Daniel F. Conley
Daniel F. Conley is an American attorney and politician who served as the district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts from 2002 to 2018. Appointed to the office in February 2002, Conley was later elected on November 5, 2002, and again in 2006, 2010, and 2014. He retired in 2018 to enter private practice. Conley placed fourth of 12 candidates when he ran unsuccessfully in the 2013 Boston mayoral election to replace Thomas Menino, garnering 11% of the vote in the preliminary election. In February 2018, Boston newspapers reported that Conley would not seek re-election to a fifth term as Suffolk DA. On September 12, 2018, Conley announced that his final day as district attorney would be September 26, as he would join Mintz Levin, a private law firm in a special counsel role. Education Conley graduated from Stonehill College, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1980 and Suffolk University Law School in 1983. Career He was appointed as an assistant district attorney by Suffolk County District Attorney Newman A. Flanagan shortly after passing the Massachusetts Bar Exam and assigned to the Boston Municipal Court. He later prosecuted juvenile cases in the Boston Juvenile Court. In 1987, he was promoted to a Superior Court Trial Unit Suffolk Superior Court, where he prosecuted felony cases. He was assigned by District Attorney Newman Flanagan to Boston's new Anti-gang Violence Task Force. In 1987 he was promoted to a Superior Court Trial Unit Suffolk Superior Court where he prosecuted felony cases. When gang violence reached near epidemic levels in Boston during the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was assigned by District Attorney Newman Flanagan to Boston's newAnti-gang Violence Task Force. In 1992 he moved to the Homicide Unit of the D.A.'s office. Conley was an assistant district attorney for a total of nine years. Boston City Council In 1993, he left the Suffolk District Attorney's office to run for a seat on the Boston City Council. Constituents elected him to the District 5 seat, where he served for eight years and served several terms as chairman of the council's Public Safety Committee. He received the O'Riordan-Mundy Distinguished Legal Service Award in 1999 and remained on the council until he was appointed Suffolk County's 14th district attorney by Acting Governor Jane Swift on February 19, 2002. Conley won election to the office later that year. District attorney Massachusetts is one of only four states (along with the District of Columbia) that have no continuing legal education requirement for the prosecutors. To address this Conley imposed a "continuing legal education requirement for Suffolk prosecutors, which allows them to continue honing their skills and exposes them to emerging fields of criminal law". In 2004, Conley and the then-Commissioner of the Boston Police Department empaneled a blue-ribbon task force to evaluate the ways in which police gather and prosecutors use eyewitness evidence. In an effort to ensure that the historical wrongful convictions that came to light under his leadership never reoccurred, Conley