McConnell Running For Office To Prosecute People Who Commit Sex Crimes
McConnell Running For Office To Prosecute People Who Commit Sex Crimes
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
McConnell Running For Office To Prosecute People Who Commit Sex CrimesAsk Travis McConnell why he is running for county prosecutor and the Democrat has a very straight-forward answer.
“I’m running to file charges against people who commit sex crimes,” he said in an interview in his office Oct. 7. “I’m sick of seeing people in the news that end up not getting arrested.”
As examples, McConnell, a Warsaw attorney, cites Pastor John Lowe, Hephzibah House and the Pierceton Woods Academy. “Just to name three,” he said.
McConnell has posted a video on his Facebook page further explaining why prosecuting sex crimes is his primary reason for seeking elected office.
“I have a friend that, the Thursday before the filing deadline, I was at a hearing on her behalf and did not go as expected and that was what prompted me to run,” he said. “She was a victim of a sex crime as well. And the prosecutor’s office made a deal that she, at a minimum, did not understand, and they indicated that they had talked to her about it. At a bare minimum, she did not understand.”
McConnell said he ended up having to file an appearance to represent her so she would be allowed to speak because “they weren’t going to allow that to happen.”
To win in the Nov. 8 general election, McConnell has to beat Republican and Chief Deputy Prosecutor Brad Voelz.
On McConnell’s campaign website, wetrusttravis.com, he states that if he is elected, his office will not prosecute any individual for possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana. The prosecutor’s office, McConnell said during the interview, should focus its resources on what matters.
“We have limited resources. If we’re going to prosecute every single thing that came through the prosecutor’s office, we need to raise everybody’s taxes. I’m not necessarily a fan of that. So I think we should focus on what matters,” he said.
Eighty-one percent of Hoosiers favor legalization in some fashion of marijuana, McConnell said. “Almost half of the states have already done that. Who knows if I win if Indiana will, but Marion County is already doing the same sort of thing, so we’d be following suit of Marion County,” he said.
As a personal injury attorney from Florida where marijuana is legal, McConnell said marijuana is “way better than oxycontin, oxycodone. We don’t have a marijuana epidemic, we have a opioid epidemic. We have lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies.”
McConnell said law enforcement is doing the work in the sex crime cases but the prosecutor’s office isn’t filing the charges.
“There’s police investigations that happen, but then they get referred to the prosecutor’s office and charges don’t get filed,” he said.
“I think the issue comes down to not believing the victims. It’s what a lot of it comes down to,” McConnell said. “As far as they don’t feel like they’ll be able to prevail at trial or whatever it would be because the core issue is they don’t the victims and/or they don’t care about the victims.”
If the perpetrator is someone who is important, McConnell said, “then they look at it a lot closer than if it’s a perpetrator who is not. I see cases get filed on a misdemeanor level that we have a fight at the park with 20 people and they charge all 20, saying that they all started the fight, or were in the fight, when clearly that’s not the case. But they just file it anyway because they have probable cause, they were there, cops wrote a report. But then on a sex crime where somebody was raped, they don’t. That doesn’t make sense to me. If anything, that’s backwards. We should focus on what matters.”
As a personal injury lawyer, he said he prosecutes all of his personal injury cases.
“In personal injury law, you’re on the prosecution side of the case. So, all the people that fight against me are the insurance, defense attorneys representing the insurance companies,” he said.
However, in the criminal arena, McConnell did a short internship at the state attorney’s office, which is equivalent to the prosecuting attorney’s office, down in St. Petersburg, Fla., for one summer. Other than that, on the criminal side, he’s been the defense lawyer.
“Personal injury attorneys are the prosecutors in the civil world, or one of the prosecutors in the civil world,” he said.
The one downside to being a personal injury attorney, he said, is that everyone thinks they’re ambulance chasers and no one trusts the prosecutors when the personal injury attorneys are prosecuting a case.
“If anything, the personal injury is probably harder,” he said.
McConnell said he believes he has a good standing relationship with law enforcement and judges now.
“I’m getting a lot of support, in particular from law enforcement, throughout the campaign, who is fed up with doing the work and then not having the charges filed,” he said.
McConnell said he’s gotten a number of individuals in law enforcement who have reached out to him and expressed “a number of concerns about a variety of things.”
As far as the judges, McConnell said he knows them all. They’re judges, he’s an attorney, so it’s not where they’re “overly friendly,” but they have professional relationships. “Obviously, they have to stay neutral. We’ve got some great judges here in Kosciusko County. They’re very professional and I’m sure that things will be fine.”
If elected as prosecutor, he stated his chief deputy will be Antony Garza “because he’s got all the qualifications.” He’s “much more” experienced with the criminal background, has been a prosecutor before and ran for judge. McConnell said Garza is “highly qualified.”
McConnell has been living in Kosciusko County for about the last seven to eight years, but growing up he’d come here a lot because his grandparents had a lot at Yogi Bear Campgrounds. His family lived right across the county line in Noble County.
“I was over here every summer my entire life from birth until probably going to college,” he said, noting he still goes over to the campground pretty often.
