Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona said Dana See­ta­hal, SC, had a stub­born in­de­pen­dence which spilled over in­to the man­ner in which she ap­proached her life, to in­clude her per­son­al safe­ty.He said: "I re­call as pros­e­cu­tors in the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions that we lost sev­er­al key wit­ness­es in high pro­file mur­der tri­als at a time when the law was not de­vel­oped ev­i­den­tial­ly as it is to­day."Dana didn't cow­er or re­sile her­self to some patho­log­i­cal cor­ner of fear. Her re­solve to seek jus­tice for all was on­ly hard­ened and she faced all chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the threats that came with the job of pros­e­cu­tor."

He said she was the quin­tes­sen­tial pros­e­cu­tor and as a state pros­e­cu­tor, a min­is­ter of jus­tice," I do re­call per­son­al­ly, that when Dana was giv­en a fi­at to pros­e­cute in her ca­pac­i­ty as a de­fence at­tor­ney, there was an ex­tra bounce in her step."If I had to choose a word to con­vey what Dana fought for, it would be "JUS­TICE". "The ide­al of jus­tice for all is one she guard­ed with fa­nat­i­cal fer­vor. It didn't mat­ter who you were, where you came from and what you did."It mat­tered not your so­cial class, your re­li­gion, your eth­nic­i­ty or your po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion. If you were a vic­tim she wasn't just ON your side, she WAS your side."

He added: "Many are the per­pe­tra­tors of crime whose con­coct­ed sto­ries fell apart un­der her mer­ci­less scruti­ny. Hard­ened crim­i­nals in the wit­ness box were known to be­come rat­tled by her in­ci­sive cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, her swift re­join­ders and her rapid-fire speech, propo­si­tions pour­ing out one af­ter the oth­er in quick suc­ces­sion, trip­ping up the de­ceit­ful in their own web of lies."

Car­mona asked: "How do you sum up the life of some­one as re­mark­able as Dana See­ta­hal?

"Com­ing as we are just out of a pe­ri­od of na­tion­al mourn­ing, there is a recog­ni­tion that words and speech­es, no mat­ter their elo­quence, can­not ful­ly cap­ture the ac­com­plish­ments and im­pact of a per­son's life."The on­ly way pos­si­ble is to en­sure that their lega­cy, the things they stood and fought for, is not shelved and for­got­ten. Dana stood for many things but what she fought for is what de­fines her," he added.