Pierce County voters will decide on November 3 between a retired Superior Court judge and the office's current chief criminal deputy to lead the prosecuting attorney's office, a race that has turned into a pointed argument over why hundreds of felony cases are piling up in the courts and who can best manage a civil liability crisis topping $690 million. Bryan Chushcoff, 74, who served as a Pierce County Superior Court judge from 1996 until his retirement in 2025, is facing off against Coreen Schnepf, 45, the office's current chief criminal deputy.
The candidates disagree over what the caseload figures say about the prosecutor’s office. Figures Bryan Chushcoff cites, reported by The News Tribune, show Pierce County felony filings fell from 4,934 in 2019 to 3,727 in 2025 — nearly 25 percent — while the average number of pending felony cases rose from 1,589 to 1,865, more than 17 percent. Chushcoff calls the buildup a failure of justice; Coreen Schnepf says the pending-case accumulation is the court’s backlog, not a prosecutorial failing.
Two Very Different Resumes
Chushcoff spent nearly three decades on the Superior Court bench before retiring in 2025. He has picked up endorsements from police unions in Tacoma and Puyallup along with the Pierce County Sheriff's Office, and civil litigation has emerged as a campaign issue.
Schnepf now oversees roughly 180 staff and attorneys within the prosecutor's office. Robnett, the outgoing prosecutor, has endorsed Schnepf as her successor, according to the 31st Legislative District Democrats.
What's Behind the Falling Felony Numbers
Schnepf attributes the decline in felony filings to changes made by the Washington Supreme Court and the state Legislature rather than any slowdown at the prosecutor's office. The most prominent of those is the Supreme Court's 2020 *State v. Blake* ruling, which struck down the state's simple drug possession law as unconstitutional and forced courts statewide to vacate hundreds of thousands of drug convictions, reshaping felony filing patterns across Washington, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of a related resentencing case.
A separate snapshot illustrates the pressure on the trial calendar. The News Tribune reported that, of 97 Pierce County cases set for trial on September 28, three went to trial, 69 were postponed and 12 were resolved through guilty pleas. The paper also found that the most time-intensive cases made up more than half of law-enforcement referrals after 2020, compared with about 30 percent before 2020. Schnepf has pointed to that shift as a structural driver of the backlog rather than a management failure.
The prosecutor’s office has also hired a technology-expert investigator within the past year and now provides regular training on technical evidence, working with Pierce County police departments and the sheriff’s office.
A $690 Million Liability Fight Looms Over the Office
Whoever wins will inherit an office managing one of the county's largest financial exposures in recent memory: abuse claims tied to the Remann Hall juvenile detention facility. Pierce County had received more than 100 claims alleging sexual abuse at Remann Hall by this past January, together totaling $280 million, and by July that number had grown to nearly 200 claims threatening more than $690 million in county costs. The Pierce County Council had already approved $750,000 in settlements for former juvenile detainees in March, building on more than 130 claims that generated $7 million in county payouts in 2025, as Hoodline has reported.
In response, Pierce County is pursuing an unusual legal maneuver to shift liability onto the state. The county is seeking to have the state named as a defendant, according to My Edmonds News, which reported that Robnett joined Snohomish County Prosecutor Jason Cummings in filing a joint suit in Thurston County Superior Court arguing that Superior Courts and their juvenile facilities are state judicial entities under a 1913 law.
Pierce County continues long-term planning to replace Remann Hall, which opened in Tacoma in 1971, with a proposed $200 million Family and Youth Justice Center, a project Hoodline has tied to broader juvenile justice reforms underway in the county.
The Office's Dual Mission
The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney is a nonpartisan elected position with an annual salary of $244,631. The office is set to oversee a $94 million budget in 2026 with 266 full-time employees, including 129 county attorneys, and its criminal division makes up roughly two-thirds of the office's total staff.
Beyond prosecuting criminal cases, the office serves as chief legal advisor for county officials and is responsible for prosecuting civil actions while defending the county against lawsuits — a dual mandate.
Campaign events and public forums have been part of the race. With the general election just weeks away, Pierce County residents are being asked to weigh two very different kinds of experience — decades on the bench versus hands-on management of a 180-person criminal division — against an office facing both a courtroom logjam and a near-$700 million legal reckoning.
