And I’ve been doing that for 36 years, honestly. That’s what sets me apart from anybody else in this race.

Jefferson County Journal: You stepped in to fill the gap left by Charles Todd Henderson, who was indicted for perjury before he could be sworn in. He ran on a fairly liberal platform of criminal justice reform — but as a conservative appointed by a Republican governor, it’s safe to say that you have a different political philosophy. Has that shaped your approach to the job?

Anderton: I’ll put it like this: there’s not a political philosophy behind [this office]. There really isn’t. The philosophy that I have is, and this may sound trite, doing the right thing and following the law. They wrote the law down for a reason and that’s so everybody would know what the law is. I don’t get to enforce the laws that I like and not enforce the ones I don’t. You either follow the rules of the game or you get out. My philosophy, it’s not conservative, it’s not liberal. It’s, “What does the law say?”

“My philosophy, it’s not conservative, it’s not liberal. It’s, ‘What does the law say?'”

I don’t know that I’m coming in with some kind of agenda. I think it was best for the people of Jefferson County to have somebody who was experienced, to try to stabilize the office. We’ve been through a lot of turmoil. Henderson was coming in and didn’t know our office and had already sent messages about who was going to stay and who wasn’t going to stay, and then when he got indicted nobody knew what to do. Then Danny Carr took over, and nobody knew how long he was going to be there. We had instability again. I have supervised almost everybody in that office at one point or another, and everybody knows what to expect from me. Everybody knows how I’m going to handle things.

And I want everything we do in that office to be straight-up and fair to everybody. I don’t want there to be any situations of prejudice when it comes to who we prosecute. It’s not a [racial] issue, as far as I’m concerned. All blood’s red, and it really doesn’t make any difference. And I don’t know of any prejudice we’ve got in that office. We really don’t.

Jefferson County Journal: You just brought up race. Is there a reason that topic’s on your mind?

Anderton: You listen to some of the people on the campaign trail right now, and some of them are constantly bringing up a racial element. And to be accused of that really gripes me, because that’s not the way I am.

And I have been accused [of being racist]. I was at a gathering not long ago, and a lady asked me, “Are you a Republican?” And when I said yes, she asked, “Are you a racist?” Why would you say that? No! I don’t know that any [candidate] has interjected that into this particular race. But on the campaign trail, I’ve had people ask me questions like that. It’s an issue that some people have on their minds.

Jefferson County Journal: Your appointment — as a Republican in a seat vacated by a Democrat — did strike some officials in Birmingham as being overtly political. How do you respond to that?

Anderton: You’d have to talk to the governor about whether or not it was a political appointment. I’m sure politics played some part in it. For me to say otherwise would be wrong. I mean, honestly.

But when I saw that Henderson was convicted and there was going to be an opening, I know that I saw my years of experience, my length of time here in Jefferson County, my length of time as a supervisor here in Jefferson County, my background as a boy scout, my background as an eagle scout — I think [Ivey] looked at all of that and saw that I was the better candidate.

Now, she asked me if I would run [for re-election] as a Republican. And I told her yes, I would. I made her a promise I would do that. I’m not going to break my promise.

Jefferson County Journal: You recently admitted that “mistakes were made” in your office’s handling of the Hoover City Schools bus driver who crashed a bus while driving under the influence. What issues in your office did that situation expose, and what changes do you think would prevent that from happening in the future?

Anderton: Certainly I don’t think this particular problem is going to happen again, not only with this particular D.A. but I think with other people. But I think there are some communication issues, and I think that’s what it brings to bear. I think there’s some education issues. You can’t have as an answer, “Well, I thought it was okay to do this or do that.” There’s got to be some clear-cut lines. You’ve got to have some fairly strict guidelines when it comes to dealing with some of these cases, and you’ve got to emphasize the importance of some of these cases. I think you’ve got to take each case individually. You can’t look and say, “This is just a traffic case, so it’s not that big of a deal.”

I think all of the veterans understand the seriousness of all of the cases, and the ramifications. I think this was very much an anomaly. I think this was a younger D.A. who had a lapse in judgement. She made a mistake. Now, understand this: her actions caused a man to get into a program that he shouldn’t have gotten into. Her actions did not cause anybody to get hurt or put him behind a wheel drunk. Her actions did not cause him to drive into that ravine; her actions put him in a program to try to help him that he shouldn’t have gotten into because he didn’t qualify.

Jefferson County Journal: You’ve said that one of the issues that bothers you most is the abuse of children and elders. What’s your strategy for addressing that as district attorney?

Anderton: Kids and old folks are the weak ones of our herd. You can I can basically defend ourselves against a lot of [abuse]. Kids and old folks can’t. They’re at the mercy of the ones in the middle.

People get mad, people hit on folks. I don’t understand child sexual abuse, so I don’t know what drives that, but I know it happens. I know that we will probably never stamp it out because people who abuse children like that, science has shown they cannot be cured. You can take away some of the driving forces, I guess, but I don’t know that we’re ever going to [cure it]. Those people and the ones who pick on the elderly are the ones who should get as harsh a sentence as possible.

“[Child abusers] and the ones who pick on the elderly are the ones who should get as harsh a sentence as possible.”

But again, you’ve got issues that come with both of those. If you’ve got an elder abused but the victim cannot testify, you’ve got a much more difficult case to be able to give that man a harsh sentence. If you’ve got a child who can’t testify or won’t testify, you’ve got a much more difficult case to try to get that person a harsh sentence. You ask anyone out there on the street, and they’ll say, “Take every pervert out there and hang them up by a tree.” Okay, fine. But the state still has to prove it.

Jefferson County Journal: That idea of finding ways to prove that abuse has occurred loosely relates to another topic of concern — the backlog of untested rape kits. WBRC reported earlier this year that there were 3,800 kits still sitting in storage. How do you plan to tackle that problem?

Anderton: The D.A.’s office in Birmingham has gotten two federal grants to help address that. The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative is taking all the old rape kits that have never been tested for whatever reason — some for really good reasons, some that are just a mystery — that grant is going to eventually take all the backlog of rape cases that have never been tested and get them tested with modern technology and modern science that we didn’t have 30 years ago.

Now, if an offender goes to jail, a DNA sample is collected and is placed into a database. And then if we have an offense, the rape kits are fed into this database, and this database narrows the field to be able to compare the two.

Things have developed over the years, and this SAKI grant is working on this backlog of old cases. It’s going to allow us to take these rape kits, have them tested, and if we come up with a suspect, can we do anything with it? We’ll have to see. It should at least take the samples that we have and be able to maybe come up with an answer. Maybe there’s not enough in a rape kit to be able to tell anyway. Maybe the sample has degraded to such a point that we can’t do anything with it. The Department of Forensic Sciences has fresh cases coming in every day, and you can’t delay the ones coming in [this year] to talk about a case from 1980. You’ve got to keep moving with the cases that you’ve got. It makes [looking at old rape cases] extremely difficult.

And the Sexual Assault Justice Initiative — another grant — is dealing with the new rape kits and making sure that those don’t fall through the cracks and end up in a property room somewhere.

Jefferson County Journal: Another major issue facing your office is the opioid epidemic. As D.A., have you implemented or do you plan to implement a strategy for dealing with that crisis?

Anderton: I think you’ve got to start with the education end of it. If I walk into a high school right now and look at these kids and say, “You shouldn’t use opioids,” they’re going to look at me and [snicker]. I think they’ve got to hear from people that have been there — somebody that they can relate to, that they can look at and say, “Man, I really like that guy. I’ll listen to what he says. It sounds like his situation is similar to mine.”

Right now, everybody is trying it. You’ve got heroin mixed with fentanyl, and nobody understands this fentanyl stuff. It’s 1000 times more powerful than heroin, and people are shooting their normal heroin and this fentanyl is catching up with them. You’ve got to let people know the dark side to doing all this. I’ve talked to some reformed addicts, and they say, “[Kids] don’t want to go down this road, but they don’t know that [yet].”

I think it’s got to start at the junior high level or below — even elementary school. I really do. I’ve talked to some people and we are discussing how to do it, because it is an issue. So many people are on it.

Jefferson County Journal: Finally, let’s talk about gun violence, which has been a significant problem in Birmingham and around the county.

Anderton: This sounds like a pat answer to everything, but I think we’ve got to talk to kids about, “Why is it okay to pull a gun because somebody looked at you bad? What is it about getting your feelings hurt that caused the problem?” This whole idea of, “He disrespected me so I’ve got to kill him,” where did that come from? Personally, I think it came from a lot of the movies and video games, a kind of desensitization. I used to watch Sons of Anarchy all the time, and that will desensitize you in a minute.

I don’t know [how to tackle that]. It’s an education thing. I think it’s parents saying, “It’s 2 a.m., you’re not going out.” I think that’s one of the keys. And again, that sounds very trite, but it’s one of those things where you’ve got to change the mindset.

The Republican primary for district attorney will take place on June 5, 2018. Read Jefferson County Journal’s interview with Anderton’s opponent in the primary, Bill Veitch, here.