As a very liberal individual who is interested in social justice, my opinion of prosecutors is biased. For the most part I see prosecutors as conservative, overzealous lawyers, who believe that those charged with a crime are automatically guilty. As such, my previous articles have supported and validated the work of public defenders and have been critical of the prosecution. Instead of considering that a prosecutor’s job is to seek justice, I have had a tendency to condemn the work they do because I see the negative results of our criminal justice system on the poor, particularly those who commit low-level crimes. However, in my recent court observations I have seen that there are those that commit terrible crimes and deserve to serve time for those crimes. So, I am writing this article for people like me, who struggle to understand why someone would want to become a prosecutor.

For instance, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, currently a liberal Supreme Court Justice who has devoted much of her life to seeking justice and reforming the criminal justice system, was once a prosecutor (ADA) in the Manhattan District Attorneys Office. In an article in the New York Times she said when she took the job after graduating from Yale Law School she felt, “A tremendous amount of pressure from my community, from the third-world community, at Yale, they could not understand why I was taking this job.” Undoubtedly, they too believed the negative stereotypes about prosecutors. However, as a prosecutor Sotomayor did not fit those negative stereotypes. Instead she took into account that the criminal justice system can be unjust and did not assume that everyone who walked in the courtroom was guilty. Sotomayor was a tough no-nonsense prosecutor who grew up in the Bronx during the 1970’s and 80’s when crime was rampant. She was also a prosecutor on the front lines helping victims and convicting those who had committed crimes, yet she was also fair. She sought justice.

So, in the spirit of trying to be less biased, several weeks ago I observed Matt, a New York ADA. I know Matt personally. He is a good man with a profound sense of right and wrong. He wants to keep communities safe, but also understands that people make mistakes and don’t deserve to suffer long-term negative consequences because of those mistakes. We walked into the courtroom and two of his coworkers, as well as several public defenders greeted us. This seemed somewhat unusual to me because prosecutors and pubic defenders vehemently clash in open court, so I assumed that they would not be friendly. Yet, in this moment, they showed a true respect for one another. The judge called me up to the bench to introduce himself, which was also surprising. I then sat down and watched arraignments for several hours. While observing Matt and his fellow coworkers prosecute individuals who had committed fairly low-level crimes, I saw that they were impartial. They did not assume each defendant was guilty.

I spoke with Matt after court and I asked him if he ever felt guilty. He replied, “Sometimes my job is hard. I know there are decent people out there who have made a mistake and regret what they have done, but it is my duty to uphold the law.” Although there are ADA’s who feel no remorse and are prosecutors for the wrong reasons, clearly Matt is not one of them. He, like Justice Sotomayor seeks out justice in an effort to better society.

Although I may always have reservations about those who seek to prosecute, after observing Matt I realize that there is also a systemic problem with our criminal justice system. It is too big, too slow and disproportionately affects communities of color and their families. In New York, ADA’s and public defenders must speed through cases in order to unclog the system, which often results in defendants pleading guilty to charges that can have long lasting negative consequences. Many of the problems lie within the system itself and not necessarily with those who prosecute and defend. Justice Sotomayor said when speaking about her time as an ADA that, “The one thing I have found… is that if you come into the criminal justice system on a prosecutorial or defense level thinking that you can change the ills of society, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This is not where those kinds of changes have to be made.” So what can we do to change the ills of society? Next week, I will highlight a critically important federal reentry program that seeks to do just that.