Thank You, Dan McCarthy

“The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which make a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizens safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”Robert H. Jackson, United States Supreme Court Justice, 1940This quote adorns the plaque with my badge affixed to it, given to me by Randy Sengel, Commonweatlth's Attorney for the City of Alexandria, Virginia when I left the office in 2003. It is a sentiment I've seen embodied in a happily large number of men and women over the course of my career, but perhaps never so profoundly as in a friend who passed away unexpectedly this week, Dan McCarthy.It's been observed in the legal community that, oftentimes, there's an inverse relationship between the skill and success of a trial attorney, and his or her skill and success as a human being. Simply put, some of the most effective and remarkably talented trial attorneys out there are walking disasters in their personal lives.Daniel McCarthy, Chief Trial Counsel and Director of Trial Training at the Bronx District Attorneys Office, was the very best trial lawyer I ever knew personally, and recognized as one of the best in the country. He was also a remarkable success as a human being. Dan could do both, and with what looked like effortless aplomb.I worked in the Bronx, where Dan was an ADA for 18 years, for a little less than two. When I contemplate my service there I sometimes feel the guilt of soldiers who, for whatever reason, spent very little time in a combat zone. I am grateful for the experience, but I hold my service cheap compared to friends, colleagues and giants like Dan who spent much of their careers in service in this good and fascinating, but often brutal and challenging community. Dan had every opportunity to leave prosecution almost 20 years ago and make a remarkably good living as a litigator in the private sector. But instead he went from one tough environment (Queens) to an arguably even tougher environment (the Bronx) in order to continue to seek justice and serve victims.Thankfully I knew Dan before and after BXDA, but during my time there he taught me things I still hold dear. My favorite example might be this one: ADA's, when they appear in court, usually announce their appearance for the "District Attorney." It was Dan who taught me to personalize my appearance to the good man who hired me. "He represents this community and he deserves your loyalty and respect," he said. "When you appear in court, say you're there on behalf of the office of Robert T. Johnson." It was a gesture I maintained when I appeared on behalf of then Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo two years later.It was Dan- more than anyone else in my career, and I have had great mentors- who emphasized in deeply compassionate terms the reality that lingered behind the case folders. Lives are broken by crime and they are not put back together by criminal litigation. The dead are silenced and their potential truncated, leaving behind grieving loved ones who never fully recover. The wounded and paralyzed- mentally or physically- are at times left to navigate lives that can draw out like a blade in numbing, endless days of struggle. Victims fight nightmares, despair, hopelessness and rage, all long after the publicity is over, the juries are dismissed and the accolades are shared. Dan never let us forget this.The Bronx, at once magnificent and godforsaken, lush with green space and choked with urban density, home to centuries of history and yesterday's arrivals from every point on the globe, possessed of both world-class schools and grinding poverty, is itself a study in contradictions.When I think about it, I suppose Dan was also. He was a nationally known attorney with sobering responsibilities who was always ready to poke fun at himself and never too busy to brainstorm with a young ADA facing a first larceny trial. He was endlessly creative, pincer-like and pulverizing when proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but hyper-ethical and deeply compassionate to everyone on both sides of the tragic cases he handled. He was erudite and analytical but fun-loving and folksy. The man could, very simply, do it all. His loss leaves an empty space in the American prosecution community and the lives of his friends and family that won't be filled. But he also leaves a legacy of decency, compassion and justice that will, in the spirit of true success, endure forever.