Jason Schmidt
FREDONIA – It appears there will be a contested race for the office of county district attorney when voters head out to the polls for the 2016 November general elections.
The Post-Journal is reporting that the Chautauqua County Republican Committee has tapped 49 year-old Jason Schmidt as the GOP candidate for district attorney. Schmidt will square off against current acting district attorney Patrick Swanson, a Democrat who was appointed to the post at the start of this year when former DA David Foley left the post to take over as county judge.
Schmidt is a former prosecutor who currently holds a criminal defense practice in the north county. He relocated from New York City to the Fredonia area in 2003. He spent five years working part-time in the DA’s office before turning his focus to his private practice and criminal defense.
This year’s special election for the DA’s office will cover the remainder of the current term, which expires at the end of 2017. That means whoever wins this year will have to run a reelection campaign in next year’s local election, if they plan to serve another term.
I uncovered a Post Journal article from 2008 that gives some of Jason Schmidt’s background.
[Fredrick’s conviction was overturned on appeal since Jason Schmidt, the assistant district attorney arguing the people’s case, improperly vouched for Texeira and the police officers who testified at trial, according to the appellate ruling. It wasn’t the first time a conviction won by Schmidt had been reversed on appeal because of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. A few weeks after Fredrick was found guilty, Chautauqua County Judge John Ward reversed the conviction of a defendant found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree unlawfully dealing with a child — a case argued at Fredonia village court. In his decision, Ward admonished Schmidt for twice answering a juror’s question during jury selection — something that is expressly forbidden by the courts — and for calling the defendant a predator during summation. Ward also admonished Schmidt for ‘‘urging the jury to apply a different standard of proof than reasonable doubt’’ and for ‘‘implying disdain for the very legal principle upon which our criminal justice system is based’’ by likening the doctrine of reasonable doubt to ‘‘legal mumbo jumbo.’’ ]