When Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was an assistant district attorney under Robert Morgenthau in Manhattan, she had a reputation for being tough, overly well prepared, and compassionate. She also had a reputation for causing entire juries to burst into hysterical tears. According to a fellow prosecutor on the case of the (extremely frightening-sounding) “Tarzan Murderer,” her direct questioning of a victim’s sister had a whole panel sobbing, and according to a supervisor, she managed to unleash the waterworks during a landmark child-pornography case. This sort of explains why a handful of those lawyers who’d argued before her when she was a judge came out to report that her questioning from the bench is so tough. They were clearly embarrassed because she’d made them cry.
