Sunday Times 2
Can this Lankan American lawyer fix America’s deadliest city?
In a banner year for South Asian Americans successfully seeking public office, super lawyer and former Deputy Attorney General of Maryland Thiru Vignarajah is running to be the top prosecutor in America’s deadliest city, his hometown of Baltimore. Vignarajah has staked his candidacy on a pair of ambitious promises: bring Baltimore’s record murder rates to “record lows at record speed” and create the “most transparent, progressive prosecutor’s office in American history.” If elected, Vignarajah would make history and become the country’s first South Asian American state’s attorney.
Former Maryland Deputy Attorney Thiru Vignarajah is seeking to become Baltimore City's top prosecutor.
Recent years have witnessed South Asian Americans successfully seeking federal, state and local office nationwide. From the US Congress to US Attorney’s offices, South Asian Americans are slowly becoming a more common feature of the American political and legal landscapes. Dedicated to public service, these community members are also gravitating toward less visible but equally important and impactful posts like the one Vignarajah is seeking now.
Vignarajah, 40, is the son of Sri Lankan immigrants with a compelling family story. When he was just three years old, he and his family fled Sri Lanka just as the country descended into a bloody and protracted civil war. His parents came to the United States with no jobs, squeezed the family into a cramped basement apartment in West Baltimore and spent winter weekends at the local library to keep warm.
Like many first-generation South Asian Americans, Vignarajah inherited his parents’ reverence for education and retains a deep interest in the country’s public schools, a topic on which he teaches and writes frequently. Both his parents are retired Baltimore City high school teachers. Vignarajah’s father was the oldest teacher in Maryland when he retired this past summer at the age of 80. His mother earned her Ph.D. at 62, finishing her teaching career at Morgan State, one of Maryland’s historically black colleges.
Vignarajah’s sterling resume belies his humble roots. After college at Yale, Vignarajah held some of law’s most coveted positions: president of the Harvard Law Review – the same post held by Barack Obama at Harvard Law School, federal clerkships, including one for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, constitutional law professor, federal prosecutor, partner at a global law firm and Deputy Attorney General of Maryland.
Vignarajah’s work has sometimes hit close to home. He attended public schools that struggled with violence, graduating from Woodlawn High School – the same high school featured on Serial, the popular podcast about Adnan Syed, a Baltimore teen convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend in 1999. As Deputy Attorney General, Vignarajah handled the closely-watched appeal in that case as Syed seeks a new trial. (Vignarajah declined to discuss the case due to the pending appeal, referring only to his statement in court that “what is popular is not always just and what is just is not always popular.”)
Like his fellow South Asian counterpart in New York, Preet Bharara, Vignarajah amassed a distinguished record as a federal prosecutor. He tried and convicted the architect of a string of violent robberies that ended in the murder of a prominent Greek businessman. As a city prosecutor, he brought to justice a wealthy executive who set his mistress’s rowhome on fire while she and her five-year-old son slept inside and prosecuted gang members responsible for a quadruple shooting that killed a 12-year-old boy.
Vignarajah’s track record fighting crime in Baltimore has earned him widespread praise. Detective Luis Delgado, a veteran Baltimore City homicide detective, called him “the best prosecutor the city has ever seen.” When Vignarajah was named Deputy Attorney General, the police commissioner described him as a “once-in-a-generation lawyer and leader.”
As an immigrant and practicing Hindu, Vignarajah has also staked out progressive positions on national issues affecting vulnerable minorities. As Deputy Attorney General, Vignarajah was the lead author on a report cited by the Supreme Court in its landmark decision recognising same-sex marriage. He has made the case on CNN against Trump’s muslim ban. He has also authored a legal challenge to deporting “dreamers” and has pledged he will “not lift one finger” to further the “falsehood that immigrants are driving crime in Baltimore.”
Ultimately, he seeks to be an agent of criminal justice reform. He has condemned policies of mass incarceration and zero tolerance and rejected popular calls for more mandatory minimum sentences. Vignarajah is confident he can make a real difference as Baltimore City State’s Attorney. “Yesterday’s strategies of zero tolerance and mass incarceration have failed us. The fate of Baltimore depends on us finding a smarter, fairer way forward. If we do this right, Baltimore could be the blueprint for every great city whose promise remains out of reach because of crime.”
The Baltimore native faces a competitive race. A first-time candidate, Vignarajah is running against the incumbent, Marilyn Mosby, who enjoys star power that stretches beyond the city. She has been an outspoken critic of police misconduct, but her tenure has been mired in controversy amid soaring crime and what observers consider the botched prosecutions of the Baltimore City police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. Gray’s death ignited violence and rioting across the city.
The election is on June 26, 2018.