Republican Attorney General candidate Tom Leonard is promising more help for county prosecutors in rural areas if he’s elected in next month’s election.
In a campaign visit to Escanaba this afternoon, Leonard told the Radio Results Network that the Attorney General has the power to appoint special assistant prosecutors…something he says should have been done to help Schoolcraft County Prosecutor Tom Noble when Noble had to deal with the triple homicide that happened several years ago.
“Tim is the only prosecutor in the whole county,” Leonard told RRN News. “He doesn’t’ have assistants under him. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for him to try a triple homicide case, and then take care of all the other cases that were coming in. That’s a situation where we should send special assistants to help Prosecutor Noble in the event that he doesn’t have the manpower he needs.”
Leonard says that in Genessee County, and the City of Flint, there are four special assistants on the job, helping the county prosecutor to prosecute crime in Flint.
“We could do the same thing here in the Upper Peninsula,” Leonard said. “There is no reason why the Attorney General couldn’t appoint two or three special assistants to help out these local prosecutors.”
Leonard says the prosecutors want to be able to run programs like sobriety courts, drug courts, and mental health courts, but they need some help to do it.
