D.A. candidate Grady set goal long ago

First of six profiles of candidates for Philadelphia district attorney.

His 6-foot-4 frame dwarfing a cafeteria chair at a North Philadelphia senior center, Brian Grady leans across the table to better hear the advice of 83-year-old Theresa Winston-Johnson.

"The world needs to be revamped so that our youth have a sense of responsibility," she tells him, leaving her milk and Oreos untouched to rail against the petty crime in the West Tioga Street neighborhood.

When she asks what government can do, Grady doesn't even mention jail. Just the opposite, in fact.

"We need an official with the guts to say, 'We can't lock 'em all up,' " he answers.

If Grady wants to project anything on the campaign trail, it's guts. One of the least known of five Democrats in the race for Philadelphia district attorney, he is banking on that image to help pull in the votes he needs to prevail in the May 19 primary.

Forty years old and making his first - and what he expects to be his last - run at the job, Grady says the District Attorney's Office has lost its way.

Philadelphia's jails hold too many nonviolent offenders, he contends. "Justice," he likes to say, "does not always mean a conviction."

It seems a contrarian notion in a campaign for a post that exists to prosecute wrongdoers.

Consider that Grady has worked the last 11 years as a criminal defense lawyer, spending more time in the Criminal Justice Center defending criminals than trying to put them away.

Still, he hardly can be accused of being soft on crime. An assistant district attorney from 1994 to 1998, he won convictions in 65 major felony cases - every case he prosecuted.

"I've realized there's a whole other side of the criminal justice system," said Grady, now a partner in Grady & Falcione, a Center City firm that handles civil and criminal cases.

As a prosecutor, he said, he learned how law enforcement works. As a defense lawyer, he saw how people could be accused wrongly or with insufficient evidence, and how resources could be wasted on petty offenses.

He touts the relationships he has built along the way, with the Police Department, judges, and the District Attorney's Office.

When Grady got in the race, one rampant rumor had it that his candidacy was a stratagem by front-runner Seth Williams to steer votes away from another contender, Dan McCaffery. Williams is African American; McCaffery and Grady are white and Irish.

Grady laughed at the suggestion. He is, he said, the least political of his rivals. He said he had met Rep. Robert Brady, chairman of Philadelphia's Democratic Party, only once - three weeks ago at a meeting Brady called as leader of the 34th Ward.

"People resist a newcomer," Grady said. "You have a party here who likes to act like they run the show. But I have no ties."

The temperature is tickling 90 as Grady and two aides canvass the neighborhood around 10th and Jackson Streets in South Philadelphia, knocking on doors of likely Democratic voters.

His signature campaign stops have been in the city's highest-crime areas, but this isn't one of them. The biggest threat is the heat. Grady doesn't mind, having grown up without air-conditioning.

"Ooh, you're a good-looking guy," squeals an 87-year-old woman as she opens the door.

"Thank you. Will you vote for me?"

"Sure," she says, "because of your good looks!"

Grady, who has a boyish face and a head of thick, gray hair, is funny and likable.

He had the first TV ad of the race - "Luck of the Irish" ran on St. Patrick's Day - yet his political operation is small.

He and his wife, Liz, live in Roxborough with their four children, ages 8 to 15. Their baby-sitter, a law student, is his campaign committee treasurer. His uncle is chairman.

"He comes off as a very blue-collar guy, but people shouldn't underestimate his brains," said State Rep. Bryan Lentz (D., Delaware), who worked with Grady in the District Attorney's Office and calls him a friend.

Grady is "intense and unyielding," Lentz said. "There's no pretense. What he says is what he thinks."

Grady can pinpoint the moment he first thought about running for district attorney. It was 20 years ago, when he was a college senior having a soul-searching talk with his father.

A knee shattered during high school basketball had quashed any plans of Grady's joining the military or the FBI. Set on a law enforcement career, he refocused his sights on becoming district attorney.

His mother was not surprised. "Brian has always had - I guess maybe from when he was a little kid - a sense that things should be just," Helen Grady said.

Growing up in a middle-class home, first in Olney and then in East Oak Lane, he didn't complain about scrubbing the kitchen floor or weeding the tomato garden, his mother said. That was because the chores were divided evenly among him and his four siblings. With Brian, she said, it was always "an equity thing."

He had been born with a congenital defect involving his leg, and doctors were unsure whether he would be able to walk. He endured several major operations from infancy through his preteen years, and today still tilts a bit as he walks.

With a high school teacher for a mother and a father who taught economics at La Salle University for 49 years, politics and civics were never far from the kitchen table.

The children learned to volunteer, delivering food to a homeless shelter at St. Francis Inn in Kensington. When their parents drove to Center City, they intentionally went by way of Second Street "so they could see there were others less well off," his mother said.

All five children went to La Salle for college, and enrolled in an honors program developed and overseen by their father. "He stressed to never lose for lack of hard work and never lose for lack of preparation," Grady recalled.

He attended law school at Notre Dame University, where his father - who died of cancer last summer - had been an undergraduate. By then, his two older sisters were lawyers at private firms. But Grady did not follow.

"I don't ever remember Brian being interested in working for a big law firm," said his older brother John, senior vice president at the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., a quasi-public city agency.

By then, Brian Grady said, he had set his goal - running for district attorney - and it would affect every decision thereafter.

In his four years as an assistant prosecutor, he distinguished himself with a high number of felony convictions. One was of Richard Wise, whom Grady helped convict of robbing gay victims and other crimes a year after Wise's acquittal in the slaying of Center City jogger Kimberly Ernest.

Grady also stood out for a less glamorous reason.

In 1997, during a recess in a simple-assault case, he punched the opposing counsel, Joseph Stanton.

Common Pleas Judge Richard Klein had just ruled that a photo of the victim's neck could not be submitted as evidence. Standing inside the judge's robing room, an angry Grady, then 27, "started yelling and accused the judge of committing judicial misconduct," according to a report by the Disciplinary Board of the State Supreme Court.

Even as the judge warned he could wind up in jail, Grady kept on screaming. When they were inches apart, Stanton intervened, putting his hands on Grady's chest.

Grady punched Stanton, put him in a headlock, and punched him two more times. "The other attorney put his hands on me," Grady recalled, "and I defended myself."

The District Attorney's Office suspended Grady for 30 days without pay and placed him on a year's probation. In 1999, after an investigation, the state disciplinary board suspended his law license for six months, citing his "overzealous attempts" to change the judge's ruling and a "subsequent loss of control."

"I was disappointed in myself," Grady said, "and I let my family down."

He characterized the episode as an example of his "passion" and stressed that nothing like it had occurred since.

"I think it shocked him as much as anyone," his mother said. Afterward, "he understood . . . his size can intimidate, and it behooves him to try to tone back his intensity."

Former prosecutor Judith Rubino, who spent 33 years in the District Attorney's Office, was a character witness for Grady at the disciplinary hearing.

"He's an honorable guy, and I think he would do an honest job, and I don't think he would be tremendously political," she said recently.

"I'm sure he would be fine as D.A., but I don't know if he's got enough experience."

With time running out before the primary, Grady said he regretted not starting his run months earlier.

"I put it on the line for this," he said, noting that 80 percent of his law business had fallen off.

If he loses?

"I don't anticipate running again," he said. "Never thought about it."

Party: Democratic. Age: 40. Residence: Roxborough.

Priorities for district attorney

End the overzealous charging and prosecution of minor crimes. Instead of seeking convictions, divert offenders who commit petty, nonviolent crimes into alternative sentencing programs, such as drug treatment and community service. This would free up space in the courts and prisons. As a result, fewer serious offenders would get out early on parole or have their cases dismissed because prosecutors didn't have enough time to gather evidence.

Assign prosecutorial teams to specific neighborhoods. This would increase residents' familiarity with the District Attorney's Office and their cooperation as witnesses. It could also foster greater use of local resources for alternative sentencing, thanks to closer ties between prosecutors and community groups.

Maximize penalties for crimes committed with guns. Press for the maximum state prison term for any gun-related offense.

Step up the pursuit of drug dealers. This could cut down on drug-related gun violence and generate forfeiture funds to help supplement the district attorney's budget during the city's fiscal crisis.EndText