Prosecutors are often portrayed as the “bad guys” of the criminal justice system. Many aspiring lawyers believe that if you want to help marginalized communities or fight injustices, working as a criminal defense attorney or public defender are the proper moves. However, an important piece of the puzzle is recognizing the significant power prosecutors hold in influencing outcomes and implementing meaningful change. Assistant Dean and Martha Craig Daughtrey Director for Public Interest Beth Cruz sat down with Vanderbilt Law School Professor Alissa Marque Heydari to discuss Heydari’s experiences as a prosecutor and her transition into policy work at Vanderbilt Law School.
Heydari is the Director of the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy (VPOPP), which works to advance innovative prosecution policies in the South, and is an expert in criminal law and justice policy. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, she served as acting director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution (IIP) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She also held the position of Assistant District Attorney in New York County (DANY), served as Acting Criminal Court Supervisor and a member of the Sex Crimes Unit and Elder Abuse Unit.
A Personal Drive for Justice
For many lawyers, the decision to pursue a career in law is often deeply personal. In Heydari’s case, she “always had a really strong sense of justice and wanted to stand up for people who are vulnerable or marginalized in some way.”
She attributed her passion for criminal and social justice to her family’s history. The daughter of a Jewish father whose parents survived the Holocaust, Heydari explained that “hearing about how there were obviously horrible things done to the Jewish community in Germany and beyond in Europe during that time, and the fact that nobody, in the end, was able to stand up to this regime,” helped shape her sense of justice.
Heydari also noted that “the criminal justice system can be very unjust, particularly towards Black and Brown communities,” which further influence her passion to work in law.
Finding Your Path in Law
Heydari did not enter law school with specific plans to become a prosecutor. When an internship exposed her to civil cases related to domestic violence—divorce, child custody, child support, and alimony—she noticed that criminal cases usually accompanied them. “The prosecutor had all the power in what was going on in the parallel civil case,” she explained. That realization inspired her to investigate the criminal side of the equation. After discovering her passion for criminal work, she applied for both prosecutor and public defense roles—“and it just sort of worked out that I ended up in prosecution.”
Power and Responsibility as a Prosecutor
When asked how she balanced prosecution and advocating for marginalized groups, Heydari noted that prosecutors, in many situations, have more power to help marginalized people than defense attorneys, and more power than public defenders to influence case outcomes.
She also acknowledged the weight of the role—“If you want to think about being a prosecutor, I think there’s truth that you may have the real power to make a difference in the defendant’s life, but at the same time, you are going to be sending people to jail, and you have to be able to sleep at night [knowing that],” she said.
Uniting Prosecution and Policy
In discussing her motivations to pursue policy work, Heydari cited the limited impact that individual cases have on systemic change. “I was really attracted to the idea of advocating for prosecutors to take on more innovative policies,” she said.
She joined the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution (IIP), collaborating with district attorneys on effective strategies. “I was working with a lot of DAs… and sort of helping them figure out: what are the types of policies they can implement, and what’s the best way to go about doing that?” Heydari now engages in similar work at the Vanderbilt Project on Prosecution Policy (VPOPP), where she addresses the challenges of the Southern legal landscape.
Throughout the conversation, Heydari emphasized that not all prosecutors are the same. “There are some DAs who are focused solely on getting as long of a plea deal as they can,” she said, “but I would venture to say most of them aren’t.” She encouraged students to engage in dialogue about prosecution and explore the area of law, because “if you don’t have really good, smart people on both sides, the [criminal justice] system does not perform well.”
