The Honorable Margaret Garnett, Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, recently visited Syracuse Law to speak with students on the benefits of clerkships and as a guest speaker in Professor Lauryn Gouldin’s Criminal Reform Seminar about The Role of a Prosecutor.
Mya DeJoseph L’27, who attended the Criminal Reform Seminar, noted that “the fact that prosecutors are not able to take on every case that might come across their desk, and they have to pick and choose which cases to take. Several factors impact the cases that prosecutors will ultimately try, such as what cases law enforcement is bringing to you, what crimes law enforcement and other agencies really care about cracking down on, how a particular prosecutor’s office is organized and how its resources are allocated, and even individual prosecutors’ interests and relationships with agents to work on investigations with them.”
Bess Murad L’26 said, “A lot of the conversation was spent on her perspective on prosecutorial power and constraints. While acknowledging that prosecutors have enormous power over people’s lives and liberty, Judge Garnett emphasized that this power isn’t unchecked; prosecutors operate within a web of practical constraints, including limited resources, relationships with law enforcement agencies, judicial oversight, and organizational culture. This view challenged the common narrative of prosecutors having unlimited discretion.”
“I found Judge Garnett’s reflections about the humanity of the law profession to be powerful. I appreciated her emphasis on the humans at the heart of the law, both when speaking of her days as a prosecutor as well as her time as a judge, and the ways all of those human relationships impact the ways the law works, in good ways and in bad,” said Molly Smith L’27.