The royal mandate under which Richard Edwards was appointed required, in the Queen’s English, that “henceforth there shall be in every countie a sober, discreet and religious person appointed by the countie courts to be attorney for the Queen, to prosecute and implead in the law all criminal offenders, and to doe all other things necessary or convenient as an attorney to suppress vice and immorality.”
While the Nutmeg State pioneered in public prosecution, it took 270 years before it had its first woman prosecutor: Mary Galvin. She was not only the first woman to be appointed a prosecutor, but also was the first woman to be named a state’s attorney. In Connecticut, state’s attorneys are appointed for eight-year terms by a criminal justice commission named by the governor.
Currently state’s attorney for the Ansonia/Milford Judicial District and an NDAA state director, Mary Galvin is proud of this distinction, but she also takes pride in several other distinctions: She’s a nationally recognized authority on arson, she teaches trial practice at the Yale University Law School, fire and arson investigation at the University of New Haven and a course on search and seizure for police in her jurisdiction.
She teaches an arson course at the NDAA National Advocacy Center and, in what she describes as an enjoyable hobby, is co-coach, with a defense attorney, of the state’s top high school mock trial team.
“This (West Haven High School) is a very diverse high school,” she says, “and our team’s very diverse and I’m very proud of them. For the last three years we’ve been the state champions in mock trial competition. We give the kids both sides of a case and have them develop themes, as prosecutors do, in their opening and closing statements. It was ironic last year that I came up with the defense theme and the defense attorney co-coach came up with the prosecution theme.”
With all these activities in addition to her demanding prosecutorial responsibilities, she found time to co-chair the program committee for NDAA’s 2001 summer conference, writes book reviews for The Prosecutor magazine and manages to “spend a lot of quality time” with family and her five-year-old son.
Mary Galvin’s staff of 20 consists of eight lawyers, plus support personnel. Her jurisdiction of over 200,000 runs along the Connecticut coast between New Haven and Bridgeport and extends up the Connecticut Valley to just below the center of the state. As Galvin describes the jurisdiction, “it covers the spectrum,” ranging from heavily industrial areas to poor inner city housing projects to the farmlands.
While Galvin’s jurisdiction has experienced a generally downward trend of crimes, one category—sexual assaults—continues to dominate her docket, probably, she notes, “because reporting is up.” Since heavily traveled U.S. Route 1 runs through her jurisdiction, she says, “we see a lot of credit card fraud and bad check cases.”
Galvin has been a prosecutor all her professional life. Her interest in arson prosecution occurred by accident. While she was serving as an assistant state’s attorney in Waterbury—her first job as a prosecutor—the state’s attorney in New Haven, for whom she had been a student intern, asked her to join his office to prosecute arson cases.
“It was probably because no one wanted those cases,” Galvin says, “but I loved them. I loved the whole theory of arson cases—the fact that it requires a certain amount of scientific knowledge as well as expert testimony. Fortunately, we put together a great team and we were very successful. I think that it probably was those cases that contributed most to my success in my career and to the fact that I became a state’s attorney.”
Galvin later moved up to chief assistant state’s attorney in New Haven and in 1988 was appointed to her present position.
Galvin has not only lectured on arson around the nation, but helped develop the first arson prosecution course at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and taught the course for ATF until three years ago when she became an arson lecturer at the NDAA National Advocacy Center. She has also lectured at the National College of District Attorneys, where she received the college’s Lecturer of Merit Award in 1995 and its Distinguished Faculty Award in 1999.
Her most memorable case: A murder case in the early 1990s. A husband attempted to strangle his wife while their year-old baby was down the hall. When he was unsuccessful he called his girlfriend and together they strangled her and dumped her body in a nearby town. After a long investigation, two factors led to the husband’s arrest. An analysis of wood chips found on the victim’s back showed that they matched the wood in her house. And after the husband jilted his girlfriend, she came forward and provided police with the details of the murder. The husband received a life sentence, which in Connecticut usually means 60 years. The girlfriend got seven years to be followed by probation.
Why does Mary Galvin remain a prosecutor?
“As a prosecutor these days,” she says, “you have to be on the cutting edge of many new scientific developments. For example, when I successfully tried the first DNA rape case in Connecticut, I had to go back and re-learn Statistical Analysis 101. I thought I had left all those numbers back in college.
“I also remain a prosecutor because it’s the only job that I know of in the law and in life where the major requirement is that you do the right thing. There’s really no job like it. At the end of every day I feel good about what I’ve done.”
The American concept of public prosecution—that a crime is a wrong committed against society as well as against the victim—originated in 1705. In what was then the colony of Connecticut, the queen of England appointed Richard Edwards prosecutor for Hartford, pursuant to a legislative mandate. Previously, complainants hired private attorneys to prosecute their cases.