No. 2 Prosecutor Heads for Private Practice

[seemslikeadream]

By ROBIN FINN

Published: January 18, 2005


TRY playing and replaying the role of assistant district attorney for 32 years, not on some long-lived soap opera but for real, in New York City in an office where the boss, Robert M. Morgenthau, is a legend for his longevity and perspicacity. And where you've been around four years longer than him. And where the workload is incessant. For a fellow with prosecutorial instincts - John W. Moscow would have wound up in investigative journalism had a college mentor not nudged him toward Harvard Law School - this is the least boring job on earth.

But after three decades of public service doing "God's work," as Mr. Moscow calls it when he's been goaded into waxing sentimental about it, he has reluctantly abandoned Mr. Morgenthau and entered private practice for practical reasons. With a son at Yale, and another son about to enter college, his $149,000 salary doesn't stretch far enough.

...

"There was the same judge for both cases," he says of Judge Michael J. Obus, who presided over both Tyco trials "and where he gets his rulings, I don't know. But complaining about a ruling is like complaining about the weather. Anyway, if you work in the D.A.'s office, you have to get used to winning some and losing some. Sure, there are people who can win every case, but that only happens when you don't bring difficult cases to court, or if you sell them out cheap."

MR. MORGENTHAU, the Manhattan district attorney, when contacted later by telephone, blames "a screwball juror" for the mistrial and blames the luck of the draw - he says his offices loses 22 percent of the cases it prosecutes - for the acquittal of Mr. Belnick. He understands, but isn't happy about, Mr. Moscow's departure. Not many lawyers stick around playing public servant for 30 years.

...

Mr. Moscow, whose father was a political reporter for The New York Times before joining city government during the Wagner administration, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1972 and joined the complaints bureau of the Manhattan district attorney's office figuring to stay a couple of years. His first important case was a racially motivated homicide in Washington Square Park in 1976. In the 1980's he specialized in tax and securities fraud and later in international money laundering. He worked on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, conducting an investigation that led to B.C.C.I.'s closing, 16 convictions and the recovery of $1.65 billion.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/nyregion/18profile.html