The Race for DA

Editor's note: This is the last article in a series profiling the candidates for Philadelphia district attorney.

Michael Untermeyer is taking his campaign for Philadelphia district attorney on the road.

As part of his preparation to run as the Republican candidate, Untermeyer has visited with the New York County District Attorney's Office and plans to visit the San Francisco District Attorney's Office in order bring back the best practices from those offices and apply them to Philadelphia's justice system.

"I'm not saying I have the answers," Untermeyer said in a recent interview. "What I'm saying is I do know how to find answers."

"If Michael doesn't know something, he researches it and whatever he sets out to do he accomplishes," said attorney Rania Major-Trunfio, who also took note of Untermeyer's research trips.

Major-Trunfio knows Untermeyer through a matching grant the Hispanic Association of Contractors and Engineers awarded to Untermeyer for a commercial building on the Fifth Street corridor in North Philadelphia.

Untermeyer, a real estate developer, invested his time and money, including working out zoning issues that took him all the way toHarrisburg to complete a handicapped ramp for the building, Major-Trunfio said. Untermeyer's aboveboard effort is the kind of effort needed to rehabilitate the city's corridors, she said.

Untermeyer is making his second foray into Philadelphia politics. Untermeyer challenged Sheriff John Green in the 2007 Democratic primary, winning 31 percent of the vote to Green's 67 percent.

Untermeyer is running as a Republican in this race because he decided to join the race just this past winter and didn't think he'd have enough time to get his message out before the Democratic primary. He also views the office as nonpolitical and points out that two of the last four district attorneys were Republicans: Ronald D. Castille and Arlen Specter.

For people turned off by the Republican brand, Untermeyer asks them to consider who will be the most effective administrator in developing and effectuating policies for an office that is the size of a large law firm.

"The priorities of that office should really be to serve its client base, which are the people of the city: the people who work here, live here and visit here," Untermeyer said.

Untermeyer said he is the best person to lead the office. He points out that he spent the most years as a prosecutor, including more than a decade in the state Attorney General's Office overseeing the asset forfeiture and money laundering section and four years in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office.

Untermeyer studied at the Rutgers University School of Law, graduating in 1977. He returned to Manhattan, the city of his birth, after law school. But after a couple of years working for the New York City Corporation Counsel, he made the move to Philadelphiain 1980. By that time, he found NYC an anonymous place to live without a great sense of community.

"I have that in Philadelphia and it's something Philadelphia offers to people, which is really special," Untermeyer said.

Untermeyer, who is not married, says he volunteers 40 to 50 percent of his time with activities like the South Street Headhouse District executive board, as a judge pro tem in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas' mortgage foreclosure diversion pilot program and as a disaster volunteer with the local Red Cross chapter.

Untermeyer said he is able to give that kind of time because of his success as a real estate lawyer and a commercial real estate developer. Untermeyer always had an interest in real estate and started buying investment properties when he was 27.

Jay Weitzman, president of Park America, an automobile parking company with a presence in nine states, and who has worked on three projects with Untermeyer, said Untermeyer is creative and always looks for different ways to put things together.

"He wants to do public service so he can help people ... and do a good honest job at it," Weitzman said.

Untermeyer said his real "joy" comes from public service, which has turned his attention to running for district attorney.

If elected, Untermeyer promises zero tolerance on illegal handguns. Untermeyer vows to lobby Harrisburg to institute mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment for all gun offenses; to seek stiffer sentencing guidelines set for judges by the state Sentencing Commission in gun offenses; and to bar plea bargaining in illegal gun cases.

Untermeyer also wants to see an increase in the proportion of defendants going through the gun court who receive sentences of jail time instead of probation sentences.

Untermeyer also vows to push for new semiautomatic handguns to be "microstamped" at the time of manufacturing with a stamp that can't be obliterated like a serial number and makes a mark on cartridge casings as cartridges are fired. The microstamping could help police track the history of a weapon fired at a crime scene from the point of the weapons' manufacturing to the gun's last legal owner, Untermeyer said.

Untermeyer said he also believes the District Attorney's Office must institute a vertical system of prosecution. He points out the district attorney's office in Manhattan has vertical prosecution. And he argues that private sector law firms wouldn't do very well if they had different lawyers handling clients' cases every time the firms' clients came for appointments.

In a vertical prosecution model, the same assistant district attorney would handle a case from the start to the finish. Prosecutors who are familiar with their cases would incentivize witnesses to show up for court and would limit the need to give "overnight subpoenas" to police officers because prosecutors would know which police officer witnesses they actually needed to subpoena for their cases, Untermeyer said.

Untermeyer also promises to create a deputy district attorney position in charge of finance. In his vision, this deputy would oversee the expansion of asset forfeiture, a development officer charged with finding outside funding and strategies for prosecuting corporate and financial crimes.

While Philadelphia is not a financial center of New York's heft, Untermeyer said the District Attorney's Office could secure fines in financial crime cases that could benefit the city.

Joe Peters, who hired Untermeyer to work at the Office of Attorney General as the asset forfeiture and money laundering prosecutor for the Philadelphia region and now of counsel with Dilworth Paxson, said Untermeyer was creative in bringing together his criminal and civil experience in order to secure asset seizures from drug trafficking defendants.

Untermeyer has the experience of working cooperatively with the Philadelphia Police Department and joint law enforcement task forces, Peters said.

Untermeyer's prosecutorial experience, as well as his business experience, give him the qualities needed to be the city ofPhiladelphia's top prosecutor, Peters said.