Election 2026: Marsigli Running To Stay Top Prosecutor

By Chris Long, Staff Writer, Wilson Times

September 20, 2026

The Wilson Times is publishing profile stories on local candidates leading up to the Nov. 3 election. This is the first installment in the district attorney race for the North Carolina 8th Prosecutorial District between Republican Jeff Marsigli and Democrat Rena Spellman. Early voting in Wilson County begins at 8 a.m. on Oct. 15 and ends at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 31.

Jeff Marsigli, district attorney for North Carolina’s 8th Prosecutorial District, says that he’s right where he wants to be and is running for reelection to keep his spot as the district’s chief prosecutor.

“I don’t have political aspirations. I’ve never been a political guy. I’ve never been all that interested in all the politics and stuff. My only thoughts are, do I think I can do something? Can I improve it?” he said.

“My only goal is to do everything I can to the best I can to make our district safer.”

Marsigli, who was born in Chicago but moved to Rocky Mount when he was 9 months old, has 23 years of experience in law under his belt. Today, he represents Wilson, Nash and Edgecombe counties.

“I went to college at N.C. State, law school at Campbell,” Marsigli said. “I lived in Raleigh for a little while, came back to Wilson about seven years ago, and now I live in Wilson, married, with two kids — just became empty nesters. I graduated State with a political science degree with a minor in criminal justice. I actually wanted to go into law enforcement. I was out of college detailing cars and applying to law enforcement agencies. I really wanted to get into the FBI. Anyways, that wasn’t moving fast enough. I guess I was getting impatient, and it was a girl I was dating at the time who said I should look into law school.”

Out of law school, Marsigli said he applied to private firms in the area and spent about 11 years in private practice.

“About 10, 11 years in, I decided since I lived in Raleigh at the time that I was going to try to move my practice to Raleigh, which was a mistake,” he said. “I wasn’t doing well there, so I decided to start looking into positions coming back, and there was an open position at the DA’s office that fortunately I applied for and moved back.”

Marsigli, who was an assistant district attorney before winning the DA office, said that over the course of his first term, he’s been able to accomplish a lot.

“One of the big things I thought needed to be improved was just the relationships within the judicial community, especially in the community itself,” Marsigli said. “I think we have probably the best relationships ever with law enforcement and the clerks and the judges. I preach respect by treating everybody with respect, and that means anywhere from defendants all the way up the line to anybody.”

Marsigli said there have been wins inside the courtroom as well.

“We’ve achieved certain things like H and I court,” Marsigli said. “That took me a whole year with a lot of folks to get it done. Basically, lower level, class H and class I felonies, can be pled in District Court. Those are the lowest level felonies. The goal is to obviously move cases a little faster, trying to get the felonies moved a little faster. It was probably six months in or so, I kept hearing about this fentanyl and this death by distribution. I wanted to start prosecuting death by distribution cases, and they (law enforcement) jumped right on it. We started charging and prosecuting death by distribution cases, which I believe, I think there were six within like the first month of me saying, ‘Let’s do it.’”

DEATH BY DISTRIBUTION

Marsigli said of all the death by distribution cases Wilson County has seen, all have ended with a conviction.

“We still haven’t tried one,” Marsigli said. “We’ve resolved all the first ones with pleas and things like that. So, I mean, there’s still a little bit of anxiety on what a jury’s going to do with it. But yeah, I think it’s gone well. We’ve gotten some kind of conviction on everyone. A lot of them have pled. There’s some that have pled straight up to death by distribution, usually with some sentencing concessions, and then I think the lowest conviction we’ve had has been involuntary manslaughters, which still is obviously a serious conviction, although a lot less time.”

Marsigli said convictions, for him, are bittersweet.

“I like to get a conviction,” he said. “You hope the family gets some closure, but you know, you’re also taking another person away from another family. So it’s never like convictions are my only goal. I meet with the victims’ families. That’s tough. They’ve lost a child most of the time. I don’t enjoy that part by any means. I tell them that I hate this, and oftentimes we’re telling them we’re cutting this deal or we’re doing this to get it done, and so it’s not easy conversations on top of it. It’s tough, but at the same time, I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Marsigli said his office is doing its best to keep deadly drugs off the street.

“Fentanyl is the main culprit right now, although I always hear about new drugs that are coming down the road,” he said. “There’s all these synthetic drugs. It does seem to have slowed down some. Of course, I think there’s more than just us prosecuting, right? So that stuff that’s going on outside affects that too. Hopefully we can help.”

Across his three-county district, Marsigli said he works with 19 law enforcement agencies.

“There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen,” he said. “That’s always going to be a challenge.”

ON VIOLENCE AMONG YOUTH

Marsigli said the biggest issue he faces as district attorney is the prevalence of violent crimes committed by minors.

“When you come in, the things you want to focus on are gangs, guns and drugs,” Marsigli said. “To do that, what we are doing, and they were doing this some before, is that we are meeting with the feds. We are having meetings basically discussing the bad actors, the target lists. We have target lists, but obviously those are adults — people with histories, people that are on our radar.

“The real difficult things with the juveniles, and that is probably, in my opinion, one of the No. 1 issues that we have right now is that we just can’t identify them up front,” he continued. “It just kind of happens, and suddenly this juvenile is on our radar, but it’s too late now. He’s already shot somebody or has been shooting at people. It’s a focus, but I don’t have a real solution to that problem.”

Marsigli said his philosophy is to be proactive and keep dangerous people off the streets, and by taking attention away from non-violent offenders, he’s able to focus more energy on community threats.

“I tell folks all the time, people talk a lot about our pleas like we’re cutting all these deals and letting folks out,” he said.

“That’s true, but it’s a numbers game is what I try to tell folks. When you have 23 lawyers, including me, handling over 40,000 cases, we have to cut deals on the vast majority of them,” he said. “The misconception is that we do it because we’re afraid. I think most of us would rather just get in there and try the case. It’s more fun to do that than it is to sit and cut deals.

“The bad actors, the folks that will hopefully make our district a little safer if we get them off the street, we have to focus on certain people, and with the juveniles that’s near impossible to. I don’t know how to target them. They are getting charged with serious felonies now, which almost automatically moves them up to go to adult court. They are charged as adults, and they move forward as adults so the punishment’s worse. Hopefully that gets out to the juveniles, and maybe they’ll stop doing it.”

BONDS, CASELOAD AND CATCH AND RELEASE

Marsigli said that although he would hesitate to say the DA’s office is backlogged with cases, if crime stopped tomorrow they would still have a job for a few more months.

“We actually move more cases than come in every year,” Marsigli said. “The Legislature just gave us three more additional positions. We’ll have three more attorneys. We’ve posted and are getting ready to hire that help, but the backlog is strong. Any of your assistant district attorneys that do felonies, their caseload is usually going to be somewhere between 300 and 400 cases. The problem with it is, let’s say they go one week and they get rid of 10 of their cases. Well, guess what? There’s going to be 10 more right in the drawer waiting. It doesn’t go down, that caseload, ever. We do pretty good. I mean, last I saw, the average age of our felonies in this district was actually under eight months, which is top four in the state. We keep the felonies moving.”

Marsigli said he’s not interested at pointing the finger to assign blame when one offender is booked and rebooked over and over.

“It’s anti-productive,” he said. “I’m never going to fuss about it. Let’s just say your typical case comes in, and a magistrate or judge sets the bond that we think is too low. This is a whole system of checks and balances. Rather than pointing a finger or fussing about it, we can just file a motion and request that the bond get raised. I don’t see any benefit in people fussing because a bond might be too low because it’s really all of us. We all have an opportunity to go in front of a judge, and the judge can decide if the bond’s too low. We started doing that, and now it takes time.”

An issue that Marsigli said he plans to bring up to local legislators, is that bail bondsmen are letting people out for a lower percentage than they used to, he said.

“When I started, it was going to be 15% was your base of whatever the bond was. Now, I’ve heard of people having to post as low as 2% or 1% in one case,” he said. “People are paying, and they’re making payments. You put somebody under a $100,000 bond, it’s hard for most people to come up with $10,000, but $1,000 is not so hard. They just cut a deal with the bondsmen and get out for a lot cheaper. I do think that’s an issue.”