COQUILLE — Jody Newby, Coos County’s chief deputy district attorney for the past eight years, is the lone candidate on the May Primary Ballot for her boss’s job.
R. Paul Frasier, the county’s district attorney for the past 16 years, is retiring at the end of his term. He recommends that she succeed him. She’s also endorsed by Sheriff Gabriel “Gabe” Fabrizio.
Newby 44, lives in Bandon with her husband, Vance, who just retired from the U.S. Coast Guard, and their teen-age son, Sebastian. The Newbys moved to Bandon because the Coast Guard stationed her husband here. She started as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office in 2015.
The prosecutor originally is from Chugiak, Alaska, where she grew up. She spent her summers in small commercial fishing villages. After high school, Newby attended the University of Oregon in Eugene for a year, then earned a bachelor’s degree in politics from Willamette University in Salem in 2001.
A Fulbright Scholar, she studied two years in Iceland, where she started an exchange program. Then she worked at the Alaska Women’s Resource Center, helping victims of domestic violence, and worked as a paralegal for an Alaskan law firm. That led her to attend law school at Seattle University, graduating in 2008.
While finishing law school, Newby interned at the City of Bothell, Wash., for a year as a prosecutor in 2007-08, then worked for Cowlitz County, Wash., as a deputy prosecutor from 2009-2015, when she moved to Coos County.
“Paul made me his chief deputy district attorney about nine months after I started, in 2016, and part of the Crash Team,” she said. “It’s an interagency team that investigates traffic crashes, processing the scene, processing the car, determining if the driver or drivers were impaired, or otherwise had committed a crime.”
Newby prosecutes Coos County’s major crimes, the Class A and Class B felonies. She has handled vehicular homicides, sexual abuse crimes and murder cases.
Newby also has been a member of the Interagency Major Crimes Team, which the district attorney leads, and is the prosecutor assigned to South Coast Interagency Narcotics Team.
“Those teams and that interagency cooperation is uncommon across the state,” she said. “I want to continue that because it’s incredibly important to have that cooperation.”
When he was chief deputy DA, Frasier started the collaborative effort with area police agencies. He says his office has an excellent working relationship with all police agencies in the county.
“I feel if we work with them collaboratively and closely, it’s easier for us to correct a problem — fix the issue,” Frasier said. “It’s a two-way street. The officers will come to us for help. I’ve worked really hard to establish that. I think Jody’s going to want to continue that.”
Newby doesn’t have a big agenda for change in the district attorney’s office.
“If we get staffing where it needs to be, we might be able to start some new programs,” she said, but that’s just not possible now, because, “We don’t have enough staff.”
Given time and funding, there are some things Newby sees a need for.
“We have huge issues with mental health,” she said. “We don’t have any kind of treatment court. There is a mental health court, but no drug court. They can have great success, but it’s just not feasible.”
Frasier said such an endeavor would require another circuit court judge, plus more parole and probation workers.
Newby said she is “exceptionally excited” to be the only candidate for the job and she’s looking forward to her new role.
“I think I”m in a really nice position because Paul has been training me,” she said. “It’s been nice because I know how the system works, I know all the judges.”
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