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A message from District Attorney
Daniel F. Conley
to the citizens of Suffolk County
As the district attorney for Suffolk County, let me begin by saying that the ability to serve the residents of Boston, Revere, Chelsea and Winthrop is the greatest honor of my professional life. I accept this charge with humility and enthusiasm, fully aware of the great responsibility inherent in being the county's top law enforcement official - a responsibility to protect the safety and improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
I strive to be accessible to each and every resident of Suffolk County, and in that spirit of openness I'd like to tell you a bit about myself. I live in the Hyde Park section of Boston, am married to the former Tricia McGillicuddy, and have two children, Jim and Christine.
I believe my educational,
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District Attorney Conley's
Biography |
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professional, and public service background have ideally prepared me to serve you as District Attorney.
I graduated from Stonehill College in 1980 and Suffolk University Law School in 1983. After passing the bar, I joined the office of the Suffolk County District Attorney.
Like all young prosecutors, I began my career as an Assistant District Attorney by prosecuting a high volume of district court-level offenses. I was assigned to the Boston Municipal Court, one of the city's busiest. I soon began prosecuting juvenile cases as well in Boston Juvenile Court, and had the opportunity to handle more serious cases, some of which I took to jury trial. There, I saw first-hand the havoc that young violent offenders could wreak on a neighborhood.
In 1987, I was promoted to a Superior Court team, where I began handling major felony cases. Among the criminals I successfully prosecuted were murderers, drug traffickers, rapists and members of violent street gangs who thought nothing of opening fire at their rivals on crowded residential streets. As gang violence increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was one of a handful of state prosecutors named to the first anti-gang violence task force, and in 1992 former District Attorney Ralph Martin promoted me to the Homicide Unit.
Again, I saw first-hand how violence can steal sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, parents and spouses from their loved ones in the blink of an eye, and I saw how violence can paralyze entire neighborhoods with fear. I remember responding to homicides where witnesses wanted to stay hidden behind locked doors, for fear they would be the next victims. I resolved, in those formative days, to spend my professional life freeing those neighborhoods from fear's grip, and bringing to justice those who take a life or hurt others in any way. My calling was clear to me - to pursue and prosecute lawbreakers vigorously and tirelessly, and to provide comfort and compassion to their victims.
In 1993, I thought I could make a contribution to the war on crime from a policymaker's position, so I left the District Attorney's Office to run for the District Five seat on the Boston City Council. I held that seat until I became district attorney. During my City Council tenure, I spent several years as the chairman of the Committee on Public Safety, and among my proudest moments was the passage of a new ordinance restricting the carrying of knives in Boston.
When people ask me why I wanted to be District Attorney, I think first and foremost of the victims, all the people whom I saw hurt by crime during my days as a prosecutor. Now, as  leader of the largest District Attorney's Office in New England, I am in the best possible position to help those victims, to hold the criminals who hurt them accountable, and to help prevent crime from occurring again in their neighborhoods.
The tone of my office is one of accessibility to all residents of Suffolk County. I want to hear the concerns of every neighborhood in our four communities. Toward that end, I regularly meet with neighborhood groups, ministers, and other agencies and elected officials throughout the county. I am letting all of them know that I - and the office I lead - am there to help them.
We have taken important strides in terms of crime prevention, public safety policy, and swift investigation and prosecution of violent offenders.
We have expanded our Safe Neighborhoods Initiatives (SNI) program, a community-based prosecution and crime prevention effort. We established our fifth SNI in Dorchester's Upham's Corner-Dudley neighborhood (others operate in Fields Corner, Grove Hall, East Boston and Chelsea), and we made the SNI its own dedicated unit, added more prosecutors, and promoted a veteran lawyer to team leader. These community-based prosecution and development programs, which have been successful throughout the county, bring together prosecutors, police, city officials, local businesses, and community and religious leaders in an effort to identify and solve public safety problems. The theory behind this is simple - the people who live and work in a given community know best who the troublemakers are and what problems they are causing, and when we communicate with them we are in a better position to target those troublemakers and solve those problems. I am considering further geographic expansion of the SNI, looking at other neighborhoods where I think the program could make a difference for the better.
I believe my office has a responsibility to help drug users break free from the grip of addiction, and to keep children off the path that can lead to lives of crime, gangs and drugs. That's why I agreed to renewed funding for four drug courts in Suffolk County - in South Boston, Roxbury, Chelsea and Brighton - where nonviolent drug users (not drug dealers or anyone with a violent history) plead guilty but, rather than face jail time, are enrolled into intensive counseling and detoxification programs in lieu of the traditional trial process. If they fail to meet the comprehensive conditions of their treatment, they are subject to imprisonment.
The same theory - that we need to help those who are trapped in patterns of risky behavior - is behind our support for a new Juvenile Diversion Program in Revere. In this program, we are diverting young first-time low-level offenders into a multi-phase educational and counseling program to help them understand the dangers of substance abuse and the consequences of risky behavior.
We also do much work in  our schools. Representatives from my office serve on Community-Based Juvenile Justice (CBJJ) roundtables, where we meet with school administrators, police, and representatives from social service agencies to identify and help children in need of services or intervention in any way.
In terms of policy, I'm particularly proud of two recent efforts. We drafted legislation that seeks to eliminate the statute of limitations for crimes of rape. Currently, we can only seek justice for a rape victim within 15 years of the crime. But as we have seen repeatedly, the very nature of the crime of rape sometimes makes it very difficult for the victim to come forward. There is no arbitrary time period by which sexual assault victims can be deemed emotionally ready to participate in a prosecution. This is especially true if the crime occurred when the victim was a child. Because different victims need different lengths of time to reach the point where they can tell a jury what happened to them, I believe we need to eliminate the 15-year statute of limitations to allow every rape victim - no matter how long ago he or she was assaulted - to seek justice in a court of a law.
We also have formulated a multi-faceted plan to protect victims and witnesses from intimidation. In partnership with the Boston police and local religious leaders, we hope to establish a stronger support network for victims and witnesses. We are creating teams, comprised of prosecutors, police and ministers, to visit witnesses and victims regularly to make sure they are not being threatened. We are going to train neighborhood groups about how they can help victims and witnesses, and we are encouraging members of the community to come into court in a show of support on the days that witnesses and victims testify. We are also drafting legislation to make it illegal for grand jury transcripts - which identify witnesses - to be disseminated to unauthorized parties, and to make it easier for the state to prove perjury against associates of a defendant who lie to protect their friend.
I have frequently spoken against efforts to weaken our criminal laws. I publicly opposed legislative language that would have diluted our strong gun control laws, and during state budget negotiations, I uncovered language that would have given judges discretion to determine whether such crimes as simple drug possession, arson, and prostitution should be treated as criminal or civil infractions. I spoke out strongly against the budget rider, believing that that discretion should rest with prosecutors, who are in constantly in touch with victims and impacted neighborhoods, and the language was not passed.
Firmly supportive of the need to swiftly prosecute the most violent offenders, my office has instituted a rapid indictment program for gun offenses. We are now presenting evidence in gun cases to a grand jury within days, rather than weeks. This is important because we more quickly get witnesses before the grand jury and indict gun users in Superior Court, sending a message that anyone who illegally uses a gun will be aggressively prosecuted. As an example of the fruits of our efforts, consider that in the six months following the institution of our rapid gun indictment policy, we indicted more than twice as many gun defendants as in the six months prior to adoption of the new policy.
I've also allotted more resources to our unit that is dedicated to investigating and prosecuting people who commit crimes against the elderly. We've added a prosecutor and victim advocate, and we've stepped up our outreach and crime prevention education efforts to our elderly residents.
That's a sampling of what we've accomplished recently. We are working every day on new ideas to make Suffolk County a safer place to live, work and raise our families.
In closing, I'd like to make clear that I view this office's mission as not just one of prosecution, but also one of crime prevention and intervention to effect positive change. The district attorney's job is a big one, but I am committed to using every ounce of my energy, passion, and compassion to fulfill this mission of making our communities safer places to live. I hope you take some time to peruse this web site to learn about what we do and how we do it. Please do not hesitate to contact my office with any concerns you have, and please join me in the important work that lies ahead.
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