A 25-Year Journey to State's Attorney
The Agency Veteran, to Be Sworn In Ceremonially Today, Is Reorganizing the Office

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 12, 2007

John McCarthy's sleeves were rolled up, as they tend to be, when he stepped behind the lectern last week to address the employees of the Montgomery County state's attorney's office. Some have known him for decades. Many are friends. After all, few lawyers in the Rockville legal scene have been around longer than McCarthy, who joined the office in 1982.

But this was the first time Montgomery's new state's attorney was talking to them as the top law enforcement official in the county. And they were all dying to know: What's John going to do?

"It only took me 25 years to get here," he said, breaking the ice and drawing some laughter. "I've been through this six times."

By "six times," he was referring to the arrival of new state's attorneys during his time at the office. McCarthy, who has a ceremonial swearing-in today, is wasting no time in making the office -- run by new Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler for the past eight years -- his own.

McCarthy, 54, appointed two deputies, promoting one from in-house and hiring one from Prince George's County. He streamlined some of the midlevel management positions, scaling down Gansler's community prosecution system to distribute more cases by area of expertise rather than geography.

He assigned two additional prosecutors to work solely on gang cases, an increase designed to tackle the county's growing gang problem at all levels of the justice system.

"The community has identified this as an issue they want us to devote resources to," he said, citing polling data from the November election.

McCarthy is also starting a cyber-crimes unit, which will work closely with police to go after sexual predators who troll online for minors. He intends to devote more resources to cold cases, and the office recently started using wiretaps in investigations.

Over dinner recently at a restaurant in Rockville, he reached across the table, grabbed a paper place mat and furiously drew a flowchart outlining some of his ideas. He paused and smiled.

"I've only had 25 years to think about this," he said. "I want to think outside the box to make sure we can be the best we can be."

Unlike Gansler, McCarthy is not viewed as a career politician and says he has no plans to run for higher office. He has served as deputy state's attorney since 1996.

McCarthy has been nominated for seats on circuit and district court benches a handful of times, but a judgeship never materialized. His most precarious career juncture was the transition between Robert L. Dean -- who lost the 1998 election amid the revelation of an affair with a subordinate -- and Gansler.

Not only did McCarthy survive the transition, he remained one of the top three deputies. The county's public defender and private defense attorneys, who regularly clash with him in court, say he is widely respected.

When he announced his candidacy last spring, the stakes for McCarthy were high.

"If I lost, I lost my career," he said.

McCarthy was born in Jersey City and was the oldest of six children. He grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. His next-door neighbors were a roofer and a truck driver.

"That background has given me insight," he told his staff during the meeting last week. "We see in this job more people with those backgrounds than the backgrounds most of you come from."

McCarthy moved to Washington in 1970 to attend Catholic University on a baseball scholarship and later got a job teaching at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in Wheaton. While teaching, he attended the University of Baltimore's law school at night. He graduated in 1979 and was briefly a defense attorney, a prosecutor in Prince George's and a public defender in Montgomery before arriving at the Montgomery office.

He rose through the ranks quickly, earning a reputation as a shrewd and vigorous lawyer who thrived in jury trials.

"Juries love him," said Paul F. Kemp, a partner at Venable LLP and a past president of the county bar association. "I think he takes the opportunity of a jury trial to teach the jury as opposed to argue with them."

In 1992, he prosecuted a landmark case in which a man was convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of his wife despite the fact that her body was never found. It was one of the first "no body" convictions in the country and the first murder conviction in Maryland in which DNA was used, McCarthy said.

Shortly afterward, brain cancer was diagnosed in McCarthy's wife. The youngest of their four children was a toddler, and Jeanette McCarthy's prognosis was bleak.

"I just remember him handling it so well," said his daughter, Meaghan, 23. "Under this horrible situation, he always held us together."

His wife recovered.

Colleagues and relatives say they are amazed by his ability to juggle a heavy caseload at work, a part-time job teaching at Montgomery College, volunteer work and coaching duties for his sons' basketball and baseball teams.

"He's as competitive in the courtroom as out of the courtroom," said his son Patrick, 25, a third-year law student. "He's involved in so much. He was almost as involved in my little brother's basketball as he was in the campaign."

He is known as detail-oriented, disciplined and meticulous. "He's always vacuuming our house," said Meaghan McCarthy, chuckling. "That might go along with being so organized. He loves to vacuum. It's kind of weird."

McCarthy works out at the Montgomery public safety training academy gym, where he has befriended many officers. He drives a Ford Taurus and gets his coffee at Krispy Kreme.

"I don't care what kind of car I drive," he said. "I never have."

His deputy selections have been uncontroversial. Laura Chase, who ran the family violence division, is well-liked in the office.

John Maloney, who headed the state's attorney's homicide division in Prince George's, also has a solid reputation. Maloney opened a campaign account to run for Montgomery state's attorney, but he said he withdrew early after McCarthy announced his candidacy. He donated $6,000 to McCarthy's campaign. McCarthy said he did not start thinking seriously about personnel matters until after the election.

Some defense attorneys and prosecutors said they anticipate that McCarthy will push prosecutors to go to trial more and offer lenient plea deals sparingly.

"He has a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor, particularly in plea negotiations," said Stephen Mercer, a Rockville defense attorney. Many welcome that move. "The more trials there are, the more honest the system is."

McCarthy said he will be tough but fair. Borrowing a line from one of his ex-bosses, former Montgomery state's attorney Andrew L. Sonner, he wrapped up his first staff meeting with a request.

"If I make a mistake, please blame it on my head, not my heart," he said. "My heart is in the right place."