The Cache County Attorney is NOT a Prosecutor

The County Attorney does NOT have the power, authority, nor duty to prosecute.

Cache County Code section 2.16.010(C)(3) states:

“The County Attorney shall be the civil counsel for the County and shall perform each civil counsel duty as provided by the Act.” (emphases added).

Deputy County Attorneys have no more authority than the County Attorney. Therefore, the Deputy County Attorneys are NOT prosecutors.

Let that sink in. What a mess! How did we get here? Noon on January 6, 2025 was the effective date of radical changes.

Before noon, the Cache County Attorney functioned like those of 27 other Utah counties where the county attorney has the jobs of both civil counsel and prosecutor. In 2023, the County Council adopted Ordinance 2023-18 titled “An Ordinance . . . Creating the Office of the District Attorney.” The amended code provided that the “District Attorney . . . shall be considered an officer of the County . . .” Subsection (B)(3) states:

“The District Attorney shall act as full-time public prosecutor in the County . . .” (emphases added).

This graphic illustrates the current staffing and legal structure of what used to be the Cache County Attorney’s Office. There is a large difference between what was assumed to be the County Attorney’s role, and what actually is the County Attorney’s role. More importantly, the position of District Attorney with exclusive ability to prosecute is completely vacant, and has been vacant for over a year.

This current staffing debacle is the most devastating symptom of the high turnover and chronic instability in this Cache County Attorney's Office.

There are solutions to this mess – they’ll take work, but they'll be worth it! I urge you to support my push to become the actual Cache County Attorney, because I understand this problem and am equipped to address it in a mature and thorough way.