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Manhattan could have a brand new high prosecutor in cost on Jan. 1 when Alvin Bragg takes over for outgoing District Lawyer Cyrus Vance Jr., a fellow Democrat.
Throughout his 12 years on the helm of the highly effective workplace, Vance, 67, oversaw main instances and investigations, together with the Harvey Weinstein trial and the continued probe into the Trump Organization.
However Vance, who determined to not search reelection in 2021, was additionally stricken by controversy, with critics accusing his workplace of giving a cross to wealthy and well-known defendants.
Right here’s a glance again at among the largest hits and misses of Vance’s tenure:
Harvey Weinstein
Vance will maybe be greatest remembered for the landmark #MeToo case that noticed the highly effective producer get convicted of rape and sexual assault in February 2020. Weinstein, 69, was sentenced to 23 years in jail.
The career-defining win, nonetheless, got here solely after Vance’s workplace declined to prosecute Weinstein in 2015 for allegedly groping model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.
The DA came under fire for the decision to spare Weinstein after a New Yorker expose revealed in 2017 that the film mogul admitted to molesting the then-22-year-old mannequin in a secret recording arrange by the NYPD as a part of its probe.
Experiences that 12 months of campaign donations made to Vance by protection attorneys with hyperlinks to Weinstein raised additional questions. However Vance maintained the marketing campaign money had nothing to do along with his choice — and stated the case wouldn’t have been provable.
Weinstein’s attorneys are attempting to overturn the 2020 conviction, and an appellate courtroom is anticipated to decide on the matter in January.
Etan Patz
Vance, who had promised to deal with chilly instances in his submit, successfully prosecuted Pedro Hernandez in 2017 for probably the most infamous unsolved crimes in New York historical past — the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
In remarks to the New York Metropolis Bar Affiliation on Dec. 14, Vance regarded again on his time as DA and gave particular point out to the case of the kidnapped and killed boy.
“After I assume again on the entire 1000’s of instances we dealt with over the past twelve years, I maintain returning to Etan Patz and his household,” he stated, in accordance with a duplicate of his ready remarks.
“Due to our employees’s unmatched abilities, we have been capable of resolve one of many Metropolis’s most notorious and formative unsolved crimes … For Etan and for his household, our prosecutors by no means gave up.”
Hernandez was convicted by a jury at his second trial — his first in 2015 resulted in a hung jury.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
In 2011, simply two years after he was elected to his first time period, Vance caught warmth for dropping costs in opposition to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the then-head of the Worldwide Financial Fund accused of raping a maid on the Sofitel New York resort in Midtown.
The French financier admitted to the encounter however maintained the intercourse was consensual. Three months after his arrest, a judge tossed the charges in opposition to Strauss-Kahn based mostly on a suggestion from the DA’s Workplace, which raised issues in regards to the credibility of accuser Nafissatou Diallo.
Whereas Vance was initially slammed within the media over the case’s collapse, his choice was backed by a number of distinguished New Yorkers, together with then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor, former Manhattan District Lawyer Robert Morgenthau.
Jeffrey Epstein
Vance’s workplace obtained wrapped up within the Epstein saga years earlier than the highly effective pedophile’s 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking costs and subsequent suicide behind bars.
In 2011, a prosecutor in Vance’s sex-crimes unit forcefully argued in courtroom that Epstein — who had been convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute in Florida — ought to have his intercourse offender standing in New York decreased to the bottom degree.
The shocking request only came to light in 2018. The DA’s workplace stated Vance “was not conscious” of the listening to till years later and had nothing to do with it.
Robert Hadden
In 2016, Vance’s workplace struck a widely-panned plea agreement that allowed Hadden, a distinguished gynecologist, to keep away from jail after being accused of sexually abusing six sufferers.
The doubtful deal outraged dozens of victims who got here ahead — together with former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s wife, Evelyn Yang, who has stated she was sexually assaulted by the previous New York-Presbyterian Hospital physician in 2012 when she was pregnant along with her first little one.
Hadden is now facing federal charges.
Intercourse Crimes Bureau
Vance faced public outcry and requires his resignation as recently as last year over his workplace’s prosecutorial selections in high-profile intercourse crimes instances.
A few of these calls got here from a dozen metropolis councilwomen who slammed Manhattan’s high prosecutor for failing “to guard and combat for survivors in opposition to wealthy, white, and highly effective males who dedicated numerous sexual assaults.” They particularly singled out his dealing with of the Epstein and Weinstein instances.
In a latest interview with The Associated Press, Vance maintained that his workplace has prosecuted many individuals of “energy and authority” — and brought on 1000’s of intercourse crimes instances.
He stated his legal professionals at all times “attempt to get the best outcome,” whereas noting that he employed an out of doors advisor to take a look at how the intercourse crimes bureau operates.
As DA, Vance took intention at sex-trafficking, and ended the prosecution of prostitution and unlicensed massages. He additionally dedicated $38 million to assist eradicate backlogs of rape kits nationwide — an initiative that earned him reward from “Legislation & Order: SVU” star Mariska Hargitay.
Malcolm X
The Conviction Integrity Program, created by Vance in 2010, re-examined instances involving wrongful convictions, together with the Malcolm X assassination.
Final month, Vance went to courtroom to clear the names of Muhammad Aziz, 83, and the late Khalil Islam after a evaluate discovered they’d wrongfully spent many years in jail for the 1965 slaying of the civil rights chief.
Trump v. Vance
In August 2019, Vance subpoenaed a number of years’ value of Donald Trump’s private and enterprise tax returns, establishing a authorized battle with the previous president that went all the best way as much as the Supreme Court docket.
The DA’s workplace ultimately received the information by means of the excessive courtroom ruling and obtained the supplies this 12 months.
Vance charged the Trump Organization and its longtime chief monetary officer Allen Weisselberg with tax fraud final June, in an investigation the ex-commander-in-chief has blasted as a “witch hunt.”
One other grand jury was convened by Vance, however no different costs have but been introduced. His successor, Bragg, will inherit the probe.
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