Scott Miles replaced longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney William W. “Billy” Davenport. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Chesterfield County Commonwealth’s Attorney Scott Miles wasted no time in making changes to the office upon winning the county prosecutor seat during a special election coinciding with the “blue wave” elections that swept the county and Virginia in 2018.
The first Democrat to hold the office in more than three decades, he defeated Republican John Childrey, the former chief deputy commonwealth’s attorney, by a margin of 2,527 votes.
Miles filled the opening created by the retirement of longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney William W. “Billy” Davenport effective July 1, 2018, with more than a year left of his term; hence, Miles faces another election this November to hold the seat he won last fall. This time, his opponent is Stacey Davenport, a Chesterfield resident and assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Henrico County specializing in domestic violence cases who had challenged Childrey for the GOP nomination last year.
After six months on the job, Miles has delivered on some key campaign promises.
“Some things I knew we could do and have results within the year so I could report back,” he says. “Other things are longer term and in progress — and then there’s some things frankly I’ve had to put off until next year to see whether I’m going to have the time to accomplish them.”
He has changed the office’s staffing composition — beginning with the firing of Childrey and another deputy commonwealth’s attorney, Thomas McKenna, who served as special counsel to the Central Virginia Regional Narcotics Task Force headed by Virginia State Police.
Miles has also reformed the county’s cash bail policy so that defendants charged with nonviolent crimes can be released on conditions that don’t require a cash bond. Taking cash out of the equation, people still show up for court dates at the same rate and they stay out of trouble at the same rate, he says. “Cash isn’t a substitute for risk — it doesn’t help contribute anything to public safety,” Miles adds, noting the disproportionate effect that cash bail policies have on minority and low-income individuals.
Perhaps most high-profile, however, has been Miles’ policy guidance issued Nov. 30 on how the office prosecutes marijuana possession, wherein he instructed prosecutors to extend plea offers for first-offense possession that do not involve jail time or trigger suspension of driving privileges. He followed up with a Dec. 21 policy memo more broadly instructing prosecutors to avoid driver’s license suspensions unless there is reason to believe the defendant’s continued driving poses a significant threat to public safety.
The approach to shoplifting cases also changed. According to a Jan. 25 policy paper, with the exception of “defendants who are recidivist shoplifters,” prosecutors are to offer defendants with no history of jail-able crimes an agreement to avoid conviction if they pay restitution equal to the stolen property and complete an eight-hour, $60 shoplifting prevention class.
“The way they’ve been traditionally prosecuted here was aggravating to the community,” he says of the policy changes, “and I think my election was, in some sense, a function of that aggravation.”
Miles, 50, is an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Somalia in the early 1990s. He credits his leadership ability to his time in the military. “Some of those principles are universal,” he says. “Whether you’re leading soldiers or paralegals or whatever, leadership by example is something everybody likes to see in whatever context.”
He later represented the Richmond Coalition of Police, a union of mostly patrol officers and some sergeants, for nearly a decade. He also worked as public defender and defense attorney, experience he shares with Stacey Davenport, his opponent this November.
Stacey Davenport is a Republican challenging Miles in this fall’s election. (Photo courtesy Stacey Davenport)
Davenport, who is unrelated to Miles’ predecessor, worked as a prosecutor in Essex County, a public defender in Richmond and as a private defense attorney.
She differs with Miles on his approach to marijuana prosecution.
“There’s a trend across the country — but specifically across Virginia and in this region — to want to decriminalize marijuana, but I don’t think we should decriminalize it until the legislature chooses to make it legal,” Davenport says, noting that state law already allows for people facing a first-time marijuana offense to have the charge dismissed if they meet certain requirements. “But I think to just pick and choose certain types of crimes to not prosecute as the law is written because of your personal feelings is inappropriate as the elected commonwealth’s attorney.”
During a phone interview in mid-May, Davenport adds, “I don’t prosecute because I want to put everybody in jail. I prosecute because I think I have a better ability to effectuate positive change in my community.”
A Matoaca District resident, she says, “I love what I do and I want to have an opportunity to do it where I live and affect my own community positively.”
Miles hopes to continue the work he’s started. One of his initiatives involves assigning two attorneys to each of 14 sections of the county to participate in activities such as ride-alongs with patrol officers, school functions, business and community association meetings.
“Even though everybody wants to be safe, people who live in Ettrick, near the campus of Virginia State University, may have different specific public safety concerns than someone who lives in Bon Air,” Miles explains. “So, by having these buddy teams of attorneys become, over time, subject matter experts in areas like Enon or Moseley, they bring intelligence back to the office in terms of what the dynamics are in that part of the county — we don’t leave anybody behind.”
