Key Bragg selection moving on
Smith heads to Queens
One of Alvin Bragg’s handpicked top deputies is calling it quits and fleeing the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and its soft-on-crime policies.
Joyce Smith, the former acting Nassau County DA whom Bragg recruited as part of his executive team after he took office at the beginning of the year, will be gone by the end of the month.
Smith was initially named trial division chief and had been heading a revamped special victims division since June.
She submitted her resignation in early November, according to a source. She is going to work for Queens DA Melinda Katz, where she began her career as an assistant district attorney.
“Joyce was a real prosecutor who wanted to uphold the responsibilities of a DA, and apparently that doesn’t work here anymore,” a fed-up insider said.
Other departures
Some other long-time prosecutors also have left.
Michele Bayer, the deputy chief of the trial division and 19-year veteran, has departed for the state Inspector General’s office.
Shannon Goldberg, chief of litigation support who had been with the office since 2009, took a job with the US Department of Justice, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Other defectors include two chiefs of special litigation, Patricia Bailey and Maureen O’Connor. Both left in May, Bragg’s office confirmed. They were among some 65 ADAs who left in the first half of this year, an exodus partially blamed on onerous state criminal justice reforms.
The office’s human resources director also quit in October.
“It certainly will create a lot of brain drain in the place. These are not small-time players in the office,” said defense attorney Mark Bederow, a former prosecutor in the office.
At least nine lawyers quit in the first two weeks after Bragg took office in January, The Post has reported.
Bragg issued a “Day One” memo outlining his progressive policies, including downgrading some felonies to misdemeanors and not seeking prison sentences for many offenses.
Smith did not return a request for comment.
“The Manhattan DA’s office continues to attract the best and the brightest. Under DA Bragg we have a higher number of prosecutors than the office did this time last year,” said spokeswoman Danielle Filson.