Real-world skill prepped nominee

Op-Ed By: Hugh H. Mo

As the confirmation process goes forward, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s legal experience and judicial philosophy will be closely dissected and analyzed from every perspective, including the parsing of the meanings and nuances of common words used to describe her or attributable to her.

As the political debate continues over the meaning of “empathy,” or the impact of her gender and ethnic heritage on Judge Sotomayor’s qualifications, judicial philosophy and her commitment to interpreting the Constitution, in the end, I believe the best way to view her qualifications is through the lens of her time as an assistant district attorney in New York during one of the worst crime sprees in a generation. That real world experience – as a skilled legal practitioner who not only ruthlessly pursued justice for victims of violent crimes but understood the root causes of crime and how to curb it – will serve her, and the country, well on the Supreme Court.

I have had the privilege of serving with Judge Sotomayor as assistant prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office almost 30 years ago. Judge Sotomayor and our peers were products of the Civil Rights era and Vietnam War generation, and became lawyers imbued with idealism and the desire to make the world a better place. Our desire to be prosecutors was profoundly influenced by growing up with television programs such as “Perry Mason,” “Dragnet” and “Naked City.”

It was an extraordinary time to be a prosecutor in the 1970s and 1980s, when New York City was besieged by violent criminals. Appointed by the legendary district attorney Robert Morgenthau, we were part of the army commissioned to stem that crime wave, but always with an abiding sense of fairness and justice in the discharge of our role in the criminal justice system.

I met assistant district attorney Sotomayor in 1980, when she was assigned to me as a rookie prosecutor. She stood out among her peers and was hard-working, diligent and insightful, with an uncanny ability to simplify a complex set of facts and incidents into a compelling story that would resonate with the jury.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not allow young prosecutors to try homicide cases until they had apprenticed with a more senior attorney. Judge Sotomayor had already tried a number of complex criminal cases, including a child pornography case, People v. D’Alessio and Hyman, but she had not tried a murder case.

She was assigned to join me in her first murder case, People v. Richard Maddicks, the “Tarzan burglar,” who committed a series of burglaries and murders in a bloody three-month spree form 1981 to 1982 in Central Harlem, by swinging from rooftops on ropes and crashing through apartment windows with his gun blazing.

Maddicks’ one-man crime spree left a trail of shattered lives, including three deaths and many seriously injured. The police investigation that led to the arrest of Maddicks covered 23 incidents over a 12-month period, 11 of which were the subject of a 37-count indictment charging Maddicks with multiple counts of murder, burglary, assault and assorted crimes.

The Tarzan case was a prosecutor’s dream, which required piecing together the multiple crimes and disparate pieces of evidence to establish a distinctive, repetitive pattern to distinguish the defendant’s identity and criminal acts. The Tarzan case was tried in early 1983 before a jury in New York State Supreme Court. Four weeks and 40 witnesses, including civilians, police, pathologists, a veterinarian, a ballistics expert and a cartographer, led to Richard Maddicks’ conviction and a 62 ½ years-to-life sentence in state prison.

Despite it being her first murder trial, Judge Sotomayor distinguished herself as a skilled litigator, investigator and student of the law. She visited the crime scenes with the detectives and established a strong rapport with the detectives, victims’ family members and witnesses, which was critical to our prosecution of the case. She organized and analyzed the hundreds of files and facts of this complex, multi-victim murder case, even creating a case diagram – People’s 1 – which outlined the People’s case and distilled a complex and possibly confusing set of facts into a powerful and striking visual aid for the jury.

It was clear that Judge Sotomayor’s trial skills and ability exceeded those of other prosecutors, even those who had more seniority. Because of her trial skills and instincts, I asked her to present half of the 40 government witnesses and to draft the opening statement of the case, which I delivered. I still remember vividly Judge Sotomayor’s ability to interact with witnesses during the trial preparation and to gently help them recount in front of a jury the traumas and tragedies that they endured. Judge Sotomayor’s direct examination of the sister of a murder victim moved many of the jurors to tears.

Judge Sotomayor played a pivotal role in the Tarzan case as an imposing and commanding figure in the courtroom and as a skilled practitioner who could weave together a complex set of facts, enforce the law and never lose sight of whom she was fighting for.

Like many young prosecutors before her, Judge Sotomayor served her time in the district attorney’s office and moved on with her legal career. In fact, it was not until the news of her nomination as a United States district court judge for the Southern District of New York in 1991 that I first learned of her compelling, up-by-the-bootstraps upbringing, a uniquely American experience that in many ways mirrors my own as a Chinese American.

While Judge Sotomayor’s credentials, judicial philosophy, personality, ethnicity and gender will be scrutinized and debated in the days to come, I think her rich experience as a tough and skilled prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office provides her with that real life experience that President Obama has talked about, his critics have attacked and what is so lacking today on the highest court of the land.

Hugh H. Mo is a lawyer in New York, was a Manhattan assistant district attorney from 1976 to 1984, and was a deputy commissioner-trials for the New York City Police Department from 1984 to 1988.