LoStracco Interview - Sherraud Boyd

Nicole LoStracco, 37, is running as a Republican for the office of district attorney of Nacogdoches. If elected she would take office in January of 2009.

She was an assistant district attorney for eight years, but resigned in 2004 to start her own private practice. Before LoStracco resigned from assistant district attorney, their wins on cases were in the mid 80 percentile. The have declined over the past few years to the low 50 percentile.

“A lot of people from the community asked me to go run for district attorney,” said LoStracco. At first she laughed about it but then had a change of opinion.

LoStracco was born in San Francisco as well as Belgium and Hawaii. She spent many school breaks in Hawaii with her father. She graduated from Mills College, a liberal arts women’s university, in San Francisco. She received her law degree from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. “ I went to Tech and loved it,” said LoStracco. She also spent 18 months in Spain for college.
While at Texas Tech, she met the man who would become her husband, James R. LoStracco. At first, Mrs. LoStracco did not know what kind of lawyer she wanted to be or if she even wanted to be a lawyer at all. “My dad was a lawyer and my grandfather was a lawyer. It was a lot of law in my family,” said LoStracco. She thought she wanted to do family law.
She actually wound up in Lufkin for her first practice. When she looked for a job in Nacogdoches, the only job for her was with the district attorney. “I didn’t know anything about working with the DA,” said LoStracco.

As assistant to the district attorney, LoStracco’s cases dealt with violence against women. In October of 2004, she left the district attorney’s office to open up her own private practice. and became a criminal defense attorney.

“Criminal defense lawyers try to get a lesser punishment from the judge and jury towards their client,” said LoStracco. She feels that all skeletons need to come out the closet when someone convicted of a crime talks to their lawyer. “I won’t defend someone if I don’t believe there are not being honest,” said LoStracco.

She also realized as a criminal defense attorney that not all cases cannot be tried. “Most of the cases end in reaching a plea bargain,” said LoStracco. As a matter of fact, she said there is a higher number of plea bargains in this field of law.
LoStracco will not defend clients in child/sexual abuse cases. “It’s pretty easy to tell if a child is telling a story or not,” said LoStracco.

Ms. LoStracco spoke to over 1,000 college students at SFA’s Risk Management Training on September 24 of this year. Her topics were sex, drugs, and alcohol. She cleared up an urban myth about date rape. “ If someone is so drunk to they can’t consent then you can be accused of rape,” said LoStracco.

Alcohol was also a big thing she talked about. In her time, alcohol was not such a big problem as it is now. “Alcohol is a real big issue in college and around the world,” said LoStracco. She stresses that when someone gets in trouble with the law about alcohol related issues, they should hire a lawyer otherwise things will not go as they hoped it would. The best thing to do is to try to avoid the whole thing period. “Do not work on your own when trying to fight an alcohol charge,” said LoStracco. Things will only get worse.

Ten days after the training, SFA student Nikolas Gallegos died of alcohol poisoning. This really upset LoStracco because she feels that people just do not get. “If people drink too much they will die,” she said. “You treat college students like adults but they still don’t get it.”

She is a mother of two: daughter Juliette, four and a half and son Trey who will turn two this month. “I’m scared because I don’t know how to warn my children about that,” said LoStracco.

She decided to run for district attorney a year ago. Her opponent is Stephanie Stephens, the current district attorney.
Nicole LoStracco is a very approachable person who is very intellectual and quick witted. “I’m not nervous about speaking in front of crowds,” she said. She does not view herself as a politician and does not sugarcoat things.