A D.A with a serious mission

 “Interestingly, my mother was an only child, and my father had two brothers and a sister, but his sister and brother had 10 children each. The other brother only had six! There were 36 first cousins in all. We were a very big family.”

 In a career that had her working for years as a prosecutor in Brooklyn in one appalling murder case after another, it’s heartening to see that the experience hasn’t diminished Rice’s sense of fun.

 “I was in Kings County’s District Attorney Joe Hynes’ office for eight years and then I was promoted to the Homicide Bureau, so all I did was prosecute murder cases,” says Rice. “It was some of the most exhausting but gratifying work I’ve done.

 “The first murder case I tried involved a female defendant who brutally executed a young man, named Shaun Phillips. He was 20 or 21 when he died and his family was devastated by it. When the jury came back and they said guilty I remember thinking, this is such a great day. Until I turned around and I saw the grieving family.”

 Phillips’ relatives were crying in the front row of the court. It was a profound moment for Rice because she realized that, although it’s important that people accused of violent crimes be punished, especially for crimes like murder, nothing she could do could ever make the affected family whole again.  

 Growing up, Rice’s parents always stressed the importance of finding a passion and pursuing it. Hopefully, they taught her, it would be something that would give back to the community, too.

 “From the time I went to law school, knew I wanted to be a prosecutor. I wanted to be a voice for those who didn’t have a voice,” Rice says.

 “When I began prosecuting murder cases it was bittersweet. It’s important work and you have to convict these people, but at the end of the day there’s a family whose lives have been ruined too.”

 When the opportunity to become a federal prosecutor came Rice jumped at the chance because it was a complete 180-degree shift from what she’d been doing until that moment.

 “I began to prosecute white collar crime, which was a great experience,” she says.

 Her successes as a prosecutor made her more confident of her abilities, so much so that she eventually felt emboldened to do what her advisors said was crazy — take on a 30 year incumbent Nassau district attorney who had no intention of vacating the post.

 Says Rice, “I had other plans. I was very confident that the county was ready for a change. I don’t know if (Denis Dillon) had ever had a real viable opponent before. But I had local and federal prosecuting experience and my roots were deep in the community.”

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