 President Andy Workman and his wife, Mary Beth, are here with us this evening. And I want to welcome back Tiffany Williams, who is a former MLK Day speaker, a retired administrative law judge and former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State, New Jersey. Welcome back. And I want to give a special thank you to the good folks at Nixon Peabody for their support of this series and of our annual Diversity Dinner Symposium. Andy Prescott, the managing partner of the firm, is here. They also have the good sense to hire many of our best and brightest, couple who will be joining us later, but one of whom is here right now, Megan Hopkins, known probably to those of you on the faculty as Megan Kruger, who is now an associate at Nixon Peabody. So welcome, Megan. And to bring greetings from the firm tonight, I'm proud to introduce Jeff Brenner, who is a partner at Nixon Peabody in the Providence Office, leader of the Construction and Real Estate Litigation Practice Group. Jeff is going to talk to us a little bit as well about the importance of a fair and equitable criminal justice system, and Jeff, welcome. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, Dean Yelnaski, for the warm introduction. As an alumna, it's particularly exciting for me to be here with you today and speak to you. So I prefer to be on this side of the bench rather than that side. So Nixon Peabody is once again pleased to co-sponsor the annual Martin Luther King Jr. lecture, a critically important event that captures Dr. King's life and legacy by inviting conversation about some of the nation's most important and most pressing civil rights and social justice issues. Many of the themes that resonate from Dr. King's legacy, and which I'm sure will be echoed by our speaker today, are embedded in the work that we do at Nixon Peabody and the values we speak to emulate firm-wide on a daily basis. As Dean Yelnaski mentioned, my colleague Jeff Brenner is here, and I'd like to begin by letting him speak a little bit about some pro bono work that he recently completed that is particularly profound. So Jeff. Thanks, Megan. So they asked me for a picture of this matter I did, and I said, if I'm going to give you a picture, I know there's going to be judges here, and I see judges who tell Clifton and Matos, they're going to give me crap forever if you have a picture up and I can't explain it. So this is in our office, and this is me with a pro bono client of ours, Kevin Lockhart. Kevin is maybe about two or three years younger than me, but his life path was a little bit different. In the early 90s, he had had a pretty long rap sheet of drug possession and drug dealing, and one of the times he had a knife on him, which was never used, but it was a very long rap sheet, and he ended up getting a 30-year sentence for jail from Judge Leger, not because he wanted to, but because he had to, under the minimum sentence and guidelines that were in place in the early 90s. And I got to meet Kevin through what was called the Clemency 2014 Project, which some of you may know that there was an initiative established by President Obama under the Department of Justice to identify nonviolent prisoners who were in jail for a very long time, and what are they doing there? And you can rationalize it in a bunch of different ways. One way you can rationalize it is if someone went in there, aren't we supposed to be rehabilitating, and if they had a drug issue, aren't we supposed to be addressing that? In Kevin's situation, and this is more about a story about him than me and my firm, Kevin was a model prisoner. He went in, got himself dried out pretty quickly within a few years, and unfortunately, the way the system was in the 90s, and I know this is going to be getting into the speaker's domain, the only way to dry out was to go to jail. And I personally think that's just wrong. I mean, this is not a race story. This is a story about what are we in society doing with people who have issues that need help. He then developed a list of accomplishments in prison by way of courses and certificates and things that I don't even understand that was a lot longer than his rap sheet that he got in the first place. And even better, he kept in touch with his family. His family kept in touch with him. He has two children who are currently in college, one's at Johnson & Wales and one's at Montana State playing D2 basketball. Their mother kept in touch with him, his mother, his aunt, and I would have phone calls from all these people who extended family members, which was great because a lot of times the judges know this, when they see the sentencing reports, the family gives up on them and they give up on the family and that never happened here. So they made it easy for me to tell Kevin's story and to get his sentence commuted by 10 years. When you're around 50 years old, there's a big difference between being in jail until you're 60 and when you're 50. And I've been in touch with him since he left the prison system at the end of 2017 but was in the so-called halfway houses in the Boston area to make sure that he is who he was supposed to be, which he was. He was able to get a job at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Needham. Doesn't mind working 70-hour weeks because he's like, I hadn't worked in 20 years being in jail. I'll work whatever shift you want me to. And last month, about two weeks or so before Christmas, he just showed up in my office. Most of my clients don't do that, pro bono or paying. So he just showed up at the office and we kind of dressed like that day. It was an office day for me after traveling a couple of days during the week. And I don't know if you can tell, but he brought me this 20-pound glass object that has this really strong base and it's a hand-blown glass object and it's inscribed just to show his appreciation. And I never met him before. And some of you who are in Providence, if you've been to our building, Citizens Plaza in the Cafe de la France, I met him down there because I never met him. He wasn't on our list, let up in the elevator. So I came down and we've never met each other. So with the coffee person as my witness, he just gave me a big hug and just started crying on my chest and God put me on the planet to get him out of prison 10 years early. And I'm like, okay, I'll take that. It was a very touching moment. I represent a lot of different clients. Some I might like, some I might not, but I try to do the best I can for them. And I felt very good about helping out Kevin and giving him 10 years of his life back, taking him out of a federal prison system that didn't need him and he didn't need it, saving the taxpayers, I don't know, what's the cost? Aaron, you might know. Is it close to $100,000 a year to incarcerate somebody? I mean, that's money that can be spent elsewhere and really giving this guy his life back. So this was an initiative that Nix and Peabody participated in around the firm. Chuck Tammy Levitt, some of you might know, is a former prosecutor and now a defense attorney. You know, helped me out understanding a lot of the bizarre terminology that the prosecutors and the criminal defense guys use and helped me write up the, you know, his story to tell so that we could get his sentence commuted. So afterward, I'm happy to answer any questions, but I didn't want to go beyond the few minutes just talking about this initiative. So thank you for hitting this on me. Thanks, Jeff. I asked him to bring the sculpture, but it was too heavy. It is very heavy. So in addition to working on the projects like Jeff described, members of our Providence office have participated in a number of pro bono initiatives. Most recently, we began working with the Sojourner House on its trafficking, housing empowerment, immigration and advocacy project through which members of our office assist victims of human trafficking with expunging their criminal records. Many of them have records that list charges related to prostitution or law-daring offenses as a result of being sexually trafficked. Additionally, many of our offices nationwide handle criminal justice act matters. On a pro bono basis, and Nixon Peabody is actually one of only two law firms that assist the Innocence Project with conducting in-depth investigations and vetting applications for individuals who claim that they've been wrongfully convicted to determine whether or not they might be able to be exonerated through DNA evidence. In addition to our pro bono efforts, Nixon Peabody is committed to its diversity inclusion efforts. Most recently, on December 7th of last year, Nixon Peabody participated in what was called the National Day of Understanding, which was organized by the CEO Action for Diversity Inclusion. This event grew out of the tragic fatal shooting of a man of color, both Imjan in his Dallas apartment by a white off-duty police woman. On the day of understanding, Nixon Peabody staff and its attorneys nationwide gathered together to learn and practice a paradigm for discussing in both a respectful and productive manner challenging issues related to race relations and diversity. Andrew, as our office managing partner, did a great job facilitating this program, and I'm not just saying that because he asked me to in an email earlier today and because he's sitting in the front row. He really did do a great job. I personally participated in the program along with the other attorneys and staff in our providence office, and I found it to be both thought-provoking, challenging, and rewarding. I'm grateful to work at a firm like Nixon Peabody that shares and builds on the very principles that were so deeply rooted within my legal education here at Roger Williams, so I feel very fortunate to be at a firm that values and expands and grows on those principles every day. The firm received overwhelmingly positive feedback with respect to the day of understanding and is intending to build on that momentum with more diversity-focused programming. So in closing, on behalf of Nixon Peabody, I want to thank the law school for the opportunity to again co-sponsor this important event. We look forward to listening with intent and purpose to what District Attorney Rollins has to share today. Thank you again. It is my great pleasure to introduce our Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Deborah Johnson, who will introduce her friend, District Attorney Rachel Rollins. I do want to take this opportunity to thank Deborah for the terrific work that she has done making this series a signature event at the law school, and it is with great admiration that I welcome her to the podium. Thank you, Michael, and welcome to everybody. It is wonderful to see all of you here this afternoon, and I know that you didn't come to hear any of us speak. You were waiting for District Attorney Rollins, so I'm going to be really brief, but I had to take a few moments to introduce our MLK speaker this afternoon, and I've been trying to think about what I wanted to say, and there really is just way too much for me to say in a very short period of time. I feel like I've known her forever, even though I haven't, but I feel like I've known for at least my entire legal career and I have admired her throughout that time. I remember as a first-year law student at Northeastern that Rachel was not... We weren't classmates, we weren't even schoolmates. She graduated the May before I started, but when I got there, she was already legendary, and people were talking about her left and right, and perhaps that was because even then, she was already a visionary and an incredible leader. Among other things, she was the first ever legal intern for the National Basketball Players Association, and later I might add, worked for the National Football League Players Association, and in fact, she's a woman of many firsts. The first woman of color to serve as general counsel, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the first woman to serve as general counsel of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which I always found fascinating because I know that Rachel does not like to take the T. Moving on. And of course today, she is here and she is the first woman of color to serve as district attorney in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the first woman elected as DA in Suffolk County, the county in which Boston sits. I feel like I should take just a moment to read her short bio, and I'm going to focus on short. There's again so much to know about her, but I want for those of you who are law students in the audience in particular to listen because I think that Rachel and her accomplishments are a shining example of what one can do with their law degree. So Rachel's been a lawyer for over 20 years and as a former state and federal prosecutor, she has handled cases involving civil rights violations, fraud, sexual predators, narcotics, violence, and weapons. She also clerked on the Massachusetts Appeals Court and before that she was at a firm and she worked for the National Labor Relations Board. That's not even in here. She was the general counsel, as I said, of both the MBTA and the Mass DOT, and in those roles she managed over 150 employees and was responsible for overseeing thousands of cases per year. She left to become the chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Port Authority. She has served on Attorney General Attorney's Advisory Council on Racial Justice and Equity. She's a former Governor Deval Patrick appointee to the Judicial Nominating Commission, a past president of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association, and was elected and served a three-year term on the Boston Bar Association Council. And as I said, that's just the short version. Over the years I have had a chance to get to know Rachel and as you can see, I hope you can see or at least have heard, she really is an amazing woman. She's thoughtful and she's strategic. She's outspoken and she truly is wise beyond her years. She's been a mentor to me and she has repeatedly shared just amazing, excellent pieces of wisdom. She gives you the real talk, she doesn't play around, and she's about getting things done. And so as I've gotten to know her over the years, I've come to admire her more and more, not just for her many accomplishments, but for the many ways in which she has led and blazed the trails for those alongside and behind her. And I would just note that in this room alone, there are three women who have benefited, have the direct benefit of her excellence and her leadership. And that's Tara Allen, Northeastern Class of 98, Tiffany Williams. Tiffany Williams, Class of 99, and yours truly, Deborah Johnson, Class of 2000, Rachel was Class of 97. So I know that I can speak on behalf of all of us in saying thank you, Rachel, and with that, I am honored and overjoyed to introduce to you my friend, my mentor, my role model, and my district attorney, Rachel Rollins. Thank you so much. So I want to, first of all, thank my three friends here from my fabulous, my fabulous Law School Northeastern. Dean, I appreciate you allowing me to come on campus and speak to you guys. I think I want to, every time I talk, I love leaving plenty of time at the end for you guys to ask whatever question you want. Like, if you're thinking about running for office, that isn't the district attorney's office. I am a first in many, many, or the district attorney's office, but I'm a first in many circumstances as a 47-year-old. I've never run for office before. I didn't choose a small office. I chose one that has, that is all of Boston and three other places as well. But I want to break this up into sort of three sections. A little bit about me and my platform. Six points that I love to try to give out to people when they hear, like, all the things they think I'm really good at and how I try to focus my life right now. And then questions. So if you would oblige. The little bit about me I just want to tell you is I'm the oldest of five children. I'm 47 right now. I think one of my superpowers is that I was blessed to be born into a multicultural home. My father is Irish American from South Boston. If any of you are familiar with Boston, think of the most racist place on earth in Cuba. And then add two. And that is what South Boston was when my dad was growing up. And my mom's family's from Barbados. And they met some 48 years ago and started a family. I'm the oldest of five children. And I have siblings. I have a sibling right now that is currently incarcerated. And so I like to say that out loud to people. I'm the district attorney of Suffolk County. I have a younger brother that's currently incarcerated. And there are more people like me than you would like to believe, that wake up and go to work every day, make decisions when I speak to young people, which is my favorite group of people to speak to. It is not... It is completely okay for you to love someone and not agree with the decisions that they make. It does not make you a traitor to your family. It does not make you a traitor to your community. You can live in a home that you might not agree with a lot of the things that are happening there as a child. But I love my siblings. I don't support necessarily some of the decisions they've made, but I know firsthand what it feels like to sit in a courtroom. The very courtroom I used to prosecute people in at the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Mowkley Courthouse, I've prosecuted people in, and I've sat in as my brother was sentenced. And those are the experiences I brought to the campaign trail and that I bring every day to work with me. As a result of my siblings, I have four of them. Three of them have struggled with either opioid addiction or cycled in and out of the criminal justice system. As a result of that, I'm the guardian of two of my nieces. So I also know what it feels like to have DCF, which is in Massachusetts, what we call the Department of Children and Families. It used to be the Department of Social Services. I don't know what you call it in your state. But I have DCF involvement in my life, not because a 51A has been filed against me, but because I answered my phone one day and was told that one of my siblings was going to lose custody of their child and my niece was going to go into a foster home. And I said, oh, no, no, of course not. And they said it'll be a week tops, and that was three years ago. So best thing that ever happened in my life, that I stood up and did that, but it was something that I know what it feels like to have DCF involved in your life, to have them call and say we're going to be at your house tomorrow at noon for a house visit. Now, because I'm me, I can say back to them even before I was the DA, no, you aren't. That doesn't work for me. You can come on this day at this time, but there are not a lot of people that have that skill set or feel comfortable enough when they are the target of a DCF investigation, for example. I'm a foster parent, so I'm at what's called a kinship foster parent. What I like to say is I like to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, whether you want them to be there or not. So I stepped up as a kinship foster parent, which is different than a foster parent. And what I did was I took the MAP class, which in Massachusetts is the parenting class you take to become a foster parent. And then I am now on the emergency list in Massachusetts. So when an emergency occurs and a 51A is filed, I get a phone call in the middle of the night and am told that there are siblings that were just removed from a home after the police did a raid, or very recently now an overdose happened. And a nine-year-old girl or boy made a phone call because their mother or father was unconscious and they thought they were dead. What I love about my house, it's not big, but we just have like a million bunk beds because I have 40 extra children that I did not give birth to in my nieces. But we have bunk beds and so I like taking siblings because I like saying this out loud to people who think, how can I help? What can I do? It is a night. It's usually at 10 or 11 p.m. and they pick the child up or the children up the next day, but you just provide a clean place for them to sleep, food and snacks. I have an adorable French bulldog. It's just an opportunity for them to feel safe on literally the worst night of their life. And that is something that I stepped up and did. And ironically, still as the DA, I'm still on the emergency list. I don't take anyone from Suffolk County because as we know, oftentimes families that are involved with one agency end up being involved in others. And if a 51A is filed, it's usually a mandated reporter and there might be some criminal charges coming. But I want to tell you that about my background because I think it's really important to hear that I bring that lived experience to work with me every single day when I sit down as the district attorney making decisions in Suffolk County. So that's my background. A little bit about my platform, it's very simple. I had made it very clear that under my administration we were going to stop criminalizing mental illness, addiction and poverty. We do that every single day in our criminal justice system. So prisons are the new asylums in Massachusetts and the House of Correction. Over 67% of the women that are currently in our House of Correction are suffering from a diagnosed mental illness in the DSM-5. So not that person looks sort of, there's something off with her or him. We mean a diagnosed DSM-5 mental illness. With respect to addiction, I really believe in services, not sentences. I like to say. And I believe that you should not be getting your treatment at the House of Corrections when we in Massachusetts pride ourselves of being sort of the bedrock of all of every fabulous hospital and people are flying from around the world to come to us. There's all this money that people are given for treatment. I don't think people should be getting their treatment in the Suffolk County House of Corrections. And then with respect to poverty, not race, I want you to hear me say this. Poverty is actually the biggest disparity in the criminal justice system is people that are poor don't get good services at all, irrespective of what color you are. So there's a lot of people in Charlestown, which is within Suffolk County, if you're from there, I don't know what the equivalent is in Rhode Island, but who are living in a housing project and don't get treated with dignity or respect or get what they believe is good service and treatment from the criminal justice system just like somebody who might be from Roxbury, which is another area of Suffolk County that is a little bit more sort of urban. And I believe your zip code should not determine the outcome of your case. And I say that out loud as often as I can. Another principle which I don't think should be earth shattering but was in my campaign is I believe people should be treated with dignity and fairness and respect in the process. I think we have completely lost track of the fact that the district attorney's office is funded by tax dollars, that we are in the service industry and we should be acting as such. And victims and survivors and defendants, we actually represent all of them. I'm aware that defendants have their own counsel, but they are members of Suffolk County as well. And if you practice, how many of you have practiced criminal law? All right, so is it shocking to hear that victims are often defendants and then defendants can then also be victims? All the time, right? And so if you're somebody who has practiced in a district court, I sort of made my way in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts. But I did a district attorney rotation when I was in law school at, I'm sorry, when I was at a law firm in a town called Brockton, which very candidly makes Boston's crime look like, you know, your dog was not on the leash, right? And so, like, so what I can tell you is Brockton is hardcore. And so I learned quite a bit there. And even in my four month rotation, I saw the same people or I'd see somebody and then I'd say, I know that last name and they'd say, oh, that's his father or that's his uncle or that's her mother, you know, or sister. And then later, that same individual that we had charged with something was the victim of, you know, a violent attack of some other sort or had been shot or something like that had happened. So I believe that we need to start talking about the fact that although we don't stand up in court and represent defendants, their families deserve to know when cases are continued. And what we do frequently is we make sure the victims' family and the witnesses know but we never reach out to what's called in Massachusetts CPCS or the public defender there. We need to make sure we're more transparent with what we're doing. And the last part of me is I think some news was made about me because during the campaign, I said out loud that there are going to be 15 crimes that overwhelmingly are crimes of mental illness, addiction and poverty that in the first instance, prosecution is not going to be the answer. Just flat out if it's a first defense, we're just outright null-prossing or dismissing this. And so things like trespassing or things like breaking and entering into an abandoned property for the purpose of seeking shelter. So I know you guys think you're down south or something in Rhode Island. It's freezing in Boston. And I don't even know if we're south or north or where we drove. You get what I mean. But my point is that if you are homeless and you break into an abandoned space somewhere in downtown Boston and the choice you're making is whether you want to freeze to death or live, I don't think we should be criminalizing that. What I want to do is pre-arrainment look at this person and say, what happened? What's going on with you? And I believe we are problem solvers. For sure when we move out of the district court and we indict up into superior court, they're more serious crimes. They're more violent crimes. Not to say we don't ask what happened in those circumstances. But it is right now in Suffolk County a very adversarial process even in district court. I don't think it needs to be. I think that we are often looking at individuals that are suffering in that moment. And what I'd rather do is say, this person's homeless. Let's find them a shelter. If it's a location where they've done this three or four times, we can give them a civil stay away order. We don't hold them accountable. But accountability does not have to equal jail. So those are some of the things I said out loud and people lost their minds. But what I love about it is I said it out loud pre-primary. It was just that everyone else assumed somebody that the sitting DA and all of the police were endorsing was going to win. And so nobody listened. And so September 4th, I won. And woke up to all of these calls from the media. I was on Tucker Carlson because that's who I am. I firmly believe I don't want to speak to people that agree with me. I think we need to start having conversations with people that don't agree with you. And if you can be pleasant and firm, but pleasant during that conversation, that's where the change is going to happen. I don't need to sit around with people that say like, you're amazing. I love hearing that, but there's no progress when that happens. So I'm the person that calls up Howie Carr. I'm the person that goes on Tucker Carlson or Jeff Cooner or conservative radio as often as I can because when it ends and they say like, well, you're not completely crazy, that's a win, right? It is, I firmly believe that. So the other thing that very recently happened is I've said out loud, and I know there's a U.S. attorney here, but I came from the federal government. I am a former assistant U.S. attorney. Andy Lelling, our U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, was a former colleague of mine. But I've been really vocal about the fact that when people are walking into courthouses in Suffolk County and are being detained by ICE, I firmly believe that there are safe zones like hospitals and schools and churches. And yes, courthouses in the public sections of courthouses. I don't believe ICE should be snatching people in public areas in courthouses because there's too much good work that we do in courthouses. Now, I will say that, you know, when people push back and say, you know, well, you don't believe that ICE can, that's a different conversation. I'm not saying ICE does not have the right to deport people. We can talk when I take my district attorney coat off and I can tell you as an individual what I believe, but as the DA of Suffolk County, it is my job to make sure people come to court that witnesses and victims and families come to court. There are civil matters that aren't happening right now because people are terrified that they could be deported. When you want to file a restraining order against someone, that's not a criminal matter. It's a civil procedure. When you want to section somebody, if you have a loved one that's suffering from a mental health issue or substance use disorder, and you want them sectioned, it's not criminal, you're afraid to go in there if they have a questionable immigration status. Domestic, people with domestic violence issues are saying all I want is for the violence to stop. I'm not saying I want him or her deported above and beyond that. I just want this behavior to stop. So it is my job to stand up and say that irrespective of what the person is charged with, I want to hold them accountable in Suffolk County prior to ICE coming in. And I need to make sure that courthouses are working the way they should. And so recently I said that and 4,000 news media outlets rained down upon me. But I will say it again. I firmly believe that. I want to just tell you guys very quickly before I open it up to whatever questions you want. Just the six things that we are super proud in my campaign of what we did. There were five Democratic candidates. Everyone said that the black vote would there were three black candidates and three progressive candidates. They said the progressive vote would knock itself out and so would the black vote and that this individual was going to win. We won with 42% of the overall vote in the primary and then with 82% in the general. So for me it was important not to boast about that but you need a mandate for change. I would have happily taken a 51% to a 49 but when people say to me, because a win is a win, right, but I will tell you when people say like oh what's going on and you're this is unbelievable I was very transparent about what it is I was running on prior to the primary and the people have spoken and I don't report to anyone but the voters and if you have a problem with that I will see you in four years when we're running again and hopefully you can become the district attorney and do something different. So some of the things just I love to say to people generally is you know six little things that I hope you take and then I'll open it up for questions. The first one is I want to encourage everyone here to be grateful, right. I don't care what your religion is. I don't care what you believe in or don't believe in but in this role in three weeks that I've been the DA we've had four homicides in Boston and I realize now that I've gone to crime scenes and seen the aftermath of violence that every morning when you wake up it is a day to be grateful for. I don't care how terrible your life is right now you are alive and that's more than four people that I've seen myself can say about this. So in the very first instance and in my line of work every morning when I wake up even if it's just for five seconds I'm like thank you, right. I am alive and then I determine what my day is going to be like. So the first thing is be grateful. The second thing is be deliberate. I love to say and it sounds cocky but I'm good at everything I do because I only do three things, right. So the people that do too much if you are mediocre at everything like good luck and I used to be that person where I was like awesome I'm a horrible mom I'm failing at work I'm juggling too many things and that's the problem we need to be very deliberate about what we're doing I can talk to you personally about running for office I thought very long and hard about what I was going to do in the same way for lawyers it's like what is my closing argument look like if in the beginning you aren't thinking about how you're winning this case later on and you're just randomly getting phone calls from police officers or federal agents and not thinking about what is my theory of the case what is my closing argument going to be you are at the whim of whatever it is that happened so I am deliberate I have a plan either before I go to bed I say what I'm going to do the next day or that morning after I'm like I'm alive I'm grateful this is my list of 18 things I want to do that is a huge accomplishment I only get three things done on my list of 18 because everything else happens but then those 15 things go to the next day but there's at least a chronicling and for the young people as you get older I am constantly in a state of if I don't write things down you remember Russell Crowe at the end of a beautiful mind with all the papers everywhere I feel like I'm slowly entering that I have to make sure that I am deliberate about what I'm doing writing down what my intentions are I say this to everyone but mostly the women in the room know your worth the greatest thing that ever happened to me was I know what I am worth and not just money wise it makes things so easy you have to think about things before they happen there were two jobs that I was offered prior to running for district attorney and what I want to say to you is that you know I part of my story that some people know others don't is June 16, 2016 I was diagnosed with breast cancer I've been healthy my whole life part of my story is I was a scholarship athlete at I was a scholarship athlete at UMass Amherst received a full scholarship our teams were cut three women's teams were cut and the men's football team that hadn't won a game in two years at all had 75 full scholarships for their entirely stinky non-successful team our three women's teams that lost scholarships on my lacrosse team of the 15 women that were playing we only had three full scholarships I was one of them they cut those three this is back in like 1990 when nobody really knew what title nine was I certainly didn't but I knew what fairness and equity and justice was and we got a lawyer and we threatened a lawsuit our teams reinstated which is great but what I can tell you is I when I was diagnosed with breast cancer I knew that I was in for the fight of my life and what I chose to do was say until they tell me you are dying I'm gonna be upbeat and positive I have a 15 year old daughter right now two years ago she was 13 and I had two nieces and I made sure that I was deliberate about what I did every day I got all the treatment I needed I'm happy to say that I'm cancer free right now which is awesome but yes it's great but there is nothing like cancer to make you wake up and say you are not promised every single day and I'm gonna do everything I ever wanted to do and if somebody tells me I can't do it I'm gonna do it harder right and better so again it also opened up my eyes and I know what my worth is I was offered two jobs before I decided to run and we had discussed a number of what my salary was gonna be and when they offered it to me it was $10,000 less than the number they said and I found myself saying like getting ready to open my mouth like you know that you said and I said thank you so much um that's a hard no have a great day and hung up the phone and didn't pick up the phone I didn't think or to and was completely fine because when you know your worth you do and they came back and offered me you know 5,000 more than the 10 that they had been off but they had already shown me who they were and so when they called back and said that I said thank you so much that's a hard no and what's ironic they're Roka actually it's a wonderful program and I have a great relationship with them now but I said no I think I'll be district attorney instead we'll work together that way and here we are right so the fourth thing is focus on you and I like to say this it's like everyone lies and there are haters everywhere so I have a 15 year old daughter I always give her this shout out she is an amazing track athlete like not just a parent like oh she's really good and she beat my uncle she is number one in the country in the United States of America and the 55 meter hurdles the 100 meter hurdles and the 200 meter hurdles and she's amazing so what's great though is when she was younger I remember watching one of her track meets and she was running the 200 meter and a girl came up to her and whispered something to her before the meet started and Peyton ran but she was normally running and she looked distracted and I'm like what's going on what happened and she said that girl just told me now Peyton was like 9 at the time she told me she ran a 25 in the 200 and if anyone runs track which clearly none of you do because you're like what does that mean but a 25 is like if you were 9 and running a 25 you wouldn't be here you'd be in the Olympics in Rio like breaking world records so I was like why did you even listen to what she said and she said she was telling me the truth and so I just said like you're getting psyched out stop listening so I cannot tell you how many people said to me in every job I've had like there's never been a woman that's done this before there's never been a visible person of color that's done this before you know no there's no way Boston as segregated as it is you can win being the district attorney is out of your head and just focus on doing the work but I also say when I say focus on you it's really important in this line of work that your emotional well being is a priority and your mental health because what I can tell you is if you do not take control of what it is that you require in your life your job will suck you dry and you will be found dead under your desk and the custodian will sweep you out and there will be a new employee that's like placed there so on the tombstone I love when people say it never says like worked her fingers to the bone and everyone it's like you're going to look back on your life and wish that you had done the things that were really important to you if you don't grasp that time it's not going to be positive the last two that I will say to you is always do what's right I'm going to go back to the immigration statement I go back to my list of 15 you know if you choose to read the comments of what's happening some of them are absolutely hilarious when people write articles about you but if for me I don't care if there are conservative people saying all types of hilarious things about me because I believe that courthouses should be safe zones if it's right if you're an elected official and then the last thing I will unbath before opening it up to questions is every time people hear about like oh went to this law school and as this degree and won this award and as the first this and first last I love to tell people I fail all the time I have failed so many times in my life there are so many jobs that I was sure I was going to get that I didn't even get a call for there are failures I've had there are mistakes I've made that when I was younger that are still discloseable mistakes for those of you in the federal government when you fill out a form and they say have you ever been arrested or charged with a crime when I was 19 I was charged with larceny under 250 and during the campaign that came out and I like to tell this to young people because the way the Herald wrote it you would think I had like stolen a car was driving 300 miles an hour throwing cocaine and like hundred dollar bills out of a you know a convertible while shooting off an assault rifle what actually happened was I walked out to my mailbox and there was a summons in the mail right and they said I was arrested when even lawyers when you think of arrest you think of a handcuff situation you think of fingerprinted none of that had happened but I made a stupid mistake and I was 19 years old and I was told at the time quaff it it'll never come up again in your life and I laugh and what's interesting I got the globe endorsement and when I was interviewing with the globe editorial board somebody said why didn't you just seal your record like what is wrong with you you're dealing with all these questions right now and I said because I am 47 years old and I'm still answering for this you haven't asked me about the American association of university women fellowship I won or the fact that I'm a 40 under 40 recipient in Boston I went to Harvard business school you didn't ask any of that you asked about my arrest and I'm going to be fine because I'm going to be the district attorney but think about a young Dominican person who's 17 years old who has a felony what is happening with her or him I don't know somebody from Charlestown who's 21 who has two parents that are addicts or doesn't know where their father is or ever met him or her and has a criminal record what is their life like that's why I need to be the DA because we need Corey reform we need to make sure we're getting people jobs and sealing their records or I'm going to be hiring people with Corey's as the DA so when I go to general electric and all these other places in Boston and say oh you will hire them because if the DA can hire them Vertex can I don't even know what you do Vertex but nobody is stealing your stuff but that's my beef with Vertex which I'm going to talk about later but all jokes aside I just need you to hear failure happens where people are exceptional is how quickly you react after you fail are you somebody who wallows in failure are you somebody who thinks about it forever are you sadness in the movie inside out which if you have not seen that it's wonderful but don't be sadness what you need to do is learn from that mistake and then pick yourself up and start moving on to the next thing so those are my six things I love telling people I want to open it up to whatever questions you have no question is stupid honestly like if it's about running for office if it's about my office in particular if it's about something I said or anything else I'd love to answer whatever questions you have you will see there's some microphones if you would come to them to ask your question that would be great and more than one of you Judge Clifton you get your first yay thank you thank you thank you listening to your platform one of the things and please don't take this as a criticism I love criticism there's only a limit as to what any human being can do but just two days ago we witnessed all of us who watched TV something really ugly at least in my humble opinion the scene in Washington DC where you had the Native American and the group of young white teenagers from Covington High School in Kentucky and let me just I shouldn't let me say this we are all aware those of us who were attorneys that the First Amendment guarantees the right of freedom of speech freedom of expression we are also aware that in the line of cases that have delved into so-called fighting words that some things are constitutionally permissible and some things are not they go beyond and are considered fighting words so for me the phrase make America great again are fighting words that phrase in and of itself is innocuous but how it has been used over the last three years plus is there nothing more at least again to me than an umbrella over hate speech to all people of color so when you have a group of young folks in Washington DC exercising their First Amendment right to concerning the reproductive right that's fine but when you're all assembled with these red hats make America great again it's difficult for me not to see that as an assault it's fighting words directed at all people to whom are not find themselves in a safe zone in this United States right now so this is my question hate speech it still goes on in Boston what would be the situation had happened in Boston and if it had involved an adult who was the what I would call the provocateur what would be the position of your district attorney's office in whether or not to consider filing charges of violating of exercising hate speech good question we had something we had something happen during the campaign where somebody went on a rant there was two people on a motorcycle that were people of color I think a black couple that got lost they were on a ride in honor of somebody that had died I think in a motorcycle accident they got lost and turned off a road and went into a section of Dorchester that was apparently this individual was very upset that they were there he proceeds to start yelling racial slurs at them the police are called and are watching what's happening they do nothing about the racial slurs but the man is clearly having sort of a mental break and decides to kick a like a telephone pole or something which alerts Boston police and they arrest him for like malicious destruction of property which to any person with any pigment in their skin says right because that's the crime that's happening right now not the racial slurs that are being screamed at these two people you know and what I can tell you is that I am a firm believer and I learned this at the U.S. Attorney's Office there are times where you file charges of course we have an ethical obligation we only file charges that we believe are crimes themselves but justice does not have to be a guilty verdict sometimes justice is doing the right thing and filing a charge and starting a conversation and seeing what's going to happen now what I find hilarious is the ACLU who usually is supportive of a lot of the things that I do would defend the very individuals that made those statements and we saw what's happening in Nashville ironically I read an article I think the Native American man that was banging the drum is a veteran and he's a marine in fact as is my fabulous detail detective Cecil and so I love that tension where it's you know I love saying out loud you know the second amendment applies to us too right like people of color that same amendment we can we have a right to bear arms it's this fierce loyalism with respect to military service except for when it's not somebody that you think it is who's been serving in the military so I would say you know I'd want to look at those facts but we are going to be bold in Boston and we're not going to stand for behavior that is questionable I like to also say if I'm saying on the one hand accountability doesn't have to equal incarceration what I love now about social media and I don't usually like social media because I'm old but I love that now people are being fully exposed for who they are and although there might not be ramifications that are legal I heard the school shut down am I yeah so there's some different things that are happening with respect to people being held accountable in other ways but you know I hear what you're saying I'd have to look at exactly what our hate statute elements are but you bet I'm going to be you know one of the other things I want to be bold about is with civil asset forfeiture which if you're not a lawyer this is the ability and I used to do this so I want full disclosure at the U.S. Attorney's Office you know we would civilly seize your property which is of course a much lower standard I've had circumstances where the underlying state criminal charges were dismissed and we still civilly seized the property and it was a home that was prior to marijuana being legal in the Commonwealth that was literally busting to the gills with marijuana plants and we seized the home and they had to liquidate the asset but I will tell you that with respect to civil asset forfeiture I want my office to be going after employers I don't want to be going after some 15 year old kid in Dorchester and civilly seizing $82 in his pocket and a 382 Honda Civic from 1932 I don't want that what I want is the employers that are engaging in patterns and practice of wage theft and they are targeting immigrants and they are targeting poor people to seize their assets or looking at white collar crimes potentially with my brothers and sisters in the US attorney's office and seeing if we can do stuff like that but that's a long way to say I want to think creatively about it for sure sir thank you first thank you so much for your talk I love listening to you and your ideas so I am curious about your plans or what you started to do about changing a culture in the office that you now run you inherited an office that was fully staffed by people you didn't hire many of whom I imagine don't share many of your views and vehemently disagree with much of what your platform was about so I am very curious about how you think about using your time to try and change a culture I mean presumably you can't fire an entire company but I love to hear your plans about that excellent question so yeah I mean the program I did at Harvard Business School which was exceptional it's like an 8 month program on change leadership everywhere in our sort of dorms it said culture each strategy for breakfast and I think people don't understand how strong cultures are you know what's beautiful is there are many people in the office supported by Dan Conley the sitting DA and every former commissioner of Boston Police dating back to like 05 BC so and not Boston College like before Christ so so what's interesting is everyone in the office supported that individual too so it's you have to kind of put your ego aside and realize I wasn't coming from the middle sex DA's office or the S6 DA's office or some other DA's office where I could say I won all of like Jerry McGuire like who's coming with me to all of you guys right and I bring 40 people in and I fire 40 people and we're up and running on the first day we're much more deliberate than that and so I've thought really hard about my transition team right so one of the biggest things this is another big piece of news is I had 40 people on my transition team I had a six person steering committee we had the head of the CJA list so is a really very excellent lawyer who's a criminal defense lawyer Jessica Hedges I had Natasha Tidwell who was not only one of my closest friends but the first female lieutenant in the history of the Cambridge Police Department black woman I had the first black female justice on the SJC retired Geraldine Hines so I had law enforcement but I also had some faces that people weren't used to seeing and then I had returning citizens so I had people that served 17 years in federal time that have turned their life around that are interviewing people in the community and people lost their mind and I loved it because on Jeff Cooner he was like these people are can you believe it and I'm like right you mean the people that we prosecute every day and know about the criminal justice system more than you yes those people those very people are on our transition team so I think it's messaging but it's also showing up and doing the work like I'm really proud that my first assistant in general in Manhattan Larry Krasner's in Philadelphia I'm not going anywhere I just show up to work every day I'm usually one of the first people in and I am frequently working in the middle of the night sending people emails at three o'clock in the morning but it's going to be you know like remember the Titans right attitude reflects leadership we're going to lead and we're going to teach them exactly how it is we would like this done and we're going to have a community to get on board and then what's beautiful about having actually managed and led groups of people before is if you're not on board we're going to help you get the next job you have because you aren't going to be working here so you know I have started a massive culture change in small things like we now have a weekly senior staff meeting which people are like what and I was like right together and learn what the other people are doing in our office we are going to have quarterly all staff meetings they would only meet once a year at like the Christmas party and so you got to understand in Suffolk County we have eight or nine divisions of the Boston Municipal Court we have the Chelsea District Court and then we have Suffolk Superior Court they're all in different places so those divisions of Boston Municipal Court they show up in different places they don't come to one bullfinch where I go every day so it's siloed and people don't know what the other people are doing so we're going to have a monthly newsletter and we're going to be I show up in court sometimes and say hello to people these are things that in the 16 years that my predecessor had the job it was just a different place like the doors were locked to the seventh floor which is the executive floor so your swipe pass didn't work in the building didn't work to come in so you'd be standing outside like me at Prada where I'm like no I want that purse let me in so anyways we have unlocked the doors my five-year-old niece had a fake tummy ache this morning and then ate two donuts with Detective Cecil on the way into work but my five-year-old niece was sitting around the office this morning for an hour until my dad showed up and I'm not going to hide the fact that I have children and we aren't going to smuggle her in in a suitcase or something like people have kids we got to take care of ourselves we're going to be fine so I think the culture is changing enormously there's never been a female elected DA in the history of Suffolk County there was one woman who was excellent who was appointed by the governor what's beautiful is we're changing things just by showing up every day and so we have to just keep showing up and keep doing the work and surrounding myself with very smart people and being really true to what it is that I said even if it's not if it's not easy my name is Marlena Connolly and just on behalf of the student body I want to thank you you mentioned Larry Krasner I'm actually from Philadelphia and I'm from the poorest neighborhoods in north Philadelphia and a lot of the things that you said I really could resonate with and I want to let you know how breathtaking it is for a woman of color to sit there and kind of see a reflection of my future self you know it's kind of like I see myself 20 years from now and I want to thank you for giving me hope I want to 30 30 no I want no 10 5 5 4 years from now I want to thank you for giving me hope I want to thank you for serving as an example I worked actually at the district attorney's office in Philadelphia for 5 years prior to moving out here and I went through those times where I literally had to recuse myself as the district attorney's representative because my blood cousin was on you know the list in Philadelphia we had more murders last year than days of the week so like I said people like you I thank you for what you are doing serious like you this was a life changing experience for me excuse my attire but last minute no I usually you know just to impress but last minute I got out of something else and I said I had to be here so please excuse me for that but I like to if you could just give advice to me as a wonder like did you always know that you wanted to be district attorney what was give us a view of you in my shoes you know as a one one out in law school I love it so I was no I did not always know that I wanted to do that in fact when you hear I was the first intern in the history of the NBA players association I had a scholarship to play lacrosse in college I was sure I was going to be the first female executive director of the NBA players association for sure and and there is a female executive director now I will find her no no no she's wonderful but that's what I wanted to be and what what was interesting was I actually graduated from law school terror remember this I graduated from law school I went to work so in sports there's like labor issues and antitrust issues like those are the two big things that you have to sort of be a specialist in if you're going to obviously criminal law is another issue that sports deals with but I'm just talking about if you're in house council at the NBA players association we are governed by a collective bargaining agreement we have grievances we have a lot of people who are fighting for all this stuff and we're always fighting like the antitrust up I knew I didn't want to do the antitrust up so I went to the national labor relations board became an expert in labor law worked at Bingham McCutchen who at the time represented the craft family which by the way patriots what all right represented the craft family and the Yaki family which owned the red sox they were like we have a case for you Rachel for the red sox and I was like oh my god this is it and I open it and it was like literally a certified like a certified I think the person was at mass mental who said like I own the red sox and I was like this this is the case and so I filed an answer that said like no you don't so that was like the extent of my big like and then and then the Yaki family sold the red sox and we didn't represent the crafts anymore and I started doing other types of work and I was super disappointed but I bounced and I not bounced like left but I adapted right I moved and adapted and started doing different types of law met some wonderful people who mentored me and did the d.a. rotation and then went to the U.S. Attorney's office and then started first and then criminal and then all of these different I took advantage of every opportunity I could I grabbed mentors and not just people of color and not just women grouchy old you know people that we it appeared that we didn't have a lot in common but I worked hard and I worked for them when you if you watch my inauguration the people that were there hugging me and crying are people that you'd say like how are these two people even speaking to each other but you have to open your eyes to different opportunities and then the work is the most important thing like I'd love to say it's great I'm the first woman I'm the first that my dad says to me all the time no one cares that you're a woman no one cares what color you are are you going to do a good job and so I want you working hard I want excellent grades call me you know we can talk about it later but I want you taking advantage of opportunities but your work must be excellent thank you very much so if someone wants to build imagine if you had a factory I want to have a factory I want to make silk but if you instead of getting silk they sell you plastic it doesn't matter how good your employers are you're not going to get a silk product at the end so a lot of what you're going to be doing as a DA consumer will be a product of information that you get so my question to you is the information that you be getting from police officers are you going to build a connection a talk with police officers or are you going to build relationships how is that going to go yeah so am I the silk but no good question we we are we can't operate without each other so so I am working on building relationships with the police but what I love to say is I don't report to them they don't report to me but I don't report to them what's beautiful about Massachusetts is with homicides we are one of the only states in the united states where from the investigation all the way to the prosecution the DA has exclusive jurisdiction over the homicide so in most other places the police do the investigation the district attorney does the prosecution piece now for search warrants and other things like that they are in constant communication with us but in massachusetts for the arrest to happen they call us to say can we do this what I made a choice to do is day one I show up at homicides we are fortunate in massachusetts people love to say this but we have a black commissioner of police for boston police we have a black sheriff of suffolk county house of corrections I am a black woman so we have a black DA and everyone is like in the media nobody is black in boston in the media but they are like oh we have three black people that are all doing this and I am like you are all white are you all doing stuff together I don't even know what this question means but I think what they are realizing is that black people are just like you our commissioner is conservative leaning law enforcement who has black skin I am a progressive prosecutor who looks at my role as bigger than just putting people in jail I believe that we have an obligation to explain the process to people to level the playing field and to make sure that whether you are in West Roxbury or Roxbury you are going to get the same outcome period end of story and I hold the police accountable unlike them we investigate law enforcement at times it is my office that does that so I think it is important that although we work together there is a line that we have between us and I am also going out to the community and saying if you are not comfortable going to the police because there is mistrust often times in certain communities then I want you to come to me so I don't know whether that is silk or plastic but I can tell you I am working hard at the relationship but it is not I think there has to be some space between us in order for us to each operate now I speak to the commissioner almost daily we just had very good news earlier today where there was a missing person that was found yesterday I believe and he said we are about to do a press conference do you want to come and I said you will find with that but thank you for letting me know what we thought some of the charges might be and moving forward but we have a good relationship but I think there needs to be space if we are going to operate well and I am going to do my job because there could come a time where I am investigating something that the people that report to him do but you are right thank you so again I just want to say thank you to all of you for coming up this afternoon and a huge thank you to Rachel but don't worry I won't disappoint you so I was like I am not worried I know you are going to make me look good so and you did so thank you my dear I just want to again thank Nixon Peabody for your support of today's lecture and I also want to acknowledge and thank the Black Law Students Association and the Criminal Law Society and the Latino Law Students Association and the Multicultural Law Students Association for co-sponsoring today's event I have a gift for you I left it in my office so we will go down and get it so don't think we are cheap and not giving her a gift we got what I just forgot to bring it so thank you all again have a wonderful evening and we hope to see you again next year