Can Brooklyn’s New U.S. Attorney Help Restore Faith in Law Enforcement?

Clifford Jones spent three decades in prison for rape and murder, crimes he knew he did not commit. So even as his yearslong effort to clear his name advanced through New York’s courts, he feared the criminal justice system would fail him again.

But he drew confidence from his lawyer, Breon S. Peace.

“I would always watch Breon — he’s cool, like James Bond,” Mr. Jones said. A partner at an elite corporate law firm, Mr. Peace led the pro bono legal team that secured Mr. Jones a new evidentiary hearing in state court, paving the way for his 2016 exoneration and a $12.5 million settlement.

“I never seen him sweat,” Mr. Jones said. “I never seen him get out of step.”

Mr. Peace’s friends and colleagues say that experiences like Mr. Jones’s case — and his career as a white-collar civil litigator, along with high-stakes work on matters of criminal justice and racial equity — have shaped Mr. Peace’s approach to the law and prepared him for a high-profile new role: U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District.

Mr. Peace was sworn in last week as the top federal prosecutor for a sprawling and diverse region that includes Brooklyn, Long Island, Queens and Staten Island. People who know him, and his new jurisdiction, said that Mr. Peace — a Black man with Brooklyn roots, a pastor’s son, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the office — could bring stability and community credibility to the office, at a time when it is sorely needed.

“He is going to be a strong leader, and he’s going to be good for the office,” said U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., a senior federal judge in Brooklyn for whom Mr. Peace worked as an intern and as a clerk. “He’s going to be a role model for the young people who come on after him.”

Mr. Peace also has something else going for him, Judge Johnson said: “He’s from the hood — he never forgot it. I think it’s important in this city, and in this country.”

Mr. Peace, the fourth Black person to hold the office, inherits the role at a particularly challenging time. The city is grappling with the fallout from the pandemic and its attending economic disruption. Its citizens are unsettled by a wave of gun violence. And many harbor a deep distrust of law enforcement.

In the summer of 2020, Brooklyn was the site of several large protests, which led to what many criticized as heavy-handed intervention from the police and federal prosecutors. Within the U.S. attorney’s office itself, there were tense debates over weighty charges brought against protesters, and some prosecutors took issue when the U.S. attorney at the time, Richard P. Donoghue, used the office’s official Twitter account to express pride in the New York Police Department, without acknowledging the racial justice issues that animated the protests.

“It’s going to be one of the most challenging times for a U.S. attorney to come in,” said Carolyn Pokorny, inspector general for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who worked alongside Mr. Peace at the prosecutor’s office in the early 2000s. “He will certainly face skepticism on the part of communities in the Eastern District about law enforcement,” even as residents are concerned about their safety.

“Breon is the kind of person who can really bring people together,” Ms. Pokorny said. “He will really focus on rebuilding trust and confidence, not just in the community, but with law enforcement partners. I think he will bring a lot of credibility.”

Mr. Peace, she added, is “one of the best trial lawyers I have ever seen.”

Mr. Peace, 50, was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey and Brooklyn. He hails from a line of pastors — his father, Dr. M. Marquette Peace Jr., retired in early 2000 as the pastor at Zion Baptist Church on Washington Avenue and Fulton Street in Brooklyn. He graduated as the valedictorian from Clara Barton High School in Crown Heights before attending the University of California at Berkeley and then New York University School of Law.

When he was considering career paths, Mr. Peace at first balked at working in law enforcement, which Judge Johnson — himself a former New York police officer — suggested while Mr. Peace was his clerk.

“Aren’t all prosecutors bad?” Mr. Peace laughingly recalled saying. (Mr. Peace, who declined to be interviewed, recounted the conversation with Judge Johnson in a recorded interview last year with the Metropolitan Black Bar Association.)

Mr. Peace said that Judge Johnson replied: “Prosecutors have most of the power in the criminal justice system, and in order for the criminal justice system to work properly and fairly, you need good people on both sides of the aisle.”

Judge Johnson remembered the conversation the same way. “We need people inside the system,” he said.

In 1999, Mr. Peace became an assistant U.S. attorney, handling narcotics, immigration, bank fraud and other cases, including an insurance-fraud ring run by a former New Jersey cop.

In early 2000, Mr. Peace asked Ms. Pokorny to work with him on a case he had charged — a mortgage-fraud scheme carried out by a husband-wife duo, targeting older Brooklyn homeowners.

The fraud was not of the magnitude the office might typically pursue. “It genuinely is a case that would not have happened were it not for Breon and the case agent,” Ms. Pokorny said. The case went to trial.

“He is an incredible communicator, and has a way of speaking to people — he’s able to convey sincerity, a brilliant delivery you cannot teach,” she said. Mr. Peace’s summation was “so fabulous,” Ms. Pokorny said, “these very jaded, experienced F.B.I. agents were completely fawning after him.”

Mr. Peace left the U.S. attorney’s office in 2002, spent a year teaching a prosecution clinic at N.Y.U. Law,then joined the firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as an associate. He made partner in 2007. He has two children; his wife, Jacqueline Jones-Peace, is a senior attorney at the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative.

As with many civil litigators, much of Mr. Peace’s work at Cleary has been below the surface — the aim, for many corporate clients, is for legal matters to be resolved in confidence, with as few ripples as possible.

Joon H. Kim, a fellow Cleary partner who served as acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan from 2017 to 2018, said Mr. Peace would bring “a new perspective” to the job. “Breon is someone who has been incredibly successful as a private lawyer, representing companies and individuals, and would bring to the job a complete and sophisticated understanding of the impact of the decisions that he and his office will be making,” he said.

The arrival of Mr. Peace may come as a relief to defense lawyers who grumble that prosecutors often lack the perspective earned on the other side of the courtroom: that right and wrong is not always clear cut, that negotiation can be preferable to an indictment, that charging decisions affect not just the defendants, but families and communities.

“It’s fitting that the U.S. attorney for one of the most diverse districts in the country is someone who has always understood the importance of diversity as well as equity in the criminal justice system,” Mr. Kim said.“That commitment is not something that he acquired recently. It’s something that he has always, in his own measured, quiet, effective way, valued and modeled.”

Mr. Kim said that Mr. Peace would excel not just at the substantive work of the office, but also as the face of the office — sharing its work publicly. The U.S. attorney, Mr. Kim noted, has to manage not only hundreds of people, but also relationships with judges, the public and defense lawyers.

“He is going to have the reins of a very aggressive office,” said Seth D. DuCharme, who served as the district’s U.S. attorney from 2020 until earlier this year. “He’s got to be energized by that.”

Mr. DuCharme called the district “entrepreneurial” and “forward-leaning,” citing as an example the use of racketeering charges — long a standby in organized crime and drug-trafficking cases — in the prosecutions of R. Kelly, the sex cult Nxivm, and the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Among the cases Mr. Peace will inherit is the prosecution of Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a close friend and ally of former President Donald J. Trump, who was charged in July with lobbying violations and obstruction of justice. Mr. Barrack has pleaded not guilty.

While bringing blockbuster cases, the district has been subject to a churn of leadership in recent years. Since Loretta Lynch left the office in 2015, the Eastern District has had eight U.S. attorneys, including Mr. Peace.

And while three Black people held the top seat in the district before Mr. Peace, there remains a dearth of people of color in the ranks of the office, notably in upper leadership.

“They are going to have to put more people of color as prosecutors in the office,” Judge Johnson said.

Zachary Carter, the district’s first Black U.S. attorney, hired Mr. Peace just before he left the office in 1999. When he left, Mr. Carter said, he felt that “in looking back, if people couldn’t tell that an African American had held that job for the past six years, I would have considered myself a failure.”

“What was really cool about Breon’s selection, is that the selection of an African American is no longer a novelty, it’s a routine,” Mr. Carter said. “Diversity really sticks when it becomes a lived experience.”