U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. tackling its most cases in years, Justice Department data show
by Matt Delaney · The Washington TimesThe U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia declined to prosecute just 19% of arrests during fiscal 2025, the office’s lowest declination rate in decades, according to data from the Department of Justice.
The federal office, which prosecutes felonies committed in the District, was once blamed for contributing to a generational crime wave by declining to pursue most of its criminal cases. Now it is witnessing one of its most aggressive prosecution rates in years.
The Justice Department’s annual data report shows the office refused to charge only 19% of criminal cases in fiscal 2025, which appears to be the lowest declination rate recorded this century. The next lowest rate occurred in fiscal 2002, when federal prosecutors declined to follow through on 22% of arrests.
The latest Justice Department numbers mark a turnaround for the office, which declined to prosecute 66% of cases just three years ago.
In 2023, the city was besieged by deadly shootings, carjackings and nightly muggings. Congressional lawmakers grilled former U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves over his office’s failure to bring criminals to justice at a time when the District was seeing its most homicides since the late 1990s.
Current U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told The Washington Times that the Justice Department’s publicly available data, which covers October 2024 to September 2025, is already outdated.
“The turnaround is even greater than what you say … since the [federal] surge, the numbers have gone down to 4% of the cases that are not being papered,” Ms. Pirro said, referring to President Trump’s law enforcement crackdown launched last August.
Ms. Pirro, who, like all U.S. attorneys, are appointed by the president, said her office’s ability to take more cases to court results in getting justice for those harmed by criminals.
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“I take the side of the victim,” the federal prosecutor said. “Criminals belong behind bars, and our job is to protect the citizens. That is the first obligation of government, and I think that those numbers make it clear that that’s just what we’re doing.”
The Times asked to review the internal data from the U.S. Attorney’s Office following the interview with Ms. Pirro. The office declined to share the data, saying it was not for public release, but reiterated that the declination rate was 5% or less each month since September.
Still, Ms. Pirro’s directives have played a part in a significant drop in crime in the District. Metropolitan Police Department data shows that homicides are down 39%, carjackings have plummeted by 64% and robberies are down 21% this year.
The U.S. attorney said the improved procedures among arresting agencies help prosecutors navigate stringent probable-cause requirements enforced by the D.C. Court of Appeals, which has been accused of hamstringing criminal prosecutions at times.
Ms. Pirro said the Court of Appeals has been “far more restrictive of police conduct than even the U.S. Supreme Court.”
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The court’s restrictions on police actions proved a nagging issue for Mr. Graves. The Biden-appointed top prosecutor bemoaned court decisions that limited how police officers could go about inspecting people for illegal guns during his term.
One case was Mayo v. U.S., in which a 19-year-old man caught with drugs and guns in the Kenilworth neighborhood later had his conviction overturned. The Court of Appeals ruled that Metropolitan Police did not have probable cause to tackle the man after he tried to flee when officers asked if he had any weapons on him.
In another case, T.W. v. U.S., officers found a gun on a man in Southeast after he agreed to a protective patdown. The Court of Appeals said the man didn’t know he had a right to deny the search and overturned his conviction.
“We lost 75% of cases where the D.C. Court of Appeals were analyzing these sorts of issues of patting down individuals who were suspected of having firearms or otherwise asking them for their consent to search,” Mr. Graves told WUSA-TV in 2023.
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To work within the District’s tighter limits on probable cause, Ms. Pirro said her office has collaborated with Metropolitan Police and federal authorities to lay out what kinds of evidence will help prosecutors present charges effectively.
“It’s a combination of our recognizing that when police make arrests, it’s our obligation to look at those cases and request more information if necessary, so that we can go forward with criminal charges or to continue the investigation, or at least to let the police know this is what we need,” she said.
The Justice Department’s numbers said the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged 52% of its defendants within a day of their arrest in fiscal 2025. D.C. law generally requires defendants to have their first court appearance within 24 hours or charges cannot be pursued.
Ms. Pirro said those numbers have improved to 67% since the federal surge last summer, but again, that internal data was not shared with The Times. She credited the uptick in day-of charging decisions to staffing more prosecutors to handle arrests as they come in.
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A raft of the cases listed in the Justice Department’s report fall under the new category of “Transferred,” or instances in which the U.S. Attorney’s Office had to send cases to probation officials or the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which prosecutes most juvenile crimes.
Ms. Pirro has been vocal about the need to come down harder on juveniles, especially those involved in so-called teen takeovers in which dozens of youths swarm neighborhoods and wreak havoc.
During the interview, she said that if her office had been more involved with juvenile offenders, the teens would not be so emboldened to break the law.
But Ms. Pirro said her team’s willingness to put even misdemeanor defendants in front of judges, the vocal support of President Trump and his aversion to disorder are dampening criminal urges throughout the District.
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“It really is a reflection of the broken windows theory that, the more lower level crimes are being prosecuted, the more people recognize that the laws are being followed, that vandalism isn’t being tolerated and the safer people are in the long haul,” Ms. Pirro said.
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Matt Delaney
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