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Fall 2005

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The Law According to Bonnie

—Jeanne Ricci




	San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis ’73. In April, Dumanis and other San Diego leaders were honored for their efforts against sexual assault. Dumanis told the crowd and members of the press that the city's sexual assault and stalking division had a 100 percent conviction rate for the first four months of 2005.

BONNIE DUMANIS ’73 IS LOOKING out at San Diego harbor from the window of her 13th-floor office. She’s explaining how, as a young girl growing up in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Brockton, Massachusetts, she wanted to be a rabbi. “That went down the drain because they wouldn’t let women be rabbis at the time,” she says. Instead, this nice Jewish girl from a working class, Democratic family became the first openly gay district attorney in the United States. And a Republican to boot.

Newly slim and sporting a black pantsuit, Dumanis has shed her matronly persona for a sharper, sleeker look, more suitable for a powerful D.A. Her smile is warm and friendly, but don’t let that fool you: She exudes authority. This is not a woman to mess with.

The county Dumanis presides over is just as complex as the D.A. herself. - http://www.sdcda.org/ - San Diego’s beaches and more than 300 days of sunshine a year belie its less-than-sunny mean-streets reality. This is the seventh largest county in the country, with more than three million residents and its share of urban problems. Combine that with its location close to the Mexican border, and you’ve got a recipe for gang violence and drug running.

Dumanis’s tough-on-crime demeanor helped her get elected in 2002. She believes one of her greatest accomplishments so far has been the creation of three special units. One is the cold homicide unit—a team effort of two prosecutors and four investigators who work across law enforcement agencies to crack the more than 2,000 unsolved murder cases in San Diego County. In less than a year, they have solved six murders. “This is so meaningful to the families of the victims to be able to get justice for their loved ones and to have some sort of closure,” says Dumanis.

The second is the narcotics unit, which targets manufacturers, dealers, and users. “We have an overall method of attacking the problem, one that recognizes that we have to get drugs off the streets, but also acknowledges we have to get users in treatment,” explains Dumanis.

The last is the sexual assault and stalking unit, which deals with victims of rape and other serious sexual offenses. “We have someone vertically prosecute,” says Dumanis. “What that means is from the moment the case comes in, it has the same prosecutor. The victim doesn’t have to deal with many different people along the way.”
San Diego County also has designated prosecutors in place who specialize in sexually violent predator cases. If a person has been convicted of a sexually violent crime and served his or her prison term, the county can still petition to commit them to a mental hospital until he or she is no longer a danger. These prosecutors also make sure registered sex offenders continue to register.

“These are some things I promised in my campaign and was successful in implementing and that I’m very proud of,” she says. And it’s clear that Bonnie Dumanis is a woman who keeps her promises.

Dumanis’s interest in the law began at UMass Amherst in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Although she was studying sociology and French, during her senior year she volunteered at a legal aid office, helping welfare recipients during their hearings. When she graduated, she wanted to be a teacher but jobs were scarce. “There were so many people who went into teaching, there was a glut on the market,” she says. “My advisor suggested that I apply to law school.” She graduated in 1976 from Western State University (now Thomas Jefferson) in San Diego.

She often considered returning to Massachusetts. “I was very close to my grandmother, and when she was alive, I went back two or three times a year to visit.” But Western State was not accredited at the time and the Massachusetts bar would not accept her credentials, so she could only work in California. There were also painful memories back east; her sister, who worked in a fireworks factory in New Jersey, was killed in an explosion in 1971.

San Diego in all its complexity—a conservative town with an active gay community—fit Dumanis much better than Brockton ever could. She quickly became entrenched in its legal community, first as a clerk in the D.A.’s office, then as an investigative assistant, finally working her way up to deputy district attorney in 1978. Although she was on a successful career path, it was not a panacea. Dumanis was still distressed by her sister’s death, and in 1983, she was hospitalized for depression for five weeks.

Her bout with depression didn’t stop her career trajectory. If anything, it helped her understand people better, a quality that helped her on the bench. She was elected to the San Diego Municipal Court in 1994, then the Superior Court in 1998.

Dumanis has been described as a firm but fair judge, which she attributes to being open-minded, compassionate, and consistent. “It’s been my experience as a judge—and in most things—if you make rules, set them, and follow through on them, then people can count on you,” she says. “And in the case of juvenile defendants, which I had a lot of dealings with, it’s a way of showing you care—it’s like parenting. When parents make rules and don’t stick to those rules, kids tend to run wild and don’t feel like you care.” Dumanis dealt with juveniles as a judge for five years, and found that most of those kids hadn’t been parented before. “I was the first person who showed they cared by putting some limitations on them,” she says, “and holding them to those limitations.”

It’s this same brand of tough love that ultimately won Dumanis the D.A. post in 2002. The race was bitter; Dumanis’s hospitalization for depression was disclosed. Perhaps this served her well in the end, making her more human to voters. Although her strong stance on crime was a key to her victory, so was her warm personality. Among her biggest supporters were her mother and father, and her partner, Denise Nelesen. Even her dog, Jake, set out with her on the campaign trail.

Victory didn’t change the D.A.’s approachable demeanor. Most people address her as “Bonnie” rather than “District Attorney Dumanis.” She successfully brought together an office divided by the 2002 election. “I feel our team has done a good job at making peope feel part of a single team instead of two camps,” she says. She also managed a budget that was “yanked right out from underneath me.” In her first month, her budget was reduced by 14 million dollars and then another 2 million shortly thereafter. She implemented a general management system, allowing the office to run despite the deep cuts.

With her house in order, the D.A. is intent on the future. Dumanis plans to attack the gang issue head on; in collaboration with Governor Schwarzenegger, she’ll implement a program to help gang members who are getting out of custody with a re-entry program to discourage recidivism. She’s also a leader in the war on drugs. “I was a drug court judge, and I’m trying to tighten up one of the programs that was enacted by the people, the substance abuse initiative, which took away a lot of our tools that we had in drug court; we are trying to revise that law.” She’s also working on a regionalization of the family justice center, which brings together all the agencies that deal with victims of domestic violence. Right now, there is just one such center located in downtown San Diego, which isn’t convenient for everyone in a county of three million people.

As Dumanis calmly lays out her future plans, you can almost see her making a mental list in her head. No doubt she will soon add a little check after each item, marking it done. Yet despite the packed schedule she keeps to achieve her goals, she makes a point of meeting with the family members of murder victims. “It’s very emotional, but I do it because it is therapeutic for the family and it lets them know that we think their case is important and we are going to do everything possible to get justice for their family member,” she says. “I express my sorrow for their loss. I just let them cry, and sometimes I cry with them and give them a big hug.”

Bonnie Dumanis may have been denied the opportunity to be a rabbi. But she’s a woman of great faith and compassion who has found her calling.

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