There may be murderers, rapists or kidnappers walking the streets of New York City, but their numbers have dwindled, thanks to Jared Rosenblatt, a former assistant district attorney in Queens.
In June, Rosenblatt concluded his 12-year tenure with the Queens DA’s Office to join the law school faculty and become associate director of the Trial Advocacy Program.
The veteran prosecutor rose in the ranks from handling narcotics charges to rape and kidnapping cases in the Special Victims Unit and, ultimately, homicide in the Major Crimes Division.
The 50-some cases he took to trial included the 2008 gang rape of a 16-year-old victim lured to the crime scene by a teen-aged acquaintance she’d met online. There was the 2009 robbery and rape of a college student dragged into an alley after her first day working at a restaurant. Then there was the trial of a drug addict who murdered his elderly father a year after killing his elderly mother in 2011
Those trials led to convictions and sentences of 40 years, 42 years and 50-years-to-life, respectively.
The work was “exceptionally rewarding and exceptionally difficult,” Rosenblatt said. “I had some really great experiences and did everything I wanted to do.”
Most of that time, Rosenblatt was also a special professor of trial advocacy and faculty advisor at his alma mater, Hofstra’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law, where he coached members of the Hofstra Trial Advocacy Association.
Under his mentorship, Hofstra’s aspiring trial advocates were crowned champions, finalists and semi-finalists at a wide array of regional and national mock trial competitions and were invited three times to take part in Baylor University’s exclusive, uber-competitive Top Gun National Mock Trial Competition.
“I’m beyond thrilled to have Jared joining the faculty,” said Professor Gwen Roseman Stern, who directs the Trial Advocacy Program.
Rosenblatt and Stern have already begun expanding the program, launching a summer program for students who want to try out for the Trial Team, laying the groundwork to enter a larger number of competitions and reaching out to pre-law students at Drexel.
“You want to get them involved early,” Rosenblatt said. “It’s like playing music or a sport.”
Amid planning for the Thomas Kline Institute for Trial Advocacy downtown and the Trial Team’s recent successes – winning the National American Association for Justice Student Trial Advocacy Competition, being named regional champions of the Texas Young Lawyers Association Mock Trial Competition and reaching the Top Gun semi-finals – Rosenblatt said he’s excited to be joining the law school.
He’s ready to pass lessons learned in the courtroom to future litigators, starting with basic advice about persuading juries.
“The first thing to ask yourself is: ‘Why should somebody care about your case?’ What is so compelling to make the jury want to right that wrong,” Rosenblatt said. “There’s a human-interest element to every story, though sometimes it’s more obvious than others.”
He’s also prepared to shatter some students’ assumptions about the best means to improve the criminal justice system.
While many students assume that working for the Public Defender or organizations like Innocence Project are the best ways to promote fairness, Rosenblatt said prosecutors have even more influence.
“A prosecutor has to care about doing justice,” Rosenblatt said. “If you’re a fair prosecutor, you do the job of the Innocence Project.”