In 2022, I wrote a rundown of the worst prosecutors in America. Three years later, it’s time to check in—where are they now, and how have public views shifted on them and the George Soros–backed approach of progressive prosecution?
First on the list is Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Elected in 2014, Mosby, I noted, “was one of the first prosecutors to campaign on a platform of de-prosecution, decarceration, and denouncing the police—indeed, the entire criminal-justice system—as racist.” In her first year in office, homicides in Baltimore surged past 300. They never fell below that level during her eight-year tenure.
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Where is Mosby? She was defeated in a 2022 Democratic primary election by Ivan Bates, who ran a campaign based on returning law-and-order to Baltimore. Bates delivered on his promise, crediting a surge in criminal convictions. Violent crime rates have fallen, with homicides dropping to 201 in 2024. Adding criminal insult to electoral injury, federal prosecutors convicted Mosby in 2024 of perjury and filing a false mortgage application. The onetime friend to felons found herself joining their ranks.
Next up is the trio of prosecutors who helped usher crime and chaos into the once-beautiful city of San Francisco—Chesa Boudin, George Gascón, and Kamala Harris. As of 2022, these three district attorneys had overseen 18 consecutive years of lax prosecutorial policies, helping turn the City by the Bay into a hub of property and violent crime.
Where are they now? In 2022, Boudin was recalled and summarily ejected from the district attorney’s office, as even San Francisco’s reliably liberal voters had had enough of crime. Gascón took his literal take-no-prisoners policies to Los Angeles, got himself elected district attorney, saw crime spike, and was defeated soundly in November 2024 by the tough-on-crime independent candidate Nathan Hochman. Meantime, in the traditional California arc, Harris failed upward, moving from district attorney to state attorney general to U.S. senator to vice president of the United States, before it all came crashing down with her loss to Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
In Chicago, Kim Foxx was elected Cook County state’s attorney in 2015. For residents feeling nostalgia for the days of Al Capone, Foxx brought them back. Over her eight calamitous years in office, Chicago suffered more than 5,000 homicides, and other violent crimes surged, even as prosecutions declined. Foxx also oversaw the embarrassing non-prosecution of actor Jussie Smollett, whom police charged with staging a hate crime hoax against himself. Foxx even declined to charge gang members involved in a brazen midday shootout, which led to rank-and-file Chicago Democrats deserting her, including the city’s progressive mayor, Lori Lightfoot.
Where is Foxx today? Having witnessed the electoral failures of Boudin and Mosby, she declined to run for reelection in 2024. She was replaced as chief prosecutor by Eileen O’Neill Burke, who promptly began cracking down on violent criminals, reversing Foxx’s lenient policies. In a fitting coda, Foxx exited office in 2024 with no license to practice law—the result, she claimed, of a clerical error.
Kimberly Gardner was elected St. Louis circuit attorney in 2016. Like her counterparts in San Francisco, Chicago, and Baltimore, her refusal to prosecute criminals followed a predictable pattern. She alienated police by labeling them racists and drove experienced prosecutors from her office, leaving inexperienced staff to implement her de-prosecution agenda. Local criminals had a field day, with St. Louis recording the nation’s highest homicide rate for several years running, triggering an economic “doom loop” as businesses and residents fled.
Gardner eventually came under investigation by both federal and state authorities for misconduct while in office. Following a Department of Justice probe, she admitted to misusing public funds. Further, the Missouri Supreme Court found that she had engaged in professional misconduct in the politically motivated prosecution of former Missouri governor Eric Greitens.
Amid the tumult, Gardiner abruptly resigned in 2023, fleeing before the voters had a chance to eject her from office.
As in San Francisco, three prosecutors share the blame for Philadelphia’s recent woes: progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and United States Attorney Bill McSwain. Krasner’s aversion to prosecuting criminals is well-known, contributing to an all-time record for homicides in the city in 2021. When the state legislature gave Shapiro jurisdiction to prosecute gun crimes in Philadelphia, he meekly backed down, unwilling to irritate Krasner and his base. McSwain used his term as United States Attorney to pick public fights with Krasner and his own boss, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, but he did not move the needle on violent crime in the city.
Where are they now? The voters in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia seem not to have absorbed the same lesson as voters elsewhere in the United States. Sure, McSwain got crushed in the Republican primary when he subsequently ran for governor. But Shapiro rode into the Pennsylvania governor’s office, where he is considering a 2028 presidential run and hoping nobody looks too closely at his record as attorney general. And Krasner remains the Philadelphia district attorney; earlier this year, he won the Democratic primary, though his own party refused to endorse him.
Where is America in 2025? In recent years, many U.S. cities tried the George Soros–backed de-prosecution experiment and found it wanting. Most of the “worst-of-the-worst” prosecutors from 2022 had received support from Soros or his political action committees. Many have since been voted out, as the public came to see that refusing to prosecute violent criminals leads, predictably, to higher crime.
In their place, voters have chosen commonsense prosecutors—leaders who recognize that some offenders can be diverted from prison, but others, especially violent ones, must be incarcerated. It’s a distinctly American habit to try bold new policies—and to abandon those that fail. Progressive prosecution joins the list of tried-and-failed ideas.
Philadelphia remains the outlier. While other cities have begun to recover, Philly risks becoming a major American city inflicting its destruction on itself. As the city’s most famous fictional son, Rocky Balboa, might say: “Yo Philly, wake up!”
Photo by Larry French/Getty Images for BET Network
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