Touting a record of increased felony filings and community involvement, District Attorney Mike Green announced yesterday that he will run for a second term.

"It’s been a learning experience the first couple years, and a building experience," Green said, pointing out that the number of felony cases his office is handling has jumped dramatically from his predecessor’s caseload, going from approximately 180 in 1996 to 329 last year.

"I’m real happy, proud of my staff," he added. "Without too much of a significant increase, we’ve been able to handle the increased workload.

"And I think the working relationship with law enforcement has improved — it has its moments, but it’s improved."

One of his first lessons was that "this job isn’t the island I thought it was," he said, but rather that it needs the participation of other agencies to keep the community safe.

For example, he said, with the cooperation of Cortez Police Chief Roy Lane, who assigned a detective full-time to check-fraud cases, more businesses and other victims are getting their money back.

"We’ve got a system going where, with the help of the courts and the collections clerk, we’re collecting restitution back on bad checks," he said, "and it seems to be working better than the past method."

The drug task force, created last year through a federal grant, is another program that is working well, he said,

"It’s brand new here," he said, "but it’s doing a good job of getting to the more serious drug dealers rather than just the real small guys."

Additionally, new guidelines for dealing with victims of child sexual abuse have been developed in cooperation with the Four Corners Child Advocacy Center, he said, while Partners of Montezuma County, a mentoring program that connects troubled children with adult role models, has become more involved in dealing with juvenile lawbreakers.

"They’re actually doing some limited supervision of kids in court cases," he said.

Plans are also being developed for a community-corrections program once the new county jail facility is completed.

"I’m not sure what type of community corrections we’ll have, but were going to have to look at ways to utilize the [old] jail for the most benefit."

Green said the sheriff’s staff at the current overcrowded jail does "an amazing job," especially considering it normally holds more than twice the number of prisoners for which it was designed. He attributed the lack of prisoner-initiated lawsuits based on conditions at the jail to the staff’s "humane treatment" of their charges.

"The physical plant is a real problem, but they’ve managed to do things to help the situation, so I’m not real surprised there haven’t been [lawsuits]."

The recent conviction of Christopher Paul, who will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the 1998 murder of an Idaho tourist near Cortez, is one of which he is particularly proud, Green said.

"I felt really good about the police work that had been done by the sheriff’s department," he said, "and I felt good that we put him away for life, that we got him out of society."

If successful in his re-election bid, Green said he would like to expand the victim’s-assistance programs through grants and provide more treatment options for people convicted of crimes, particularly juveniles.

Green, a Democrat, will likely face former Deputy District Attorney Tim Tuthill in the fall election. Tuthill, who announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination last month, was highly critical of Green’s performance, charging the incumbent has been too lenient in plea-bargaining with offenders rather than taking them to trial, thus allowing criminals who should be in prison to remain on the streets.

"The numbers show that we’ve got to have ways of dealing with defendants other than trials," Green responded. "We can’t just have one approach.

"I think that we’ve been handling the defendants and providing those three things —punishment, rehabilitation and protection to the community.

"We are sending people to prison," he added. "We are getting convictions — I think we’re doing the job."

Tuthill also accused Green of not only breaking a campaign promise to offer no plea bargains in crimes of violence, but of knowing he couldn’t keep such a promise when he made it.

Green conceded that the "realities" he confronted once elected had made his self-imposed ban on plea-bargaining impossible to keep.

"We had to utilize plea dispositions for a variety of different reasons," he said. "If we couldn’t reach a disposition that the victim agreed to, we’ve gone to trial.

"No, we haven’t tried them all, but the system almost requires us to at least make offers — the realities of the system prohibits us from taking every case to trial, even if it’s a crime of violence."

"I have to deal with the reality," he said, "and if the reality dictates that I couldn’t do, or shouldn’t do, what I had promised, then that’s what I have to deal with."

"After I got in here, after I saw the number of cases and after I started talking with law-enforcement and victims . . . I came away with a sense that what I said [about making no plea bargains] had to be taken and modified a little bit in practice."