by Lindsay J. Patterson

An assistant district attorney in the Middlesex County courts, who prosecuted criminal cases from Marlborough to Somerville, is leaving her office July 24 and will make the switch from prosecution to defense when she joins an East Boston practice.

“I’ll be starting out fresh when I come back from my honeymoon,” said Kimberly M. Foster, 29, who worked for Middlesex County courts for three years.

She has added her name to a list of court-appointed defense lawyers and will also join Allesandra Petrucelli, a friend from law school who currently focuses on civil litigation, real estate and personal injury cases, in her East Boston practice.

“Kim will be taking the reins with criminal law, due to her extensive background with the D.A.’s office,” Petrucelli said. “She is extremely intelligent, hardworking, and well-poised in manners. I am very excited to work with her.”

Foster said it breaks her heart to leave the district attorney’s office. “I’m not leaving because I want to leave, I’m leaving because I can’t afford to stay,” Foster wrote in her resignation letter to the district attorney. Even as supervisor in the district court, she made little more than $35,000 a year. Her salary, she said, could not sustain the pressures of law school loans and a recently purchased condominium in Somerville, along with the responsibilities of marriage.

Foster, a graduate of Boston University and Suffolk Law School, applied to the Middlesex County courts her third year of law school. “I wanted to keep to my roots and help people,” said the Somerville native. Her father works for the Somerville Housing Authority and her mother is a nurse at the Somerville hospital.

Ten months into her job, Foster won her first jury trial, an operating under the influence (OUI) case in Marlboro. “The D.A. gives you trial experience you wouldn’t have in a firm,” she said.

During her time at the D.A.’s office, Foster tried cases ranging from an animal cruelty case in which she protected two emaciated horses from their neglectful owner, to criminal harassment cases between neighbors. “It’s tough because they still live next to each other,” she said.

The cases that affected her most, she said, were domestic violence and civil rights violations. Foster said she sometimes cried along with the victims she defended. Drugs, she said, were the most common factor behind most crimes, but she failed to understand the motivations behind people who seemed to simply hate each other.

“I don’t know how people can live their lives that way,” she said. “It’s intolerable.”
The young lawyer said she’s become a little desensitized to the cases after gaining more experience, but still feels strongly about each one. “It opens your eyes to how evil some people are.”

While Foster will begin making the commute into the city soon, she hopes to return back to her roots within a year. “My ultimate goal is to set up shop in Somerville,” she said. “This is where I know people.”