Merced County DA candidates spar over charges that were never filed

Perhaps the most heated race in Merced County’s June election, the Merced County district attorney seat is expected to be decided on Tuesday.

The Election Day polls will see incumbent District Attorney Larry Morse II take on his first opponent in challenger Kimberly Helms Lewis since taking office in 2006. The two camps have lobbed accusations in the past few months.

Helms Lewis, a one-time prosecutor in Merced County who now holds a similar job in Stanislaus County, and her campaign team have repeatedly pointed to accusations made against Morse by three former employees of his office who say he made sexual comments to female subordinates and inappropriately kissed a married employee.

Morse has said the claims were incidents taken out of context, and denied sexually harassing anybody.

Helms Lewis has said she was inspired to run by the #MeToo movement, a national shift which has opened the door for women to talk about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.

At the same time, the office's chief deputy district attorneys, Harold Nutt and Rob Carroll, wrote a letter to the editor to the Sun-Star accusing Helms Lewis of botching cases that involved sexual crimes. "Helms failed to file charges in a case involving the rape of a 16-year-old foster child for nearly three years, despite DNA evidence linking the alleged rapist to the crimes," the letter says.

She pushed back against their accusation, saying when she left Merced County in 2007 the district attorney's office had six more years to file charges in the rape case. She told investigators she needed more evidence and turned the case over to deputy district attorney who followed her, she said.

"I think that Mr. Morse is feeling a little desperate," she told the Sun-Star.

Nutt and Carroll "clearly have a bias" because they work for Morse, she said, pointing to other more recent cases in which the district attorney's office did not file charges. There was Anthony Thompson, a county employee who was accused of trying to trade sex for favors, and Brian Miller, a Merced County deputy accused of sex with a 14-year-old in the sheriff's office's Explorer program, to name a few.

Morse said the difference is that Helms Lewis' case had enough evidence to file but she let it linger too long. "The victim was no longer willing to cooperate," he said. "Rape victims are very fragile and have to be handled with great care and sensitivity."

The two candidates were out on the campaign trail in the final weekend before the election.

After working at the Merced County District Attorney’s Office for more than eight years, Helms Lewis spent 10 years with the Merced County Counsel’s Office until last year, when she became a deputy district attorney in Stanislaus County.

"I think we need an office that's sympathetic to the needs of the community," she said. "And I think we need a (leader) that's willing to listen to all the members of the community."

Morse, whose been district attorney for a dozen years, touted the endorsements he's gotten from numerous community groups and law enforcement agencies. He noted the drop in the county's homicide rate, and said gang violence has been cut by more than half in recent years.

"The county is safer than it has been in years," he said. "And, I believe voters are ultimately concerned about public safety."

The final few months before Election Day have not been without controversies.

Morse's camp questioned why Helms Lewis would accept a campaign contribution of $20,000 from a Merced company, Central Valley Concrete, which was sued by prosecutors on behalf of the Merced County District Attorney's Office and others in 2010. A judge ordered the company to pay $300,000 in civil penalties for the violations.

The same month, it was reported that Morse's office oversaw a case in which his son, Ethan, was questioned last July despite being asked by the California Attorney General’s Office to step aside. The office claims no conflict of interest because the younger Morse was never a suspect. But, an expert on legal ethics said it “reeks of inside favoritism.”

This story was originally published June 3, 2018 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Merced County DA candidates spar over charges that were never filed."