To the Editor:

Had Enough? I know I have. Victims of crime in St. Lawrence County deserve better than our current district attorney. As a result, I have stepped forward with a plan to restore the balance of justice in our county. As I’ve traveled our communities during this campaign the response has been overwhelmingly positive. However, as in any political race conflict and confusion can cloud the landscape.

I wanted to take this opportunity to address some distortions, innuendo, and outright lies people are spreading in an effort to discredit me. Everyone knows how incompetent, disorganized, and ineffective the current district attorney has been. No one can possibly look at her record of dismissals, acquittals and mismanagement and say my opponent deserves to return to office, so instead they seek to tear me down.

Let’s set the record straight and deal with issues head on - just like I have done my whole career. I have heard many people question my departure from the Public Defender’s Office and the reasons I choose to do so. Let me share the true story with you. I resigned Oct. 19, 2011 from the Public Defender’s Office on my own accord. As County Attorney Michael C. Crowe told the Watertown Daily Times, “It was a completely amicable parting of the ways.”

I resigned after I decided that someone had to stand for victims, someone had to fix the broken DA’s office and that someone was going to be me. The county leadership knew this, and their attempts to publicly discredit me ultimately backfired.

Like any good prosecutor, I share with you my proof. I received a settlement from the county of $25,000 upon my departure, an acknowledgement of the county leadership’s mishandling of my employment. In addition it was agreed that I would keep working for the county through the assigned counsel program.

The second issue that I want to address head on is my comments regarding the workload in the Public Defender’s Office. I was never overwhelmed. My office had a responsibility to zealously represent every client we were assigned-and I did it well.

In head-to-head match-ups with my opponent, at trial I won 12 out of 18 times. That is an amazing statistic-two out of every three times I went to trial against the DA, I won. My frustration as public defender was rooted in my disgust for the revolving door of justice criminals are receiving in St. Lawrence County and the enormity of the problem.

The District Attorney’s incompetence allows criminals to be arrested, go unpunished and set free, only to come back again after committing other crimes. When the voters elect Mary Rain, that incompetence ends.

Now you know the whole story and rest assured that help is on the way. I ask you to support justice in St. Lawrence County. Had Enough? On Nov. 5 vote Rain for DA.

Mary Rain,

Candidate for St. Lawrence County District Attorney