To understand a prosecutor’s job you must understand what
constitutes justice. So, what is justice?
Justice is the administration of fairness, which Candice Hooper,
the chief deputy district attorney in San Benito County, has been
pursuing for more than 18 years.
To understand a prosecutor’s job you must understand what constitutes justice. So, what is justice?
Justice is the administration of fairness, which Candice Hooper, the chief deputy district attorney in San Benito County, has been pursuing for more than 18 years.
After graduating from the University of Santa Clara Law School in 1985, Hooper was a deputy district attorney in Santa Clara County for a year before moving to San Benito County. She and her husband, George Mancino, have lived here with their two children, Joey and Kellie, since then.
She has prosecuted cases that have run the criminal gamut. Currently she is in charge of all misdemeanor cases, environmental and drug court felonies.
Making sure justice is done evenhandedly is the most challenging aspect of being a prosecuting attorney, she said.
Hooper became a prosecutor because she felt life was about choices and people need to be responsible for the choices they make.
In the past, she’s given presentations at schools and compares the district attorney’s office to parents disciplining their children when they make a wrong choice.
“I’m here to make sure you get grounded,” she said.
Her job description includes far more than simply sending someone to their room without dessert. On a daily basis she negotiates the outcomes of people’s lives.
Several cases stick out as being particularly memorable because of the intense emotional nature surrounding them.
One case involved a drunk driver and an 18-month-old child – a child who at the time was the same age as Hooper’s own baby boy.
The baby was in a top of the line car seat and in the most favorable location in the car – the middle of the back seat – but because of the manner of the impact, the seat failed and the child, Alex, ended up in a coma and completely on life support at Stanford Medical Center.
The conviction of the drunk driver didn’t alleviate the heavy burden placed upon the young parents of how to pay for Alex’s medical bills, let alone deal with the stress and heartache of his condition.
“I’ll always remember baby Alex,” she said. “Everything I was watching my 18-month-old do, I knew baby Alex isn’t. It was hard for me.”
No matter what the outcome of a verdict, knowing that the innocent people’s lives were affected by someone else’s crime is hard to stomach.
Not only are the victims never made whole again, but sometimes a jury may not see a case the same way the office does, returning a verdict that may be disappointing.
Any case that has hours of time and investigation invested into it, but for some reason the jury isn’t receiving the intended message, is very frustrating, Hooper said.
Being a prosecutor in a small community brings some tough realities with it, such as prosecuting someone she knows.
This close proximity to defendants can also provide one of the most rewarding aspects of being a prosecutor. Witnessing someone she’s prosecuted turn their life around because of the system, as well as friendships she’s fostered with victims or their families, gives the hardships of her job a decidedly heartwarming twist.
Throughout the years the nature of her profession has caused Hooper to look at things differently, she said.
Anyone who deals directly in human lives, whether it be in the medical profession, law enforcement or any type of public service, will be affected sooner or later. But if the job makes a person jaded, they’re in the wrong business, she said.
“I’m sure it has affected me. It affects the way I am with my children,” she said. “I think I’m just aware of a lot more than a lot of other people might be.”
Receiving threats at different points of her career have heightened this sense of awareness, especially when her children are present. If she is in a situation where she runs into someone she knows is upset with her, all she has to do is look at her children and they know to stay close, she said.
This sense of caution comes with the job, she said.
“Maybe that goes back to being tainted, but you get used to it,” she said.
Being a prosecutor wasn’t Hooper’s long-time dream. Originally, she wanted to be a school teacher.
With slim job opportunities available when she graduated from college, she decided to go to law school.
“I don’t know why I went to law school in the first place,” she said. “My burning desire was to be a teacher, then it just changed.”
The drastic change in career paths hasn’t brought any regrets, except that if she was a teacher she would have the same hours as her children, “so that would have been nice … but I love what I do,” she said.
Hooper hopes to continue serving San Benito County for as long as she’s given the forum to do so.
When the time comes for her to retire, she hopes her lasting accomplishment will be believing she did the best job she could without any regrets, she said.
Her greatest legal triumph of her career so far has been her lengthy tenure in the office, along with her passion for her job.
“I love what I do,” she said. “To me, that’s a victory.”
