Also, the poster said "conservative" but didn't explicitly say "Republican", so you can't necessarily rule out counties with Democratic DAs. The poster also didn't give a timeframe. It could have been well before the housing bust for all we know. They were obviously being intentionally vague.

Here's a checklist of things that shouldn't be too hard to establish with some Google-fu:

* Election results for "double-digit" losses by incumbent DAs.

* Areas with a special division for "mentally disordered" clients (Is this a common term found everywhere? Dunno).

* A (state?, unlikely, but I don't know of many county-level legislatures; they are generally governed by a mayor or council) legislature that started specifically evacuating drug possession cases from the docket (would this count as a "legislative pardon" or were the cases just reset?) as a response to 5+ year lag on civil suits.

* "heavily conservative", which your list here seems to contemplate.

* a sex-scandal embroiled DA, with reports probably emerging in the 2008-2009 timeframe.

And there were other significant details in there too, but I think the sex scandal thing will be one of the best filters. Probably all you need is DAs-in-sex-scandals + election results from 2009-2011 to pinpoint the county. OP was not being sneaky or anonymous at all, anyone who cares can find out relatively easily.