U.S. Attorneys Protect Victims of Domestic Violence by Enforcing Federal Gun Laws

Bob Davis

Welcome to Patchwork, the podcast from the Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. Today, we're joined by Erin Nealy Cox. She's the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. As the chief law enforcement officer in the Northern District, she oversees more than 100 counties and a population of more than eight million people. Erin was appointed in 2018 to the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. Today, she chairs the Domestic Violence Working Group. In support of the Attorney General's goal to prevent violence, Erin and other U.S. Attorneys are working in their communities to try and enforce gun laws to prevent homicide and save lives. Erin, thanks for joining us today. 

Erin Nealy Cox

Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be included in Patchwork.

Bob Davis

Erin, when you started in your job, tell me what you saw in terms of the landscape of the risk to victims from gun violence. We know that when a gun is in the hands of someone with a history of domestic violence, it can be very dangerous. 

Erin Nealy Cox

Well, the initiative regarding the reduction of violent crime through gun crime prosecutions is one of the Attorney General's signature initiative. So as we looked at how we were going to be pursuing gun crime under the auspices of overall violent crime reduction, that's how I really got involved in it, because, again, we tried to figure out how we could have the biggest impact for gun crime prosecutions. The other thing that is obvious, is just reading the newspaper and the various locations that we have in the northern district of Texas, it's shockingly prominent how many times you will read about homicides committed by domestic violence partners, family violence partners, how they often involve children - those stories are very prevalent in our society, all over the country. 

And so it got me talking to our district attorneys and our police chiefs and to a tee, what police chiefs will tell you is that family violence is obviously a huge part of what they do as a police department, that oftentimes these calls or some of the riskiest to law enforcement to respond to and many of the jurisdictions are struggling with the percentage of homicides that are family violence related, as opposed to just homicides that are unrelated to domestic violence and all of these things together sort of put together a pretty persuasive argument for paying more attention to it and seeing how we as federal partners can help in this in this fight. We do not do the heavy lifting, we do not have a domestic violence offense in the federal criminal code. We have to rely on the state to do the heavy lifting, but there is a place for us where we can support those efforts and where we can make a difference and I think that gun crime prosecutions is our best choice for that.

Bob Davis

Tell us a little bit about how you got started on this with the Attorney General and what your work has been with the department to enforce these gun laws.

Erin Nealy Cox

Sure, well I will say that we kind of got started when we were looking at the data. I'm a fan of using data to really analyze our impact in this area. I started taking a hard look at it in conjunction with my colleague, who's the SAC at ATF and what we were noticing is, number one, we didn't do very many of the domestic violence gun cases historically. But number two, a lot of the research out there suggests that when abusers have guns, the opportunity for violence and in fact, homicide goes up dramatically. So, as you know, the federal government's limited resources, we have just put our resources where we think they're going to make the biggest impact and I felt like this was a good area to put our resources in the domestic violence area. It was also the only area in the federal gun crime law where all the defendant has to have is a misdemeanor conviction. No other area, other than domestic violence, will a misdemeanor conviction qualify you for a charge under the federal gun crime statute. I mean, that certainly is a unique way to get at some of this gun crime. And so I began discussions with our District Attorneys across the Northern District of Texas, which there are many. I talked to people at Main Justice and there are several other United States Attorneys are also interested in pursuing this type of focus. And we had a strategic meeting, several meetings and calls. And ultimately, when we were able to put it before the Attorney General, he was very supportive of our efforts to continue this, to, in fact, broaden its scope and that's why he's the first Attorney General to ever create the working group underneath the Attorney General's Advisory Committee. So we're happy that he did that. We think it brings good strategic focus to this effort. 

Bob Davis

You mentioned partnering with the ATF. Talk a little bit about that resource, that federal resource. They're an extremely effective partner, aren't they, in this? 

Erin Nealy Cox

They are, and they're one of our best partners. We handle a lot of federal cases with them, especially in violent crime reduction efforts. They are one of our primary partners. Because of the nexus between gun crime and violent crime anywhere, ATF is going to be the go-to agency. And what I have here is I'm very happy to have a Special Agent in Charge here that feels the same way about these cases that I do. ATF also has an Acting Director, Regina Lombardo, who very much prioritizes these cases and has said from her perch at the top down to the ranks that everybody should be paying attention to these cases. They are not hard to convince agents to get involved in. They're easy sells. And so I think, you know, we have been very interested in making sure that nationwide we are paying attention to this and we've been successful in that effort. 

Bob Davis

You mentioned that children are oftentimes victims in these homicides.

Erin Nealy Cox

They are.

Bob Davis

People don't often recognize it, but when you think about mass shootings, multiple shooting victims, a lot of times it is these scenarios.

Erin Nealy Cox

There is a strong connection between domestic violence in someone's past and active shootings.

Bob Davis

So this is this seems like a way to really hone in and find a preventive measure. People often ask themselves, how can we stop these mass shootings? It sounds like this is one way to do it is to really target in on these people who are prone to violence already. 

Erin Nealy Cox

Yes. Absolutely. 

Bob Davis

How does this go over in Texas? I grew up in Texas and learned how to handle a farm safely in Texas. And I can imagine that this is not the easiest thing to enforce in the Lone Star State. What challenges did you face when it comes to taking away a gun from someone? 

Erin Nealy Cox

Yeah. You know, you would think that I think a lot of people just have that reaction to gun crime. But, you know, strangely, Texans who care about having guns and who are very forthright in terms of their Second Amendment rights are very much in favor and making sure that guns do not belong in the hands of those that are prohibited.

I have not found any resistance, whatsoever, to that effort and they are aligned in their support of making sure that domestic violence, abusers, and felons, and the like are not the ones that have guns. Because I think, you know, it's not hard to talk about why that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, surprisingly or not, we haven't had any resistance to this effort at all.

Bob Davis

That's great. And you we work with other U.S. Attorneys across the country to implement this in other communities. What's that been like? What challenges have they faced? What's worked well? 

Erin Nealy Cox

Well, it's so encouraging to see a number of U.S. Attorneys that have a lot of interest in this. We work with the U.S. Attorney in Nevada, in Vegas. We work with the U.S. Attorney in Ohio. We work with U.S. Attorneys in LA, and New Jersey, and Oklahoma. 

And, you know, we have a large working group of folks that are really dedicated to making sure their office is paying attention to this and messaging it from the top. And I think the difficulties that we have at the federal level, especially when you're talking about across the country, it really comes down to, you know, how the prior convictions are sorted out at the state level and whether or not they qualify under the federal statute. There are a couple of gaps where a domestic violence conviction at the state would not necessarily qualify. One, for example, a prominent one is what they call the boyfriend gap, which is you can be prosecuted as a domestic violence case if you the boyfriend and you're not living together but you are an abuser. At the federal level, you have to either be cohabiting, you have to have a child, or you have to be married. And so you can see where there's a boyfriend-girlfriend situation that is not going to be a case that we can take on. There's also some jurisdictions that have convictions for domestic violence in the first instance at the municipal city level. Those also don't qualify, so, for example, Alaska is a state that handles domestic violence in the first instance at the municipal level. And unfortunately, unless you have repeat offenders, they do not make the cut. So there's you have to really do a legal analysis for these cases. And it is an extra step. It's an important extra step, which is why we get our appellate division involved in every case that we take. And many other U.S. Attorneys do the same thing. But, you know, it's everywhere that we feel like we can take on a federal case, we're happy to do it.  

Bob Davis

I always think of the victim and the family and the precarious situation when they're trying to get to safety. Adding a gun to that just makes that really unimaginably difficult. Tell me about your thoughts about getting that gun out of that situation. 

Erin Nealy Cox

Yeah, I think the chances of violence and certainly the risk of homicides go directly up. I think one study that we tend to quote as it goes up at a rate of 500 percent if an abuser has a gun in the home, but you really don't need a study to tell you that that's a dangerous thing to have happen. I think what we need to do is we need to, you know, we need to get the word out broadly that if a you if you have a misdemeanor or a felony conviction, a misdemeanor for domestic violence, felony conviction for anything, and you possess a gun thereafter, you're going to be eligible for a federal prosecution. 

I think people understand that. Hopefully what that will do is that will be a deterrent for folks to have a gun. We also obviously can prosecute cases where there is a protective order for victims of abuse. We need to get the word out to the family law lawyers and to those family law courts that that these defendants are going to be eligible for federal prosecution if they violate the protective order and possess a gun.

And so I think a large part of our efforts, in addition to our prosecutions, have been outreach, sending our prosecutors into the communities to talk to the police departments, to talk to the judges, to make sure that the judges understand that this is an option and to make sure that community nonprofits understand that this is an option so they can help their clients. The violence is dramatic and we need to make sure that victims know that this is an option for them that they can definitely take advantage of. 

Bob Davis

Let me ask you this, if someone's at risk in a situation already and there is a gun involved, there's got to be added fear to try and reach out and get help. Tell me what that person can do if they there is a gun, they are afraid about that, but they are also equally afraid to make a call.

Erin Nealy Cox

And that is, unfortunately, what we deal with a lot, but that is actually one of the benefits of having the ability to call the feds, because at the federal level, we do not need the testimony of the victim in these cases. It's really just about possession of a firearm and a prior conviction. So we need certified conviction documents and then we need evidence of possession and so in some of these instances where the victims are very reluctant to engage in testimony or they're in a relationship that may be overly influenced or codependent with a potential abuser, we can avoid putting the victim on the stand. We really just have a very different case than the state has in terms of proving the actual domestic violence, and that's helpful.  Our case is simpler, they're easier to make, and the victims that we've worked with are very grateful that they don't have to be overly involved in the case, but yet it is a significant case with some serious penalties. 

Bob Davis

How do you know when it's working? Tell me about some of the results you see. 

Erin Nealy Cox

You know, that's a great question. I think it might be too early to tell. I kicked off the initiative in 2018, and so we really only been doing it for a couple of years. I think certainly will want to track the data and see how we're doing for right now. For right now, what I can tell you is our percentages in terms of domestic violence cases are way up, not only in my district, in my district we’re up about eight hundred percent from 2017, 2018 timeframe. So you can just see from the numbers there, right, that we're doing a lot more of these cases. but across the country, we're doing a lot more of these cases and I would like to think that over time we're going to be able to track the metrics and say that this really resulted in some reduction of violent crime and certainly a reduction of domestic violence, because unlike the state system where you are arrested for domestic violence and very rarely are you detained in the federal system, we seek detention. We don't have bond in the federal system so we move to detain and if we can convince the magistrate court that there are violent and that's a danger to the community to allow them back into the community, we can detain them. And we've certainly done that. And that provides some much needed separation for the victim so that we can get the victim, the services they need, the support services they need, and they can have that needed separation as opposed to be back in with their abuser. And so I think, I hope what we're going to see is the data is going to tell us we've been successful, but just the numbers as we have them right now. I feel very good about what we've done. 

Bob Davis

You know, our listeners range from people in the justice system to mental health providers and others, and they oftentimes ask ‘what can what can we do? What can the average person in a community who wants to help with this problem do to get involved and to address this?’

Erin Nealy Cox

Well, you know, I think the nonprofits that we have in many of the communities are so dedicated and so passionate about helping victims, I think they certainly can always need help. But from my point of view, just getting the word out, I think that's part of what we want to do is make sure that we get the word out so that if you're an abuser and even if you have a gun or you think about having a gun, hopefully this will this will make you not have that gun. And certainly we want people to know that if they do choose to have a gun, we're going to be coming after them. That is going to be squarely within our sights. And I always like to make sure that we're using the criminal justice system in the right way for both deterrence and punishment. 

Bob Davis

Erin, thank you.

Erin Nealy Cox

Absolutely.

Bob Davis

Really, really appreciate your time and all the work you're doing. Thanks for joining us. 

Thank you for listening to Patchwork, if you enjoyed this episode. Please share it with someone who you think may value hearing what we shared. Help us get the word out about this important initiative. 

And if there's something you'd like to hear about our work here at the Office on Violence Against Women, please let us know. Give us a call at (202) 307-6026 or e-mail us at patchwork@usdoj.gov.

Thanks for listening.