This episode of We Don’t Have to Choose with Mary Moriarty features Arlington County Prosecutor Parisa Dehgahni-Tafti and Philidelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church. Parisa was first elected to a four-year term in November 2019, followed by being elected to her second consecutive term in 2023 where she will serve until 2027. She came to the Office of Commonwealth’s Attorney with a twenty-year record of criminal justice reform as an innocence protection attorney, a public defender, and a law professor. Parisa sought the Office because, in her own words, “I always knew what I hoped for in a justice system, and so I finally decided to live inside that hope.” Prior to being elected Commonwealth’s Attorney, Parisa served as an innocence protection attorney representing innocent individuals in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, as a public defender litigating cases of constitutional magnitude, and as a law professor helping train the next generation of criminal law attorneys. Parisa earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and her J.D. from New York University School of Law. She resides in Arlington with her family. She enjoys reading Jane Austen and James Baldwin and has an abiding attachment to Star Trek.

Larry was born in 1961 in St. Louis, the son of a World War II veteran father and minister mother. After attending public schools in St. Louis and the Philadelphia area, Larry earned degrees from the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. While at Stanford, rather than focusing on corporate law, Larry worked for indigenous rights, homeless people, and the poor, in criminal matters. After graduating in 1987, he received several job offers from prosecutors’ offices around the country but instead chose to return to Philadelphia to work as a public defender. During his first two terms as District Attorney, Larry has supported victims, he has exonerated the innocent, and he has held police accountable. He has reduced future years of incarceration and supervision while helping to drop the jail population. He has focused on the most serious crimes in Philadelphia while working with leaders to address the root causes of violence. He has kept kids out of adult court and kept them home. And he has fought against the powerful, like drug companies and those who steal from workers. Larry lives in Philadelphia with his wife of 37 years.