Art. 61 District attorney; powers and duties

The district attorney is the person in charge of criminal cases in their district. They decide who gets charged with a crime, when the charges are filed, and how the case moves forward. This means the DA has a lot of control over whether someone is prosecuted at all, and what charges they might face.

This power is not completely unlimited. The attorney general has some oversight authority over district attorneys, as described in a related rule. But day to day, it's the local district attorney who runs criminal prosecutions in their area and makes the key decisions about how each case is handled.

For someone involved in a criminal case, this means the DA's office holds a lot of the decision making power early on. If you're a victim, witness, or defendant, the choices about whether to bring charges, what those charges will be, and how the prosecution proceeds rest largely with the district attorney and their staff.