It’s a tiny county with a high crime rate. And almost nobody wants to be its top prosecutor.

The candidate filing deadline came and went. And no one, it seemed, wanted to be the top prosecutor in Dorchester County.

One candidate had filed earlier in the process, only to withdraw the very next day. The Republican incumbent, Amanda Leonard, declined to run again. The county’s Democratic Central Committee reached out to a number of possible candidates but found no takers.

Their GOP counterparts, however, were able to find someone to put forward: a 46-year-old with only five years of attorney experience.

Observers say the ambivalence reflects a deeper challenge in finding legal professionals in Maryland’s smaller jurisdictions who are willing to take on daunting caseloads for less pay than they could earn in private practice.

Political parties have also sometimes been unwilling or unable to offer candidates for races seen as unwinnable because they are dominated either by Democrats — think Baltimore and Prince George’s County — or Republicans — think the Eastern Shore and parts of Western Maryland.

But this election season, Dorchester might have been in play, with its voters nearly evenly split among the parties.

While state Democrats sought this year to put up a candidate for every race in the state legislature, that effort didn’t extend to local state’s attorney races or other down-ballot contests.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but I think that is a really concerning thing,” Michelle Barnes, who served as Dorchester’s elected state’s attorney from 2002 to 2007, said of the lack of enthusiasm for her old position. “That should’ve been a job where people say, ‘This is my community, I feel an obligation to step to the fore and make sure there’s an experienced leader in this position.’”

That’s exactly what Joel J. Todd says he is doing.

Todd was Worcester County’s state’s attorney for 16 years, retired and moved to Arizona, but he came back because his wife was allergic to the desert air. He decided to start working as a line prosecutor again, this time in Caroline County. And he’s now the lone candidate to be the top prosecutor there, at age 71.

“In the smaller counties, you don’t have a large quantity of attorneys to draw from, and many of the attorneys that would meet the minimum residency requirement are involved in successful private practices and don’t want to give that up to run for state’s attorney,” said Todd, referring to the state’s two-year residency requirement for elected prosecutors.

“I decided, somebody’s got to do this. So I stepped up to do it,” he said.

Dorchester, a heart-shaped county on Maryland’s Eastern Shore located halfway between Annapolis and Ocean City, is the largest in the state by total area, but it has one of the smallest populations with just 33,600 residents.

Its crime rate, meanwhile, is among the highest in the state. Judiciary data show the number of criminal cases handled by the county’s State’s Attorney’s Office is, proportionately, the largest in the state — twice the rate of Baltimore’s.

To handle such a caseload, there are supposed to be six prosecutors. But Leonard, the state’s attorney, said turnover has at times left her with as few as three.

The office has a total budget of $1 million; the elected state’s attorney earns $161,000, which is set by statute to be 80% of what the county’s District Court judge earns.

Only four people have served as Dorchester’s state’s attorney in the last three decades. After a long-serving Democrat left to become a judge, Leonard, one of his prosecutors, was appointed to take over. She then ran as a Republican for a full term, facing no opposition in the general election after a Democratic candidate withdrew.

Leonard declined to be interviewed, but in a statement said that “a number of personal and professional considerations factored into my decision not to seek another term as the elected State’s Attorney.”

“The work has been deeply rewarding, and I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve this community,” she wrote.

Others say her office has been beset by problems.

Sydney Bradner-Jacobs, chair of the Dorchester County Democratic Central Committee, said that in discussions with possible candidates, “several attorneys pointed to the significant legal, operational and reputational challenges facing the State’s Attorney’s Office after the turmoil of the past several years.”

She noted an ongoing federal lawsuit against Leonard and two former employees that accuses the office of failing to disclose exculpatory evidence that eventually led to a quick acquittal in a long-running murder case.

The suit was brought by Key’Marion Ennals, who was charged with murder in 2022 and incarcerated for more than 600 days before a jury took less than 20 minutes to find him not guilty.

Before the case reached the jury, the presiding judge determined that Leonard and her office committed ethical violations by failing to disclose crucial evidence, threw them off the case and replaced them with a prosecutor from Prince George’s County.

While prosecutors generally enjoy absolute immunity and the lawsuit faces steep odds, Ennals’ attorneys say in court papers that the failure to disclose evidence showed that there has been significant misconduct in the prosecutors’ office.

“What we uncovered in the Ennals case was not a simple error,” said attorney Larry Greenberg. “It was a deceitful practice of hiding exculpatory evidence, obscuring the truth, and keeping an innocent man locked up for 631 days.”

He added, “While Amanda Leonard is no longer seeking reelection, the damage has been done.”

At the time of the lawsuit filing, Leonard told WBAL-TV that Ennals’ rights were not violated and denied that there was any pattern of withholding evidence.

Against that backdrop, Victoria Brohawn, a former judicial law clerk for one of the county’s former prosecutors, filed paperwork to run on Feb. 24, only to withdraw the next day. Reached by phone, she declined to comment.

By the official deadline, no one had filed to run.

Jared DeMarinis, the state’s administrator of elections, said the race could have been decided by write-in votes if the party committees had put no candidates forward and no third-party candidates ran.

Some in the legal community have suggested that Dorchester County “might be better served if both parties allowed the courts to appoint an experienced prosecutor to stabilize the office, rather than proceeding with a traditional campaign process,” said Bradner-Jacobs, the Democratic Party committee chair.

But that won’t happen. The Republican Central Committee, which did not respond to requests for comment, quickly put forward a candidate: public defender Kenneth E. Thalheimer. He ran four years ago and lost, finishing third with 422 of the 3,340 votes cast.

Thalheimer, who did not respond to several requests for comment, is relatively new to the courtrooms of the Eastern Shore. The 46-year-old served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999 to 2006, then became a police officer in Anne Arundel County. He was nearly killed when a drunk driver struck his patrol car in 2007, and he left the force in 2010.

He filed for bankruptcy in 2013, according to court records, then worked for five years as a District Court bailiff.

During that time, he wrote in his online profile that he earned a master’s degree in Delaware, then attended law school, earning his degree from the University of Maryland in 2018. He became a public defender in 2021.

During the 2022 campaign cycle, Thalheimer told voters he strongly supported the Second Amendment, backed increased sentencing for habitual and violent offenders and wanted to establish juvenile diversion programs and a mental health court.

Leonard says she’s confident Thalheimer will do well in the job. “He is a capable and respected attorney and has my full support,” she wrote.