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  • Assistant Mercer County Prosecutor to head county bar association

    The Trentonian, NJ
    Feb 1 2015

    Assistant Mercer County Prosecutor to head county bar association

    By Isaac Avilucea


    TRENTON >> Whenever Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Gasparian presents a
    case to a jury, she often follows The Rule of Three, laying out
    beginning, middle and end. She is fashioning a similar approach as new
    president of the Mercer County Bar Association.

    Her yearlong tenure will be defined by The Three Cs: collegiality,
    community service and continuing legal education.

    "I look at us as a family," Gasparian said of the association's 1,200
    members. "We are often on the other side of each other. But in the
    end, we are joined by a profession and the ethics that guide our
    profession."

    The association's blood-like bond was evident when colleague, fellow
    bar member and Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor John Carbonara
    suffered a devastating stroke in November.

    The association raised nearly $13,000 to help his family defray
    medical costs. Carbonara is undergoing therapy and slowly recovering.
    The hope is he'll be able to return to work sometime in the future.

    "It's been a blow," Gasparian said of losing Carbonara, a bulldog of
    an attorney who, along with Gasparian's husband, Brian McCauley,
    helped prosecute several Bloods gangsters who orchestrated the
    infamous Myspace murder of 20-year-old Arrell Bell.

    To that end, the association knows what it's getting in Gasparian, a
    graduate of Rutgers School of Law, a 16-year veteran of the county
    prosecutor's office and a committed bar member who worked herself up
    the ranks since she joined in 1997 as a law clerk.

    She served two four-year terms as a trustee before becoming the first
    female prosecutor and ninth woman to hold the position, replacing
    immediate past president and former Rutgers classmate, Dorothy
    "Dottie" Bolinsky, of Drinker Biddle & Reath in Princeton.

    Gasparian's parents, Armenian immigrants who came to the U.S. in their
    late teens, were particularly proud of their daughter's distinction as
    the association's first Armenian president.

    Garparian's goals are lofty. They include strengthening the
    association's relationship with the judiciary, expanding membership
    and increasing the organization's position as a community stakeholder.

    She has plans for "Breakfast with the Bench," an hourlong event for
    attorneys to get to know judges and staff in the family, civil and
    criminal divisions.

    The organization will continue to work closely with the Trenton Area
    Soup Kitchen, Meals on Wheels and Volunteer Lawyers CARE, which offers
    free legal consultation.

    The organization already sponsors professional development seminars
    and a daylong event to help attorneys get mandatory continuing
    education credits. But Gasparian hopes to drive down costs of events
    to encourage membership and participation among younger attorneys.

    Gasparian's bend toward public service is a theme in her career. She
    could have ventured into the lucrative path of private practice but
    has remained at the same post for the duration of her legal career.

    "The system needs to have people who believe in the system for the
    system to work, and I'm one of those people," she said. "I may never
    have a beach house, but I consider it rewarding."

    While with the county prosecutor's office, she has spent more than
    five years in the homicide unit and was cross-designated to the U.S.
    Attorney's Office.

    She worked with Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Askin in 2007 to
    secure the convictions of several reputed members of the Bounty Hunter
    set of the Bloods street gang involved in a massive drug ring in
    Trenton.

    Recently, her poignant remarks at at the sentencing of William
    Marshall captured the family of Ruschell Fireall's deep sense of
    betrayal. Marshall was convicted of murder after he ran his
    ex-girlfriend off the road and gunned her down in front of her family
    in November 2012.

    "If she wasn't going to be with him, she wasn't going to be," Gasparian said.

    Gasparian's line of work could callous the softest of souls. But she
    said there's a difference between being tough and unflinching.

    "You are dealing with people who may have experienced the worst thing
    in their life," she said. "You have to be analytic and clinical but
    caring and compassionate. You can watch it on TV. But when you're
    inside the belly of the beast, when it's a real situation, it's such
    tragedy."

    Gasparian hopes the stint as president is as fulfilling.

    "I want it to be a great year," she said, "and I'm confident it will be."

    http://www.trentonian.com/general-news/20150131/assistant-mercer-county-prosecutor-to-head-county-bar-association




    From: A. Papazian
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