6 | THELAKER from the cover A new narrative A er passing the bar exam, she worked as a mortgage foreclosure defense attorney with the Empire Justice Center. She was moved by clients’ trauma of losing the spaces where they gardened and held barbecues and holiday get-togethers. e late Betty Tyson, the Rochester woman who spent 25 years falsely imprisoned for murder, was among her clients. “I was there for about a year, but I still had this gut-wrenching desire to go and do criminal work, and I speci cally wanted to go to the Monroe County Public Defender's O ce.” at desire also went back to her childhood. “I thought to myself if I can be a lawyer, I can help some of the people that are in my community who are victims of the criminal justice system. I remember a gentleman on the side of my building one time, he was strip-searched right outside in broad daylight.” She also wanted to change the narrative of apathetic public defenders, so evident in a back-handed compliment she once received: “‘You're such a good public defender, have you ever thought about being an attorney?’ “Some of the public defenders in our local o ce are some of the top attorneys in the county, and I'm still, even to this day, trying to wash away that narrative about public defenders,” she said. ‘Yeah, they want you’ LaToya was working as a judicial law clerk in 2021 and hadn’t considered the bench herself. Colleagues suggested she apply for a mayoral appointment when a judgeship vacancy opened between election cycles. “I was surprised,” she said. LaToya had to overcome the same nagging doubts she had had since childhood. “ ere's no way they're going to take a little black girl like me from the city school, who barely got out of high school, barely made it to college, barely made it to law school,” she began. “Sometimes you have to stop and talk to yourself and say, ‘Yeah, they want you.’ When I look at my body of work, I'm not surprised. I've done everything I was supposed to. I have given everything to the work I do. I work hard. I constantly learn every day.” Mayor Malik Evans appointed her in February 2022, and she was elected to a 10-year term the following fall. Now, she welcomes both the weight and potential of her role as defendants come before her court. “I love being a judge. It is the most exciting — sometimes it can be the hardest — job that I've had. . . . You never know, it could be through something you said to them, something you did in the case, that's going to change a person's life, especially when you have people that come back to the courts time and time again in a revolving door. You may be the person that puts the stop on that door.” Perhaps they feel invisible, too. LaToya recently requested her high school transcript. She laughed as she referred to herself as an “alphabet student” in high school, with grades ranging from A to F. She wanted the record so she could show young people that a shaky start doesn’t seal your fate. “ e rst thing I tell them is to take your adolescent self out of the way of your adult self, and what I mean by that is: Do not stand in the way of what's going to happen when you get older because the mind that you have right now is not going to be the mind that you'll have next year. “When I look at my old transcripts and think of my times at the schools that I attended, it reminds me of the growth. From barely making it out of high school to graduating cum laude from law school. So again, it truly isn’t where you started, but where you end up.” – Lenore Friend “When I look at my old transcripts and think of my times at the schools that I attended, it reminds me of the growth.” — Rochester City Court Judge LaToya Lee ’03 Rochester Mayor Malik Evans appointed LaToya Lee to the bench in February 2022, and she was elected to a 10-year term the following fall.
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