Carl Brizzi for Prosecutor

Carl Brizzi had just landed the biggest victory of his short career as a private lawyer. But on the plane ride home to Indianapolis, something nagged at him.
He had defended a trucking company in a Brunswick, Ga., court in 2001 against a $10 million personal-injury lawsuit. The plaintiff's injuries stemmed from a loading dock mishap, but Brizzi showed some of the injuries had been faked.
"It was about money," he said, recalling the case. He remembers thinking the victory felt hollow compared to the white-collar and gang cases he had worked on a few years earlier in the Marion County prosecutor's office.
"At that point, it dawned on me that this was not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my professional career."
When he returned home, he spoke with his wife, Melanie, about running for prosecutor.
He then won the endorsement of his mentor, outgoing two-term Prosecutor Scott Newman, and in 2002 he was elected to the job.
There were no second thoughts this time.
"I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing," he said.

Mentors in family, career
Ask who has influenced him the most, and Brizzi's answer comes quickly: "My mother and Scott Newman."
The two have been his shepherds through life.
He's close to his mother, Toni Brizzi, 60. And Newman, 46, meets him for dinner every few months to commiserate about the pressures of being prosecutor.
Carl Brizzi was born in New York to Italian parents who divorced when he was young. Brizzi moved to Indianapolis' Northside with his mother and sister when he was 7.
"She raised two children on her own, without help from anyone," Brizzi said. "(She is the) hardest-working person that I know. Passionate about certain things, outspoken about certain things."
He graduated from North Central High School, where he coached a powder puff football team and started dating one player during his junior year. They both went to Indiana University, and he and Melanie Anderson married during his first year of law school at Valparaiso University 15 years ago.
The young lawyer made his first foray into campaigning when he volunteered for Newman's 1994 bid to unseat Democratic Prosecutor Jeff Modisett.
The 26-year-old, then a state appellate court public defender, didn't know Newman, but he was interested in the law and politics.
Eventually he started driving Newman to campaign events in an old Honda with a busted passenger door. They got to know each other, and after Newman won, Brizzi accepted a job in the prosecutor's grand jury division.
Newman remembers Brizzi's first case in court. He sat next to Brizzi's mother as the young lawyer tried to convince a jury that a judge's secretary had defrauded the judge.
The jury couldn't agree on a decision, so Brizzi had to retry the complex case. But his courtroom performance impressed his new boss.
"I do remember being very pleasantly surprised at somebody basically fresh out of the box from law school, having the kind of assurance and persuasiveness that this guy had," Newman recalled. "I remember the look on his mother's face, which was a very proud but very contained smile."
He recalled one other memory from his early dealings with Brizzi.
"I remember wondering if I had been that good right out of the box," Newman said.
He later promoted Brizzi to chief gang prosecutor, where Brizzi handled violent crime cases. After a year away from the office, Brizzi returned briefly in 1998 to set up its gun prosecution unit before leaving again to start his own law firm.
During one hiatus from the prosecutor's office, Brizzi worked as senior investigative counsel in Washington in the U.S. House of Representatives' probe into a fundraising scandal involving then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
The job came, Brizzi said, after he told Newman that investigations like that interested him. Newman helped get him an interview.
Brizzi was proud of the team's work, but he decided Washington wasn't the right place for him, either.
"I don't really know how to describe it," Brizzi said. "Everyone always seemed to have an angle."

A different style
If Brizzi looked to Newman to guide his budding career, his style in overseeing the prosecutor's office has diverged significantly from the detail-oriented tenure of his mentor.
Brizzi leaves a lot of the detail work to his staff, allowing him to work on anti-crime initiatives that cross agencies as well as meet with media to talk about particular cases and crime trends.
Still, he says, "You are leading 168 trial lawyers, and you have to lead by example, and you can't ask your people to do something you haven't done."
The office has battled problems with turnover at times, but Brizzi says that situation has stabilized in part because of a pay raise for his staff that he helped lobby for. In short, Brizzi says, he's had to adapt the office to the times.
"There's a certain entertainment factor that wasn't there when I was a deputy prosecutor from '95 through '98," Brizzi said, referring to television crime shows such as "CSI," which he says have raised jurors' expectations.
"Two years ago, we started training our lawyers on how to use more visuals at trial so that we keep jurors' attention, a little bit more of the razzle-dazzle factor."

What about the future?
Brizzi's ease before a camera and ability to connect with voters have led to speculation about his future beyond the prosecutor's office. But he dismisses such talk, including whether he might run for mayor.
At a debate this month, he said he would serve all four years of his second term if elected -- a pledge he's also made to his wife.
"I really do prefer to be at a level where I can make decisions . . . and I know it sounds cliche, but make a difference."
John Dickerson, 32, would agree with that. Dickerson spoke to the media recently about how Brizzi's office handled the case of his wife, Leslie.
A co-worker, Abraham Maya, killed her three years ago at a Far-Eastside Boston Market; he pleaded guilty and received a 75-year prison sentence.
"I saw dedication put into my case," Dickerson said.