New York – noted sex-crimes prosecutor, wrongful-conviction experts, a state ethics official and a former judge are among dozens of people advising Manhattan’s next district attorney on the first changeover in the prominent office since the Ford administration.
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Newly elected D.A. Cy Vance’s wide-ranging transition team, announced Thursday, reflects themes he stressed during his campaign, such as preventing wrongful convictions and assigning prosecutors to neighborhoods to sharpen focus on crime patterns.
With defense lawyers as well as prosecutors, investigators and former jail commissioners, it also reflects the broad outlook Vance told voters he offered as a defense lawyer and litigator who started his career in the office he will lead.
Vance was elected Tuesday with the backing of retiring 35-year incumbent Robert Morgenthau, and Vance has balanced his proposals with assurances about sustaining much of the prosecutorial powerhouse Morgenthau has built. The nearly 500-lawyer office is known for high-profile cases ranging from celebrity arrests to corporate fraud, and it serves as a basis for television’s “Law & Order.”
Still, Vance noted Thursday, “a healthy organization is one that does change — it’s just one that changes intelligently.”
Besides a swath of the legal profession, the 37-member transition team includes a seminary professor, a diversity consultant, union officials, an expert on computer crime, the director of a nonprofit group that helps ex-convicts find jobs and city Human Rights Commissioner Patricia L. Gatling. Team’s leader Michael G. Cherkasky chairs the state Commission on Public Integrity.
Two members — Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld — co-founded the Innocence Project, a New York-based group that has helped marshal DNA evidence to exonerate more than 240 people after their convictions.
Despite the team’s exoneration experts and defense lawyers, “I’m not trying to send a message that we need to be more defense-oriented,” Vance said, adding that the point was “to help me be a better prosecutor.”
Perhaps the team’s most well-known member is Linda Fairstein, a pioneering Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor who is now a best-selling crime novelist.
The transition team will make suggestions about policy but not day-to-day operations or hiring, Vance said.
Vance, 55, worked for Morgenthau in the 1980s before spending many years as a trial lawyer in Seattle, returning to Manhattan in 2004. He is the son of former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance.
Well now that the dottering old man is out, it’s bound to get better.