Defense lawyer Douglas Hayes enters race for district attorney

http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/artic...699427550396494 Defense lawyer Douglas Hayes enters race for district attorney CHUCK SCHULTZ, NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER March 14, 2006 12:00 AM And then there were three who wanted to be district attorney. Douglas Hayes, a Santa Barbara native and former prosecutor who has been a criminal defense lawyer locally for three decades, has filed as a candidate for Santa Barbara County district attorney in the June election. He will compete for the four-year post against Assistant District Attorney Christie Stanley of Santa Maria and criminal defense attorney Gary Dunlap of Solvang. The winner will replace 23-year District Attorney Tom Sneddon, who is not seeking another term when his current one expires at the end of this year. He disputed the widespread notion that Ms. Stanley is unbeatable because of her long career as a prosecutor locally and her broad base of endorsements, from lawyers in her office as well as law enforcement agencies around the county. "I don't agree," Mr. Hayes said. "I think I'm unbeatable, frankly." Mr. Sneddon was a senior prosecutor in the Santa Barbara office when Mr. Hayes was a deputy district attorney there from 1973 to 1977. The latter now questions the way his former superior has sometimes allocated resources and used public money. "It's a question of placement of values," said Mr. Hayes, 60, during an interview Monday at his East Victoria Street office. The district attorney, he says, "shouldn't waste money on personal vendettas and personal promotion." Asked if he thought the failed prosecution of pop star Michael Jackson on child molestation and other charges was motivated by a personal vendetta on Mr. Sneddon's part, the candidate replied, "I just don't know. It went on way too long. Too much money was spent." That would apply, too, to prosecuting other "incredibly petty matters" such as bicycle thefts at UCSB, he said. He noted that two major trials were under way simultaneously then in the Santa Maria courts, Mr. Jackson's trial and the potential death-penalty trial of triple murderer James Manuel Noriega. Yet, the former garnered far more resources from the District Attorney's Office. "You've got to admit that the perception of two (prosecution) lawyers on a triple-murder case next to a really minimal touching molest case, with five lawyers (prosecutors), there's something askew there," Mr. Hayes said. "I think that was a misuse of funding. I don't know why that couldn't have been handled by a single lawyer." He added, "as reprehensible as his (Mr. Jackson's) conduct may have been, it certainly didn't hit the Top 10 list of molests that have ever occurred in this county. It was clearly prosecuted because of who he was." Mr. Sneddon has endorsed Ms. Stanley, his longtime assistant for the North County, in the race to decide who will replace him. If she's elected, laments Mr. Hayes, "it will just be more of the same." "If you have someone who's been an assistant for somebody for 20-odd years, the likelihood is that the style will remain the same," he added. "I'd like to change that. I think I have something to contribute." Mr. Hayes was born in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in 1945 and attended a preschool called Humpty Dumpty Nursery School, run by his mother, which formerly stood at Santa Barbara Street and Constance Avenue. He graduated from San Marcos High School and UCSB before earning his law degree from the University of Oregon. He played football and rugby while attending UCSB and is on the university's Hall of Fame football team, he said. "I'm not a city slicker," he remarked -- and is opposed to putting up campaign signs or spending anything close to the $100,000 some observers predict it may take to win the seat for district attorney. "People are going to know me by word of mouth," he said. No one besides the three candidates has taken out papers to run in the June 6 election. The filing deadline is Wednesday for the post that pays between $147,048 and $179,520 annually, county officials said. If none of the three gets more than half the votes cast then, the top two finishers would vie in a runoff campaign that would be decided in November.