I. Becoming a Prosecutor

The fact is, good prosecutors are made, not born.

I know for certain when I first thought about becoming a lawyer. I'm less certain about when I began thinking about being a prosecutor. In hindsight, I believe my choice to become a prosecutor was the logical culmination of various influences in my life before I graduated from law school. I have a good friend who claims he became a prosecutor because it was the only job he could find when he passed the bar. He then fell in love with the job and made it a career. Another friend says he consciously chose prosecution because he saw it as a political stepping-stone. A female district attorney I worked closely with told me it was the role in the justice system she felt philosophically most comfortable with. I think that was largely my motivation as well. My story is unique, but I don't think it's unusual. I suspect I'm typical of many lawyers who choose to spend all or part of their career in public prosecution. The fact is, good prosecutors are made, not born.

While my life had a bumpy beginning, I had a warm and loving childhood. I was born to an unmarried woman from Ohio who, when she became pregnant, was sent by her family to Denver to have her baby. That was quite common in 1951. I was adopted when I was one month old by a couple in Colorado Springs. I attended a Catholic grade school for eight years. I was a boy scout and an altar boy who memorized his Baltimore Catechism and went to confession once a month. All my sins were venial, if not trivial.

When I was in the sixth grade, my teacher, Miss Holmberg, selected me to be one of three students in the class to debate a team from the seventh grade. On the appointed day, students from the entire school packed into a small gym to witness the oratorical competition. Several parents attended. The school principal and parish pastor were both in attendance. While I can't recall the precise topic of the debate, it had something to do with the relative merits of public versus private education. Given the audience, my team had the enviable task of arguing the superiority of religious schools. As part of my preparation for the debate, I read several articles, including one in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report, to which my father subscribed. The article discussed the fact that inner-city Catholic schools had higher standardized test scores than urban public schools, despite having considerably larger average class sizes. I didn't cite the article in my principal argument because it didn't address the specific issues that I was to cover in my limited time. However, the opposition made a big deal about large class sizes in religious schools, arguing they adversely impacted the quality of education. So I began my rebuttal argument by pulling out the magazine and quoting relevant research findings that undermined the heart of the opponent's argument. The seventh grade team was rendered somewhat speechless and visibly demoralized. I managed to stay calm and conceal my glee. But beneath the calm exterior, I had a sense of how Perry Mason must have felt when his surprise witness devastated his opposing counsel's case.

After the sixth-grade team was awarded a decisive victory by the judges, the school principal, Sister John Catherine, approached me. She was obviously pleased with my performance. "You did a great job, John," she said. "You really ought to be a lawyer." I didn't know how to respond. No one in my extended family was a lawyer. In fact, I didn't personally know anyone who was a lawyer. That night I asked my parents to clarify exactly what lawyers do.

But I never forgot Sister John Catherine's suggestion. In fact, it was the only career advice I received in my entire life. From that point forward, I paid careful attention to what lawyers did. And I took every opportunity to improve my writing and oratory skills because I understood those were important for lawyers to have.

I also attended a Catholic high school. Despite the fact that my father died very suddenly when I was a freshman, an event that was the most traumatic in my life, I continued to obey all the rules. I was a good athlete and a very good student. I was elected student body president my senior year. But in terms of my eventual career choice, it was one of my teachers, Sister Georgetta, who had the greatest influence on me. I have frequently credited her for inspiring my interest in public service.

Sister Georgetta taught Latin. The best students were required to take two years of Latin and two years of modern language. Sister Georgetta was about eighty years old. She was less than five feet tall. She took her vow of humility so seriously that she never allowed herself to be photographed. But she had total and complete command of the classroom. Her desk in the front of the class was on a foot-high platform so she could see all the students. She had a deck of index cards with the names of all the students in the class, one name on each card. Boys were listed by their last names, girls by their first. She used the Socratic method, constantly asking questions of her students. She would pick a card and call on the student listed. If the student didn't answer correctly within a few seconds, she would draw another index card. Because she would constantly shuffle the deck of index cards, no student could relax, even if they had just been called on. The resulting tension created a classroom dynamic in which even the most mischievous students tended to be attentive and compliant.

As a Latin scholar, Sister Georgetta spent several summers at the Vatican interpreting ancient documents. She was also an expert in Roman history and would intersperse stories about the Roman Empire with her Latin instruction. One day early in my sophomore year, she told a story about how Rome celebrated the return of its conquering armies from foreign campaigns. She described how the citizens of Rome would line the Appian Way and express their adulation...