Dan M. Alsobrooks
"Lest We Forget"
The establishment of a Prosecutor’s Memorial was one of the priorities I placed before the NDAA Board when I ran for NDAA president. The response from prosecutors since the NDAA Board approved the memorial project in Austin last November has been overwhelming. Prosecutors from more than 10 states have already pledged over $15,000 in support of the memorial. I am certain we will soon have a memorial in which America’s prosecutors can take great pride.
Memorials, like poetry, are meant to stand for much more than the mere words or physical appearance that constitutes them. The memorial that NDAA is working to establish at the Ernest F. Hollings National Advocacy Center will specifically honor those who have died while carrying out their duty as prosecutors. But the prosecutors named in our memorial will stand for something beyond just themselves and the ultimate sacrifice they have made. They are symbols of all those thousands of prosecutors who, since the founding of our nation, have given so much of themselves to protect the rights and the safety of every citizen. Many heroes have come from the ranks of state and federal prosecutors, like Fred Capps from Kentucky, Paul R. McLaughlin from Massachusetts, Chris Marshall from Texas and Eugene Berry from Florida.
Every year the U.S. Department of Justice survey of state prosecutors shows a consistent pattern: staff members in just under 50 percent of prosecutors’ offices are annually the target of a work-related threat or assault. For example, many of you may know that NDAA vice president and Georgia prosecutor J. Tom Morgan has been targeted by those who have been subjects of his investigation and prosecution of entrenched and organized political corruption. It is not at all unusual for prosecutors to wear a bulletproof vest or require security guards for their home and family. In my travels across America as NDAA president, I have learned that threats to the lives and safety of prosecutors and their staffs are far too common. Assassination has been an occupational hazard for prosecutors in many parts of the world. And under specter of terrorism, we can no longer assume that we are insulated from such international evils.
Beside the physical danger prosecutors face as they perform their jobs, there may be no other public office that puts its holder in a metaphorical line of fire from defendants and their lawyers, the media, the public and political enemies every time the powers of the office are exercised.
If anyone tried to tell an audience of prosecutors that they were in their jobs for the pay, they would get a big laugh and maybe a few boos. We do this job because we want to contribute to our communities and make them better places to live. Doing the right thing, no matter what the political or personal risk has been the driving force of almost every prosecutor I have known.
Prosecutors don’t think of themselves as heroes. We tend to respond to praise, criticism and, yes, danger by saying “I’m just doing my job.” In fact most of us would consider it the highest of compliments if people said of us “you just did your job.” The Prosecutor’s Memorial will say that about all prosecutors, past, present and future.
1Rudyard Kipling,
Recessional June 22, 1897.
