Queens DA Katz talks the job, the office and the criminal justice system
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Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who is entering her fourth year in office. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s biggest surprise since becoming the top prosecutor in the borough came during her first three months in office in 2020.
“The world shut down,” Katz said. “There was no roadmap, there were no rules of engagement.”
For the first time since Hurricane Sandy a decade ago, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced the courts to close their doors. Barely three months into her tenure as district attorney, Katz employed a philosophy that may speak to the way she’s attempted to approach her time in office in the years that have followed.
“A steady hand during turbulent times,” she said.
The Eagle recently sat down with Katz in her office inside the Queens Criminal Courthouse to discuss her thoughts on the job, her attempts to balance restorative and punitive justice, the state’s bail laws and how the Queens DA’s office has changed over the past several years.
Katz was first elected to office in 2019, beating out now-City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán by fewer than 100 votes in the crowded Democratic primary. Though Katz was not the most conservative candidate in the race, Cabán, who was supported by the Democratic Socialists of America, was easily the most progressive candidate. In the time since, Katz has often been seen by progressives as too conservative a prosecutor and by conservatives as too progressive.
The St. John’s University School of Law grad, who had previously served as an assemblymember, councilmember and borough president, took over the DA’s office from the late Richard Brown, who sat in the office for nearly three decades. Brown was celebrated by some for his tough on crime approach to the office, but was also heavily criticized for ignoring – and sometimes rewarding – prosecutors who bent or broke the rules.
Though Katz did not discuss Brown’s tenure, she did say the office has changed in a number of ways under her leadership.
Of the two dozen bureaus and units operating in the Queens district attorney's office, half have been created under Katz. For the most part, the new units are aimed at strengthening the office’s work in restorative justice approaches and community engagement.
Of the five divisions within the office, the Community Partnerships Division has seen the largest expansion. When Katz began, the division’s only unit was the Office of Immigrant Affairs. It’s since grown to include the Civic Awareness Unit, the Community Engagement Unit, Youth Empowerment Unit and Community Advisory Councils.
She’s also created the Rehabilitation Programs and Restorative Services Bureau, and bureaus to deal with fraud, human trafficking and housing and worker protection cases.
“I think that this office has managed to hit a great balance of fairness and equity in the court system, while still assuring people that folks are accountable for their actions,” Katz said. “Accountability could mean prosecuting drivers of crime, which I believe is necessary, but it could also mean diversion to mental health services [or other diversion programs].”
“We’ve had a lot of great changes that I know will outlast me, and that's a good thing,” she added.
Katz was also behind the creation of the Queens district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which is designed to reassess cases where defendants claim they were improperly or unjustly convicted.
The unit has vacated 72 sentences since first launching – a vast majority of those were cases where convictions were made solely on the testimony of police officers later convicted of perjury or falsifying documents.
Though the CIU and the DA’s office has, in some of the CIU’s cases, exposed wrongdoing by past prosecutors, it has also been criticized for not casting blame on assistant district attorneys in cases where some say prosecutors behaved improperly.
“I don't know if there's a reluctance [to blame prosecutors],” Katz said. “Most of our cases were vacated on new evidence, which shows at the time, [prosecutors] were doing their job.”
The CIU currently has over 130 requests for conviction reviews on its desk and a team of three prosecutors, three paralegals and four investigators to go through them. Katz said, like all units, she has hopes to expand the team.
The district attorney also said that she was proud of the work the office has done that haven’t involved prosecutions.
“Things that we do that don't end up in prosecutions but help people is really a valid part and a strong part of this office,” she said. “We had a case where a father gave his life savings to buy his daughter a house, put a down payment on who he believed was the lawyer, turns out that it was a scam.”
“We got the majority of the money back without even finding the defendant,” she added. “We're still looking for him. We didn't find him, but we got the money back.”
In addition to COVID, Katz took office just as a series of bail reform laws went into effect, and which saw several changes in the years she’s been in office.
While Katz hasn’t been quiet about her opinions of the reforms, she also has not been as vocal as other district attorneys have been on the issue.
The DA has advocated for state lawmakers to grant judges the ability to set bail based on the perceived dangerousness of a defendant – a standard that is used in every state except New York.
“There should be some form of community safety that can be taken into account when doing securing orders or doing pre-trial holds on people,” Katz said. “I also think we should be able to send pre-trial people to mental health services without being ordered, to drug rehabilitation, to Cure Violence programs, to violence interrupter programs, to workforce development. Right now, we don't really have those tools.”
The district attorney added that she supports the original intent of the bail laws – to eliminate a defendant’s financial situation from their chances of being incarcerated pre-trial. But she maintains that she feels the reforms “went a little too far.”
“I think little by little, [lawmakers are] adding these small changes,” she said.
New data released last month from the Department of Criminal Justice Services shows that in 2021 fewer people were detained on lower level cases because they could not afford bail and that number of people rearrested after being released on their own recognizance dropped by two percent when compared to the year before the laws went into effect. Additionally, the failure to appear rate – in New York, bail’s only legal intention is to ensure a defendant returns to court – decreased by three percent when compared to 2019’s rate.
Katz, who was speaking to the Eagle in her capacity as the DA last week, declined to comment on her plans to run for reelection in 2023.
Her campaign spokesperson, Max Kramer, confirmed that Katz would run for reelection in 2023.
“DA Katz is focused on protecting the residents of Queens,” Kramer said. “She’s led an office that’s centered on fairness, safety, and accountability and she’s been a steady hand in turbulent times.”
Last week, former Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge George Grasso formed a website and announced his intention to explore a run for Queens district attorney. The former Queens beat cop is the first to suggest a possible challenge to Katz.
He’ll likely face an uphill battle, particularly financially.
Katz has brought in over $1.1 million to her campaign account since taking office at the start of 2020, according to records from the state Board of Elections.
Correction: An earlier version of this story suggested that it was unclear whether or not Melinda Katz was running for reelection. That is incorrect. She is running for reelection.
