R.I.’s U.S. Attorney proud of his Portuguese roots; wants to curb violence, drugs and guns
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PROVIDENCE – At the helm of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Rhode Island for about eight months, Zachary Anthony Cunha says his new job has been an “incredibly rewarding” experience thus far.
“It’s satisfying on a moral level, but it’s also incredibly satisfying on a professional and personal level… [because of] the number of issues that we deal with and the way they touch the lives of the people in our community” said Cunha, who was sworn in last December as the top federal law-enforcement officer in the Ocean State, after being nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Cunha, 46, is not the first Portuguese-American to serve as U.S. attorney, but surely belongs to a very small exclusive clan (now Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha also served as U.S. Attorney from 2009 to 2017).
Cunha, who likes to think of himself as “thoughtful, fair and decent,” traces his roots to Beira Alta and Algarve in mainland Portugal. He said his top priority has been maximizing public safety, whether it is by combating drug trafficking and overdoses, gun violence, fraud or white-collar crimes.
“These are all things that we, as the federal government, are uniquely situated to go after,” he said. “To actually see some of these cases start to come to fruition, that’s incredibly satisfying to me… the feeling that we’re actually having an impact and doing some good.”
Cunha brought with him 17 years experience with the U.S. Department of Justice, serving previously in U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the districts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York.
As a federal prosecutor, a great part of his job has been centered on white-collar and health care fraud.
Since March, his office has seen about two dozen resolutions, charges or sentencings related to fraud.
“We’ve had a huge increase in fraud in the wake of the pandemic and pandemic related relief, and that has a huge impact on people’s lives,” Cunha said. “We have elder fraud. We have people whose life savings are wiped out through people reaching out and perpetrating various frauds on them. That’s the kind of complex paper intensive case that the federal government is kind of uniquely good at doing. So, it’s important to me that we do those cases.”
Another priority is to go after larger, organized drivers of violence.
His office recently concluded a case involving gang violence, stemming from generations of feuding between rival gangs in the city of Providence. As a result, four Chad Brown gang members were sentenced to federal prison in July.
“Under the pretense of dispensing justice, these defendants inflicted terror and violence on the people of Providence to serve the ends of their criminal enterprise,” Cunha said, when the sentence was revealed.
As far as drug trafficking, he said his office is primarily committed to going after large-scale drug dealers.
While Rhode Island recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana despite the fact that it still remains illegal under federal law, he said this policy should not have a big impact on his office’s workload.
“Fentanyl, opioids, things like that, that’s where I’m going to focus my resources,” he said. “It’s up to Congress to decide what they criminalize or don’t criminalize at the federal level, but it’s up to us, as U.S. attorneys, to figure out how to effectively use our resources in the way that’s going to have the biggest impact. For me, in the drug space, that’s opioids and serious narcotics that actually are leaving people dead in our community.”
In his view, the opioid crisis should be fought not only from a law enforcement standpoint but also from a medical perspective.
When asked, he said he was familiar with Portugal’s widely acclaimed drug policy, which decriminalized the public and private use, acquisition, and possession of all drugs about two decades ago, adopting instead an approach focused on public health rather than public-order priorities.
“The Portuguese Government continues to go after – you know, in terms of criminal law and criminal prosecutions very vigorously – large scale drug traffickers,” Cunha said. “That’s an important part of their model. The other half of their model is a more public, health-oriented approach to the end users…I think it’s consistent with what we do and some of the efforts here in Rhode Island. You have to have both. This is not a problem that you can solve purely through prosecution – opioid abuse or narcotics abuse. You have to have, you know, resources devoted to recovery.”
He said one of the great things about a state the size of Rhode Island is having the opportunity for multiple different agencies and entities to work together and coordinate with one another in order to help folks get beyond addiction and get their lives back on track.
“For example, we are out in the community all the time doing outreach with addiction support and recovery,” Cunha said, adding that his team tries to attack both ends of the drug problem. “We’re not just here to lock people up… We should be looking at every option that we have in the toolbox to determine how we deal with this crisis.”
But how does he balance the desire to send a strong message to individuals accused of crimes with the Biden administration’s stance on criminal justice reform and wish to reduce some of the incarceration time and focus on rehabilitation?
“That’s a challenge in every case,” he admitted. “I think part of it has to do with our role in the federal system. We’re not prosecuting every criminal that’s picked up on the street. We’re generally focusing on higher level particular types of crime. It’s also important to remember that we’re not the only player in the system. We’re the prosecutors, but ultimately it’s the court and the judge that makes a determination about what somebody’s sentence is going to be.”
Cunha stressed that his team takes a very fact specific, individualized approach to every case to achieve the right balance or what is the sufficient standard but not greater than necessary.
“What’s the magic number here?,” he said. “What’s the minimum amount necessary to make sure that we’re protecting the public and that we’re accomplishing the goals of encouraging respect for the law and all the other factors that we have to take into account? We try and do it on a very case-by-case basis, as opposed to we’re going to look at one category and treat everybody exactly identically regardless of their circumstances.”
His office receives criminal referrals from federal investigative agencies, state and local investigative agencies, and, occasionally, from citizens. After vigilant consideration of each criminal matter, he decides the appropriateness of bringing criminal charges and, when deemed appropriate, initiates prosecution.
Although his office mainly deals with criminal law, it also includes a very active civil practice.
“I’m especially proud of this,” he said. “We go out in the community to make sure that folks are guaranteed their civil rights and part of that includes language access. So, you know, whether it’s in the state court system or whether it’s in schools making sure that folks from immigrant communities who don’t speak English or for whom English isn’t their first language that they get the services that they’re legally entitled to.”
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Cunha said one of the most influential people in his life was his grandfather António, a native of Sandomil, Beira Alta. He immigrated to the United States in 1921 and married a Provincetown native, the daughter of a fisherman originally from Algarve.
“He settled along with the rest of his family on Broad Street in Hartford, Conn.,” Cunha said. “That’s where he and my grandmother lived after they married.”
Both Cunha and his father, Dr. Burke A. Cunha, an infectious disease physician and professor of Medicine in New York, were born in Hartford.
“I grew up spending a lot of time with my great-aunts and uncles and their families and sort of that extended Portuguese family network” recalled Cunha. “My grandfather and I were very close and he was a huge influence in my life growing up. There were two things that animated him: his love of Portugal and his Portuguese heritage and his love of the United States and the opportunities that it gave him.”
Cunha said he learned from him and other Portuguese relatives the important values of hard-work, unassumingly being a good person and staying committed to family. He, himself, has taught his two children about their Portuguese heritage, as a way to provide an important connection to their own identities.
“You try to give your kids a sense of where they came from and what their family went through,” he said. “That’s important to transmit those values.”
One of his biggest regrets is not speaking Portuguese. Although he remembers his grandparents speaking it to each other all the time, he admits he cannot say much other than “Obrigado” (Thank you) or “Boas Festas” (Happy Holidays).
“I still hold out hope that one day I will find time to take lessons,” he said.
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Cunha earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, from Brown University in 1998, and a Law degree, also with honors, from the George Washington University Law School in 2001.
He said he chose law because it seemed to be a good fit for his written and oral advocacy abilities, but most importantly it was a place where he could “make the most difference and do the most good.”
In 2010, he received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the highest honor conferred by the U.S. Department of Justice, for his work as part of the prosecution team that achieved a $2.3 billion dollar civil and criminal resolution of charges against Pfizer, Inc. for illegal marketing conduct. At the time, this case represented the largest civil recovery and fine ever collected by the Department of Justice in a health care fraud case.
Cunha said he wanted to be a U.S. attorney because it was “an opportunity to serve on a different level… to actually direct our priorities and our focus.”
So far, the biggest challenge posed by this new job is that “it never stops.”
“There are several things that are new every day. They’re all equally urgent and they all compete for your time… So there’s a lot of juggling and balancing. But on the other side of that coin, you get to make a lot of impact in a lot of different areas. And I really feel like we’re making a lot of progress on a number of fronts. So, it’s challenging, it’s stimulating, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. That’s what I love about it.”
What legacy would he like to leave behind one day?
“That’s a hard question,” he replied. “I would like to be perceived as having been motivated exclusively by the merits, to have done things because I thought they were the right call and the right thing to do and what the evidence required.”
He said he particularly loves the fact that the Department of Justice is an institution with a very long and proud tradition of upholding important values.
“I think it’s really important to uphold and reaffirm that we are here to uphold the rule of law; we’re here to protect people, civil rights and civil liberties and that we are impartial and not driven by politics or political pressures,” he said.
Cunha said he wished his grandfather António was still alive to see him in this new position.
“He was, you know, an incredibly decent man who never went beyond 6th grade in school, but managed to make a successful life in this country,” Cunha said. “First as a factory worker, and then he built his own small business and he sent my dad and my aunt to college for the first time of anybody in their family… [I wanted him to see] how proud I am to hopefully carry on some of the things he taught me and his legacy.”
Lurdes C. da Silva may be reached at ld******@oj*****.com. To read more stories about the Portuguese-speaking community in English and Portuguese, please visit ojornal.com.
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