Prosecution Of Teen In Braylon Meade Case Debated At Commonwealth's Attorney Forum

ARLINGTON, VA — The race for Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney turned more contentious at a Democratic primary debate Wednesday night when challenger Josh Katcher highlighted the story of a grieving mother whose 17-year-old son was killed by a drunk driver in Arlington last November.

Katcher, who previously served as deputy commonwealth’s attorney in the office of Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, highlighted a letter sent by Rose Kehoe, the mother of Braylon Meade, who was killed in the crash. Kehoe sent the letter to local officials, asking them to rescind their endorsement of Dehghani-Tafti in her re-election bid for commonwealth’s attorney of Arlington and Falls Church.

Kehoe was upset that Dehghani-Tafti did not agree to try the driver, also a 17-year-old, as an adult. She also complained that Dehghani-Tafti did not attend the final sentencing hearing for the defendant.

“That is not real justice,” Katcher said in his opening comments at the debate, agreeing with what Kehoe wrote in the letter.

“What I have heard is that people are concerned with the direction of this office,” Katcher said at the debate at the Lubber Run Community Center, sponsored by the Arlington Committee of 100. “They want a commonwealth’s attorney that is willing to acknowledge rising crime and the centrality of justice for victims.”

READ ALSO: Mother Of Arlington Teen Killed By Drunk Driver Angry With Prosecutor

In response to Katcher accusing her of not seeking “real justice” for Meade, Dehghani-Tafti argued that the criteria for transferring the case against the defendant from juvenile court to adult court had not been met.

“I can understand why a parent would want to see retribution,” she said. “Our job as commonwealth’s attorneys is to be sensitive to that, but also to follow the law. And the easiest thing to do politically would have been to try to transfer the case.”

The teenager ended up pleading guilty to aggravated involuntary manslaughter in the death of Meade, the same charge he would have faced if he had been tried as an adult. In late March, an Arlington judge sentenced the teenager to one year of detention and two years of probation, although Dehghani-Tafti had sought three years in detention.

Dehghani-Tafti and Katcher are the two candidates for commonwealth’s attorney on the ballot in the Democratic primary, which will take place on June 20. Early voting in the Democratic primary begins on May 5.

Katcher announced in November that he would be running for commonwealth’s attorney, seeking to unseat his former boss. He resigned from his job last summer prior to launching his campaign.

In the Democratic primary in 2019, Dehghani-Tafti defeated Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos, running a campaign focused on criminal justice reform. Stamos was first elected in 2011 and had served as a prosecutor in the county since 1987. Dehghani-Tafti ran unopposed in the general election in November 2019 and won election, taking office in January 2020.

Meade was killed in a crash at the intersection of Old Dominion Drive and Williamsburg Boulevard in the early morning hours of Nov. 11 when an SUV driven by a drunk driver ran into his car, the Arlington County Police Department said in an incident report at the time.

Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a nonprofit group that works with reform-minded elected local prosecutors, said prosecutors face many difficult decisions as part of their jobs, “none more agonizing than cases involving young people and the tragic loss of life.”

“As a former prosecutor, I also know that the auto-pilot of past 'tough-on-crime' punitive policies, accompanied by decades-long sentences that have filled our prisons and jails, do not heal broken hearts and often simply compound these tragedies,” Krinsky said in a statement.

Science shows that young people have a greater capacity for rehabilitation, are more responsive to treatment than adults because their brains are still developing, and are more likely to age out of criminal behavior, according to Krinsky.

“Dehghani-Tafti made a difficult decision to keep the young person in this case in the juvenile system,” she said. "This does not remove accountability for the underlying conduct; instead, it follows both the science and traditional role of the youth justice system — balancing accountability and rehabilitation in a manner that promotes the interests of justice and serves the entire community."