Stats don't back Stewart getting tougher on crime

The “Seabaugh effect” keeps progressing on Democrat First District Attorney James Stewart, a recent review of data reveals.

Stewart will face off against Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh this fall to try to win reelection. Demographics slightly favor Stewart, but Seabaugh has shown a terrific campaigning ability in his runs for the state Legislature.

In his challenge, Seabaugh, picking up on some disgruntlement within the parish, has emphasized an approach that will lead to more charges filed and more cases going to trial. Stewart has come under criticism for being too much in the mold of a “progressive prosecutor,” or one who tends to dismiss lower-level charges or pleads down too aggressively because supposedly prosecutorial resources should go to more serious crimes and lower-level offenses are allegedly an offshoot of a disadvantaged background that are committed disproportionately by racial minorities.

Leftist special interests had high hopes for Stewart in this mode, backing him to the tune of nearly a million dollars in this initial run for office to fill an unexpired term. Yet in that term he followed marginally at best that role, leaving no special enthusiasm for him by those previous backers for his first reelection attempt in 2020.

However, he changed his tune heading into that year. Over his second term for most of it, even as crime rates shot up his criminal charging rate went down, while trial average remained about where it had been since 2008, well before his arrival. Further, in the previous two years 70 percent of the 81 people arrested for murder already had previous arrest records. This pattern caught Seabaugh’s attention, who months before his formal announcement last fall had circulated the idea that he would challenge Stewart.

Stewart then began changing his ways, talking up his willingness to impose the death penalty. He also took about 50 percent more cases to trial last year than the historical average of just over 40, which would indicate pursuing more charges and less willingness to plead down. Recently, Stewart touted a high conviction rate above 90 percent, according to documentation not available publicly. But the total number of cases filed was about 20 percent fewer in that year than a decade previous, just before he took office, while the violent crime rate actually inched up about 3 percent from the last six months of 2016 to the last six months of 2025.

In short, Stewart understands that a skilled campaigner like Seabaugh can exploit that record, who can raise enough money – much less of it coming from the local legal community than in Stewart’s case – to get the word out that Stewart is too soft on crime. So, he must pull whatever statistics he can to try to counter that, adjust his practices on the margin to reflect a harder on crime approach, and he also benefits from the nationwide secular decline in criminal behavior.

But the facts and data continue to be out there that paint him as more kindred to progressive prosecution than being tough on crime, leaving him vulnerable.