Steve Descano let a man arrested more than forty times walk free. In February, that man stabbed Stephanie Minter — a 41-year-old single mother — to death at a Hybla Valley bus stop.
Fairfax police had warned Descano, in writing, that Abdul Jalloh was escalating. Descano dropped the charges anyway.
On May 6, the U.S. Justice Department opened a federal civil-rights investigation into whether Steve Descano — the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney — gives illegal immigrants a better deal than the citizens he was elected to protect.
Descano is a Democrat. Seventy cents of every dollar that first put him in office came from a George Soros–funded PAC.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is examining Descano’s plea bargaining, charging, and sentencing.
The question is whether Descano gave U.S. citizens worse treatment than defendants whose cases carried immigration consequences. Investigators are working under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Safe Streets Act, and 34 U.S.C. § 12601 — the federal law for law-enforcement misconduct.
The trigger is a December 2020 policy in which Descano told his prosecutors to weigh a defendant’s “collateral immigration consequences” before charging.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon did not mince words: “The Civil Rights Division will not allow local prosecutors to pick and choose winners based on their immigration status.”
Descano says his policies are “fair, legal, and reflect the values of my community.” Then, days before he testified to Congress, he quietly deleted the line.
This is the part Descano cannot post, spin, or delete his way out of.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis called Stephanie Minter’s murder “entirely preventable.”
“It’s totally unacceptable. It never should’ve happened. And the criminal justice system will learn some hard lessons from this.”
Davis laid out what Descano could have done — convene a grand jury, prosecute without the victim’s testimony, do anything to keep a man arrested forty times off the street. Descano did none of it.
The police union didn’t hedge either. Sean Monahan, president of the Fairfax chapter of the Virginia Police Benevolent Association, said Jalloh “should have never been let out… Stephanie Minter should be alive right now, and she’s not because (Descano’s office) chose to release him.”
At the May 14 House hearing, Rep. Jeff Van Drew said it to Descano’s face: “Your office dropped the charges in almost every single case.”
Descano calls the investigation political. A police chief, a judge, and a former attorney general say otherwise.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Timothy Carney calls him “America’s Worst Prosecutor.” Fairfax writer Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is blunter: “The Department of Justice is right to investigate Descano.”
Jason Miyares has been naming him since 2021, when he wrote that “citizens should have a backup plan” when a prosecutor refuses to enforce the law.
At the May 14 hearing, the former Attorney General said it to Descano’s face: “This is not incompetence. This is not coincidence. This is policy.”
The hardest verdict didn’t come from a politician. It came from a judge.
When Descano’s office let Ronnie Reel walk in 2022, Fairfax Chief Judge Penney Azcarate said from the bench that the deadlines were “woefully, woefully missed” — and that it wasn’t the first time she’d seen it from his office.
He took the Soros money. He wrote the policy. His own police warned him in writing. A judge rebuked him from the bench.
Stephanie Minter is still dead.
The Justice Department is investigating. So is the press. The only people who can actually remove Steve Descano are the voters of Fairfax County — and he is on the ballot on November 2, 2027.
He hasn’t changed a thing.