Hi, I just passed the halfway mark of my internship with the Queens District Attorney's office, Domestic Violence Bureau. We prosecute domestic violence complaints, and the work is interesting in that our lawyers cannot be said to have clients, because in over half of the cases the complainants would rather that we not prosecute. In those cases, the works feels very mechanical. We simply must call in the police officer, fill out a form with the standard legal language ("when responding officer arrived at the scene s/he found the complainant hysterical/fearful/greatly alarmed with injuries of such and such nature") and use the police officer's testimony to extract from defense counsels plea bargains of Orders of Protection or Anger Management Programs (most of the time) and without photographic evidence or convincing police testimony most of such cases, I imagine, are dismissed for insufficiency. I was surprised at the sometimes antagonistic tone perfectly sweet ADAs took towards complainants who wished the charges to be dismissed. I feel quite a few, after a couple years of such work, are simply tired of being lied to by those they feel they are helping.

I’m learning that the marks of domestic violence are never as dramatic as one might expect – punches sometimes leave no mark, and dark skinned people have less noticeable bruising. The first two violent crimes I encountered were committed by women against men. One, a 19 year old Chinese female smacked her boyfriend with a phone after he catch her taking money out of his wallet, and we have three pictures of his bleeding face. The other, an Asian (Southeast or Indian) woman stabbed her husband with a knife in the arm, the second time she’s done this in their marriage. Strange how people can remain married after something like that; strange how a man will put up with something like that.

The first time I got to second seat my ADA (basically take notes, consult during breaks) was her bench trial regarding a Romanian man who allegedly violated an order of protection filed against him by his ex-wife, a middle aged, educated Romanian woman who has been here for 5 years on a tourist visa. She took care of him during his throat cancer, in exchange (I infer and the defense attorney insinuated) for him filing residency papers in her behalf. The defense attorney sought to raise reasonable doubt by bringing in the possibility that she fabricated the incident in order to benefit from the Violence Against Women Act. The judge found the doubts raised quite reasonable, which I found to be a horrible decision. Because how a law intended to protect battered immigrant women can now be used to against them to malign their credibility.

Most of the cases are very straight forward - the complainant, even if doubtful, signs a Supporting Deposition certifying that the responding police officer's version of events as stated in the complaint is true, and a relatively light offer is made and accepted. The cases with complainants who want their respective defendants out of their lives (or the ones who refuse to take our phone calls) are usually offered full orders of protection are given, with some sort of anger management or batterers' or stalkers' or alcoholics' program. The rising third years have their own cases and can present their own cases in court. One of my daily tasks is calling complainants to ask what they would like us to ask of defense counsel - whether they want full orders (no contact whatsoever) or limited (can even live together but no harassing, menacing, threatening, hitting, etc), whether they think some sort of counseling program would help, whether they need to come to the office so that we can send them to Safe Horizons next door.

Now that I feel fully comfortable in the office and have done and can do basically everything that I can possibly do for the office, the best word for the work is simply “cushy.” The office is the most congenial I have ever worked in, and the Assistant District Attorneys have a good deal of freedom in setting their own schedules and in handling their cases. The work is as far from stressful as can be. I actually miss being in school, taking classes and reading about difficult cases. Most of the cases are surprisingly straightforward. The police officer usually responded quickly enough to witness an injured complainant, there are usually pictures, and even without pictures or a complainant or a police officer the district attorney's office can access the actual 911 call. Even when I have to write a response to a defense motion, I can either find old motions to model mine after or browse through the ADA binders to find the relevant cases. Defenses tend not to be that creative, and I'm sure I've read the same arguments against admissibility of evidence and insufficiency of fact copy and pasted with different defendants.

The most exciting case so far was the trial of the rather slick, egomaniacal man who stabbed his girlfriend 13 times and burned her with a crack pipe (yet she survived and was able to testify) and while in prison impregnated a prison guard. We had to listen to his prison conversations with his two other girlfriends for incriminating admissions. Quite entertaining in the way gross, overly sexualized and dumb movies are entertaining. The best part was when the defendant fake sobbed for ten whole very loud minutes about how much he loved the victim, how he’s found God and how Jesus must forgive him, while being cross-examined.

-- CeciliaWang - 08 Jul 2010