Another NY Partner Makes Candidacy for DA Official

As rain beat down on the steps of City Hall yesterday, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. formally announced his candidacy for Manhattan district attorney.

It’s a “cold, cold, rainy day. My wife, who is Irish, tells me it’s a great sign of good luck,” Mr. Vance, 54, told a crowd of supporters, which included former Eastern District U.S. Attorney Zachary W. Carter and retired Court of Appeals Judge George Bundy Smith, now at Chadbourne & Parke.

Mr. Vance, a partner at white-collar defense firm Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer and the son of former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, has now joined Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former state judge and a partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, and Richard M. Aborn, a partner in Constantine Cannon, as confirmed candidates to succeed Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau.

All three candidates yesterday addressed the topics of altering the structure of the district attorney’s office and changes to the Rockefeller Drug laws.

During yesterday’s 10-minute news conference, Mr. Vance, who worked in the trial division and the racket’s bureau of Mr. Morgenthau’s office in the 1980s, said that if elected, he would continue Mr. Morgenthau’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting white-collar crime. At the same time, “we can never lose sight of the D.A.’s role in ensuring safety on our streets, in our subways, in our schools, in our public housing developments.”

While Mr. Vance vowed to build on the “traditions of fairness, integrity and non-partisanship that have defined” Mr. Morgenthau’s office, he said his office would distinguish itself by embracing a community-based model of justice.

In a phone interview, Mr. Vance said he would retain the vertical prosecution system in the office.

By allowing an assistant district attorney to see a case through from the “complaint room to trial,” Mr. Vance said the vertical system he supports would increase a prosecutor’s effectiveness while reducing the “wear and tear on victims and other witnesses” who would have to repeat their story to multiple assistants.

The vertical system in Manhattan “has been very, very effective and we want to retain that. At the same time, I believe we can take advantage of the community-based justice models,” Mr. Vance said.

A “cousin” of the Brooklyn model, Mr. Vance’s approach would give prosecutors “geographic ownership of specific zones within the county,” made up of multiple precincts and neighborhoods. This will give prosecutors insight into the crime patterns in a particular zone and make them accountable for crime reduction in their assigned areas, Mr. Vance said in an interview.

In 1991, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes reorganized his office along geographic lines, according to an office spokesman. Brooklyn is divided into five zones, and a trial bureau is assigned to each. The objective is to allow the prosecutors who handle most of the street-level crimes to become familiar with the police, community groups and repeat offenders within their zones.

The Brooklyn office maintains specialized bureaus that handle certain categories of crimes, such as homicides, major narcotics investigations and sex crimes.

Complaints are drafted centrally from a borough-wide complaint room, and a separate designated unit handles arraignments, with authority to negotiate pleas.

Team prosecutors take over when a case is presented to the grand jury. Once an indictment is issued a different prosecutor is assigned to handle the case through to completion.

Commenting on his proposed plan, Mr. Vance said he would assign prosecutors to geographic zones within Manhattan to encompass multiple police precincts and neighborhoods.

“This partnership,” he said at City Hall, “will help us identify block by block, building by building who is committing what crimes, where and why.”

Mr. Vance said he did not yet know how he would divide the borough, but he suggested that each of Manhattan’s six trial divisions could be “aligned” to a geographic zone.

Rockefeller Drug Laws

Mr. Vance, who served on the State Sentencing Commission that recently recommended overhauling the Rockefeller Drug Laws, also said yesterday he would continue to work with Governor David A. Paterson and the Legislature “to enact sentencing laws that offer treatment, not just punishment, to non-violent drug offenders.”

With both houses of the Legislature under Democratic control for the first time in a generation, and Mr. Paterson firmly behind reform, legislation repealing the remaining harsh aspects of the 1970s-era drug laws is widely expected this year.

In 2004, the Legislature amended the law to eliminate life sentences and reduce penalties for the most serious offenses and establish a mechanism for some prisoners sentenced under the amended scheme to seek sentence reductions.

One of the most contentious issues in the reform debate has been whether judges should have the authority to divert non-violent drug defendants to treatment programs without the consent of the prosecution. Last week, the Assembly passed a bill (A6085/S2855), which would give judges that authority.

The Assembly bill would also eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenses, and set up a process that would allow about 2,000 inmates to apply for a reduction of their sentences.

Mr. Vance said in an interview he supported legislation that moves the debate forward from a punitive model for low-level non-violent drug offenders to a treatment method.

He said he supports giving judges the independent ability to “craft a treatment-based sentence” for certain non-violent offenders.

And while Mr. Vance urges prosecutorial input, he said he would not allow prosecutors to veto a judge’s decision.

Stressing the importance of providing financial backing for an overhaul of the drug laws, Mr. Vance said ultimately, “We can move dollars from reduced prison costs to treatment.”

Snyder’s Platform

Ms. Snyder, who declared her candidacy in October, believes the Manhattan office must be “updated and reorganized to better serve communities,” said her senior advisor, Michael Tobman, of Hudson TGP, a political consulting firm.

Under Ms. Snyder, prosecutors would be assigned to communities to work with the police, social services agencies and the New York City Police Department to mobilize resources to prevent crimes, Mr. Tobman said.

As for reorganization, Mr. Tobman said the office needs to be set up “more along geographic lines,” but he added that the precise mechanism had yet to be determined, and it “may involve bureau lines and may not.”

Mr. Aborn, who threw his hat into the ring after Mr. Morgenthau declared earlier this month that he would not seek a 10th term, believes that a geographic division of the office reflects an “old way of thinking,” said his spokesman, Alex Navarro-McKay.

Dividing an office on geographic lines, Mr. Navarro-McKay said, “doesn’t address the really important question of stopping crime before it starts.”

Drug Law Reform

In a letter earlier this month to the chairmen of the Codes Committees in the Assembly and Senate, Ms. Snyder came out four-square in support of allowing judges to sentence defendants to treatment programs without an agreement from the prosecution. But she also called for a sunset clause for any reform legislation, so the effectiveness of the changes could be evaluated.

She also criticized the work of the Commission on Sentencing Reform, which last month issued a report on the Rockefeller drug laws, as a “weak submission.”

While the report stated that a majority of the panel preferred giving judges discretion, it did not make a specific recommendation on the point.

Ms. Snyder’s adviser, Mr. Tobman, said the candidate could not address the question of whether prisoners should be allowed to apply for a reduction of their sentences until legislation setting new parameters for the sentencing of lesser drug offenses is enacted.

Mr. Aborn, through his spokesman, Mr. Navarro-McKay, said he supported giving judges discretion to divert defendants to treatment programs without the consent of the prosecution.

Similarly, Mr. Aborn supports giving prisoners a means of being resentenced according to the terms of any amended format, Mr. Navarro-McKay said.