As Labor Nears, Oakland D.A. Labors On

OAKLAND -- For Danielle Hilton, Fridays at the District Attorney’s Office are a breeze: Head four flights downstairs inside the Alameda County Courthouse, send a few hardened criminals to prison on a good day and make it home by dinner.

At 31, Hilton is one of the younger deputy district attorneys at the Alameda County Courthouse here. Her navy-blue business suit and conservative heels are offset by her girlish smile and short, sparkly gold nails that she painted herself.

She attributes the glow of her tawny skin to the bulge at the middle of her waist. "I’m due in two weeks!" she laughs to a colleague who passes her in the courthouse hallway.

But even at eight and a half months pregnant, Hilton, a UC Davis School of Law graduate, is not yet ready to trade in her cases for a cushy room in the maternity ward.

"I love my job!" Hilton says, laughing airily as she settles into a client consultation room outside of the courtroom where she just helped put a repeat drug offender behind bars for the next three years.

As Deputy District Attorney, Hilton is confronted with just about every crime that is committed within the city of Oakland.

"You see or hear about every crime," she says. "Most people have no idea how often crimes happen, but we see them all."

Hilton cut her judicial teeth in Oakland, prosecuting misdemeanor trials for two and half years before moving on to what attorneys call the Bridge, Oakland’s preliminary hearings unit, which determines whether a crime is a misdemeanor or felony.

Now Hilton is part of a specialized general crime team that handles a host of felony crimes, from burglary, to drug abuse, to homicide.

"My job is to deal with things that most people in this world don’t want to know exist," Hilton says. "It’s not pretty, it’s not simple, and it’s not clean."

Hilton’s job comes replete with long hours investigating gruesome violence and mindless crimes. It means poring over photographs and medical reports of grisly murders, talking with the devastated families of homicide, rape and robbery victims and sometimes, cajoling unwilling and uncomfortable witnesses into testifying.

Hilton has no illusions about the dangers that her job poses to her personal life. She admits that prosecution can cause anxiety ("Sometimes you just get burnt out!" she exclaims), and she is fiercely protective of her private life, choosing to discuss details of her family and upbringing only off the record.

"I have to watch my back," she says. "At the DA’s office, you hear about every crime that happens. It can make you neurotic."

But with six years of experience under her belt, Hilton does not flinch at violence or gore.

"I’ll read the paper over the weekend and see that five people were murdered. I just think, ‘Monday should be a busy day at the Bridge,’" she says casually.

While Hilton’s specialty is general crime, she relishes prosecuting sex cases.

"I like sex cases," she said. "A sex victim is a very real victim who you can’t help but care about."

Then there are the more difficult cases. A year ago, Hilton prosecuted a sexual assault case involving a young boy who had been molested by a male family friend.

"Putting a seven-year old on the stand, who was five or six when he was molested and having him talk to a room full of strangers about something that private, that taboo…"

Hilton sighs. "It was my most difficult case."

Yet Hilton cannot imagine working in another field. She believes that she will be a prosecutor for the rest of her life.

"When I’m in here working on a sex case on the weekends and my family is at home without me, it’s okay because I truly care about the people who I’m working for," she says. "I truly care about what I do."