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    Sex Crimes Prosecutor Picked For Kavanaugh Hearing Brings Decades Of Experience

    Rachel Mitchell, head of a sex crimes unit in Arizona, has worked to make prosecutions less harrowing for victims. She'll be asking questions to Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
    by Camila Domonoske Sep 26, 2018 6 minutes
    Rachel Mitchell, head of the Special Victims Division of the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, is on leave as she heads to Washington, D.C., to assist the Senate Judiciary Committee with a hearing scheduled for Thursday.

    The outside attorney who will be directing questions to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, is a prosecutor from Arizona who has dedicated her career to prosecuting sex crimes — and pushed for best practices in investigations to protect and serve victims of assault.

    Rachel Mitchell is head of the sex crimes unit at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, with decades of experience prosecuting criminal cases of sexual assault and abuse.

    She'll be asking questions during a hearing on Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will center on Ford's allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were in high school.

    Mitchell is a prosecutor, but in this situation, no criminal case has been opened — and the Senate is not a courtroom. And Mitchell has been hired by the Senate Republicans who have staunchly defended Kavanaugh against allegations of wrongdoing.

    Ford that when she and Kavanaugh were in high school in suburban Maryland in the early '80s, he pinned her to a

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