BREWER WEARS MANY HATS AS PROSECUTOR

 

Matt Williamson | Enterprise-Journal​​ - Jul 5, 2016

 

David Brewer was headed back to McComb from Tylertown on Highway 98, and along the way he reached in his glove compartment to grab a pen.

As he grasped the implement, he realized it wasn’t a pen at all; it was a crack pipe — a parting gift left by the man who had broken into Brewer’s truck and stolen a handgun.

To Brewer, that’s the type of guy who keeps his job security sky high.

As prosecutor for Pike County, the City of McComb and Pike County Youth Court, Brewer estimates he’s handled 31,000 cases since 2006, when he moved from Jackson back to his native Pike County and became  prosecutor. That includes 25,000 total charges, 2,500 trials resulting in 1,750 convictions, not to mention another 5,100 juvenile delinquency cases and 1,400 or so child protective orders.

Brewer said numbers like that are what have earned his appointments as prosecutor in youth court and for McComb, and partly why he “was fortunate to have a sweeping victory in an unopposed election” for the county prosecutor job.

But even his 70 percent conviction record isn’t enough to ease his worries about driving around with a crack pipe.

“When you’re the county prosecutor driving on the road and you find a crack pipe in your car, you kind of freak out,” he said.

Brewer, the son of the late Roy Brewer and Ganeath Daniel, graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1989 and received his law degree from Ole Miss.

After practicing law in Jackson, he decided to move back to Pike County.

“It’s the place I call home, and it’s that place eventually where they’re going to close that box on me and put me down,” he told members of the McComb Exchange Club on Thursday.

Brewer noted that as a prosecutor he has a lot of the same authority as the district attorney, but it’s exercised in a different court.

Between his three jobs, he appears before seven different judges in four different courts — youth court, county court, McComb Municipal Court and Pike County Justice Court.

While the DA prosecutes felonies, Brewer mostly handles misdemeanor cases. However, it’s also his job to argue felony cases during preliminary hearings in municipal and justice court, where a judge will decide if there’s enough evidence for the grand jury to hear a case.

Brewer said others have different ideas about his job.

“Most people think of me as the guy they call to get a ticket fixed,” he said. “... One thing that you need to say if you call to get a ticket fixed, is not that, ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong and you ought to throw this ticket out,’ but I like to say, ‘Confession is good for the soul, and you ought to go ahead and confess.’ ”

He said traffic violations are usually the easiest to prosecute, giving the example of a motorist pleading for leniency, insisting his cruise control was set on 72 when he got stopped on the interstate.

“Your honor, I agree. He was going at least 72 miles per hour,” Brewer said.

Property thefts and drug cases are the most common.

“Kids seem to like breaking into cars and smoking weed. That’s the two biggest things that I deal with,” Brewer said.

He said “the statistics bear out” that property theft in Pike County is 109 percent higher than the national average. Auto burglaries are especially commonplace among juvenile offenders, he said.

“They’re going out at night, and they’re popping door latches, and if the door is unlocked they see it as an open invitation to enter your car,” Brewer said.

He said there are other cases that keep him busy, including those born out of domestic disputes — “baby mama cases,” as he calls them.

He said the rise of single-parent households is making fatherhood and monogamy diametrically opposed, and the fallout tends to be women feuding over the same man — and getting arrested when things get out of hand.

“I often times find myself embroiled in the battle,” he said. “I do get a lot of domestic cases.”

Brewer noted that “in some ways I expedite the judicial process” by working with the DA to get defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges, clearing up the circuit court docket.

With his varied roles in holding people accountable for their crimes, Brewer said he’s not likely to win popularity contests.

“I get called a lot of names and if it weren’t such a wholesome environment I could tell you what they are,” he quipped, revealing some of the more milder not-so-honorary titles — “prostitutor” and “persecutor.”