Fairfax Co. prosecutor worked without license
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. - A Fairfax County prosecutor was working without a valid license for months, trying cases including child sex crimes.
According to documents obtained by FOX 5, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Katherine Ballou contacted the chief judges in both circuit and district court alerting them that her annual dues to the Virginia bar were accidentally left unpaid.
As a result, Ballou’s license was suspended between October and January, during which time she handled eight plea deals and six trials, according to a spokesperson for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office. That includes a felony child sex assault case and two other felony cases involving juveniles, according to the spokesperson.
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"We’re going through any court process right now to determine what effect it will have on prosecutions," said Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano.
A judge could toss the cases and a defense attorney could request a re-trial.
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Descano said, thus far, no cases have been impacted, and his office is maintaining all cases should stand because it was an administrative error.
"I think it’s important to note that it’s not because of any bad acts on her part," Descano said. "It’s administrative because the check didn’t get put in the mail."
According to Ballou’s February letter to the chief judges, she paid her dues immediately upon realizing the mistake and was reinstated within 24 hours.
In a county prosecutor’s office, typically those bar dues are handled internally.
FOX 5’s Lindsay Watts asked Descano who was to blame for the error.
"I’m not going to sit here and blame the prosecutor," Descano said. "What I’m going to say is that our office, we should’ve done a better job of making sure this got done. I take full responsibility for that, and now we have processes in place that re-double our efforts to make sure that doesn’t happen again."
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Descano said his office has reached out to defense attorneys in Ballou’s cases from that time period to make them aware.
Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at The George Washington University Law School, said a defense attorney could ask for a re-trial, but in these circumstances, it’s unlikely the request would be granted and also unlikely a judge would decide to toss out a conviction.
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But he also pointed to the well-documented tension between some Fairfax County judges and Descano’s office, with judges publicly blasting plea deals they deemed too lenient.
"I would say that it wouldn’t shock me to see the judges wanting to send some kind of message to the prosecutor," Saltzburg said. "There’s some greater chance that will be treated as something other than a technical violation than there would be if it was almost any other prosecutor’s office."
He said while it’s not uncommon for an attorney to forget to pay dues at some point in a career, it’s a bad look for a county government.
"It’s embarrassing given that prosecutors are supposed to teach us how to do things right," Saltzburg said. "It’s embarrassing when an office messes up so badly."
FOX 5 reached out to Ballou as well as the offices of the chief judges but did not hear back.