She became a lawyer “to help people.”
Speaking with the Richmond Times-Dispatch inside the John Marshall Courts Building on Ninth Street, Colette McEachin, Richmond’s top prosecutor, recounted the series of events that led her to becoming an attorney and a public servant.
It’s a story that began nearly 60 years ago, during the highly publicized Black Panther trials in New Haven, Connecticut. McEachin, then a high school student who lived an hour away from New Haven, said she was deeply impacted by the prosecutions of senior members of the Black Panther Party accused of orchestrating the murder of an FBI informant.
The trials came amid a larger FBI effort to disrupt the Black Panthers’ operations and were widely seen as politically motivated.
“I just thought, ‘wow, this is so cool,’” McEachin recalled of watching the proceedings play out. “‘I think I want to be a lawyer.’”
Now, McEachin — a graduate of Brown University and the University of Virginia — has worked in the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney’s office for more than 25 years. For the last five of those years, she has served as the chief prosecutor.
And she wants four more. McEachin announced in January that she would seek reelection once again. She will face Tom Barbour in a June 17 Democratic primary that is tantamount to election.
“Crime has gone down,” she said when asked why voters should choose her over her opponent. “And community justice reforms have gone up.”
McEachin reflects on victories, controversies
McEachin’s terms have seen some of the higher-profile events in recent Richmond history.
She was the lead prosecutor of Amari Pollard, the Huguenot High School graduation shooter who killed Shawn Jackson outside the Altria Theater in June 2023.
It was a case that touched on so many issues, McEachin said, from gun violence to youth issues to school safety.
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