CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Juvenile defense attorney named top Suffolk juvenile prosecutor

Boston Herald - 10/18/2022

The new chief of the juvenile unit in the Suffolk District Attorney’s office is banking on her experience from the other side of the courtroom to inform her work in her new “impactful role.”

Migdalia Iris Nalls is finishing up her work as an attorney in the Youth Advocacy division of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, an organization that provides free or reduced cost legal representation in the state.

On Tuesday, DA Kevin Hayden named her to the open position of chief of the juvenile unit at the DA’s office. Nalls will be returning to the unit where she served as a prosecutor from 2011 to 2014, after having been a prosecutor assigned to the Roxbury municipal court.

“Migdalia’s blend of defense and prosecution experience along with her deep knowledge of the juvenile court system and her commitment to diversion and youth support programs make her the ideal person to head this extremely important unit,” Hayden said in a statement announcing the move.

Since 2016, according to a copy of her resume shared with the Herald, she has worked at the CPCS advocating for juveniles from litigating delinquency, youthful offender and child requiring assistance civil cases to representing the teens in court for every manner of criminal case. She wrote that she works “hands-on to arrange support services … that propel the future success of clients.”

It’s that last bit that she hopes will really make a difference when she comes back to the DA’s office, where her career began as an intern while a junior political science major at Boston College. From June through August of 2001, she worked there to help organize youth outreach initiatives for the Gang Unit division and other works related to the prevention of violence and crime.

The work, she told the Herald, was largely describing what the DA’s office did to kids who were just learning about the justice system for the first time and “how they could be a part of it in a positive way” and “be a positive impact in the community.”

While she will now head the unit tasked with handling cases in which the defendant is 17 years old or younger and, by its description on the DA office’s website, she told the Herald that she is most excited to continue that work she began in 2001 as an intern and strengthen the office’s connection to outside agencies and programs to further preventative and outreach work that can prevent high-profile juvenile crimes.

From 2014 to her move to CPCS, Nalls worked as a staff attorney at South Coastal Counties Legal Services.

The Grove Hall, Dorchester, native attended English High School, where she graduated in 1997 from English High School before moving on to Boston College and then its Law School. She served as president of the Massachusetts Association of Hispanic Attorneys in 2017.

©2022 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.