Suddenly, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York embraced the person who was giving out tips on how to beat him with a friendly hug.

“I always thought that at some point in my career I would return to Brooklyn, which is the center of the universe in my mind,” Peace said.

Peace, who grew up in Crown Heights, was a graduate of Clara Barton High School and eventually the NYU School of Law. His legal career started as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr.

He began working at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in 1996 as an associate doing defense work after a stint as an Assistant U.S. Attorney For the Eastern District from 1999 through 2002. Peace went back to Cleary Gottlieb and eventually became the first Black person to be named partner there in 2007.

On August 10, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Peace to take over as the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of New York, which serves Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 5, 2021 and sworn in by Chief Judge Margo Brodie on October 15, 2021.

The last U.S. Attorney was appointed by Donald Trump, focused on gang violence in Long Island, talked often about M.S. 13, and glorified harsh sentences in headlines. This U.S. Attorney, however, brought up the time he represented a wrongfully convicted person who had spent over 25 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.

“We commit to doing it in the right way — our focus is on doing things fairly, ethically, and focused on doing things that are not biased in any way be that racial or political, or in fear or favor of anyone, and doing it with compassion and empathy,” U.S. Attorney Peace said.

“I know from experience how important and consequential what we do is,” Peace continued. “I know having defended people, and particularly I have defended a person wrongfully convicted and I worked to get them exonerated after they spent more than 25 years in prison for a crime they didn’t do. It teaches you that when a mistake is made the grave consequences that come along with it impact that individual’s life and also the lives of their friends and the family in the community. Being fair and making sure that you do the right thing is incredibly important.”

Peace has certainly not turned his back on gang violence and terrorism cases, both international and domestic. That’s a large part of the job, after all, but his goal, he explained, is to prosecute all crimes in a holistic manner. He is quite passionate about his civil teams in that respect.

“A lot of people think of us as a criminal prosecution office, which we do a lot of, but we also have a strong civil division and we are trying to use those tools to bring actions to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities including the people neglected, overlooked and abused,” Peace said. “We have a civil rights team and an environmental justice team in our civil division, which I’m proud of because it’s the first of it in any U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country. This past march we also created a Consumer Protection team.”

The event was hosted by the Brooklyn Bar Association, and its Federal Courts Committee, and was co-sponsored by the Kings County Criminal Bar Association. Michael Farkas, past president of the KCCBA served as the moderator during the one-hour long question and answer session.

Two of the biggest questions Farkas had for Peace were about discovery and alternative sentencing. Peace’s responses on discovery at one point drew a harsh response from Farkas, but Peace assured him that his office instructs prosecutors to use their discretion and to try to have as fair trials as possible. Farkas was much more happy to hear Peace’s response on alternative sentencing.

Peace explained that when possible, his office does try to use its discretion in charging, as well as using pretrial diversion and post-trial programs. Two programs that Peace said he was fond of were the Pretrial Opportunity Program (POP) and the Special Options Services (SOS) program.

“The Pretrial Opportunity Program is focused on people who have addictions for drugs or alcohol and the Special Options Services program focuses on youthful people between the ages of 18 and 24,” Peace said. “Those programs are designed to help certain individuals and give them the opportunity to complete their programs and at the end there is a determination as to whether there is a different disposition. We have dismissed cases of people who have completed those programs successfully, we have reduced charges, we have also just recommended non-jail sentences.”

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