Dan M. Alsobrooks
In 1998 Dan M. Alsobrooks was in his 20th year as a Tennessee prosecutor and skilled courtroom lawyer, but he had reached a critical point in his career. He had concluded regretfully that he was professionally burned out.
At about the same time he heard about the National College of District Attorneys (NCDA), then situated in Houston, Texas—he wasn’t yet familiar with NDAA—and took an opportunity to attend the college’s career prosecutor course.
Today, Dan Alsobrooks, district attorney general of Tennessee’s 23d Judicial District, is the 51st president of NDAA, representing America’s local prosecutors. Before his one-year term ends, he’ll probably testify before Congress on criminal justice legislation, confer with the attorney general often on federal policies affecting prosecutors, possibly talk to the president about administration criminal justice initiatives, travel thousands of miles on association business, be quoted frequently in the news media and speak at more conferences, hearings and other assemblages than he ever would have expected.
For reaching the pinnacle of his profession, Alsobrooks credits those three weeks at NCDA, plus his later experience as a faculty advisor and instructor at the college, with inspiring and re-energizing him and re-setting his sights. “It came at a perfect time in my career,” he declares. “Without those experiences, I never would have had the confidence to tackle this job.
“I opted to teach at the college,” he explains, “probably because of my background as the son of school teachers, and I absolutely loved the opportunity to be rubbing elbows with the very best prosecutors in the country, both teachers and students. This got me re-charged. I discovered that maybe my skills were average or above and that gave me confidence to run for public office. My boss was retiring, I ran for the job and was elected in 1990.”
Alsobrooks’s jurisdiction covers five counties in what he calls “northwest middle Tennessee.” Three counties are preponderantly rural and two are bedroom communities for Nashville. The district has a total population of 117,000 spread over 1,983 square miles.
How does he cover such a huge district?
“We do a lot of traveling,” Alsobrooks explains. “I have two branch offices and I spread my operation out. One of the challenges is to make sure that all the bases are covered every day, because there are courts in session all the time. Sometimes I have 50 to 75 miles between courts. It involves a lot of traveling, phoning and e-mailing. Technology helps.”
Alsobrooks does this with a staff that he describes as “the equivalent of seven assistants on the criminal side and one-and-a-half on the civil side, including child support collections.” He also has five state-paid and two locally paid assistants, some of them part-time. Additionally he has lured back, as a part-time assistant, a former district attorney general and former boss, who returned to the office after eight years of retirement.
As would be expected, most of the crime in the jurisdiction spills over from neighboring Nashville. As a result, Alsobrooks says, “we get some pretty sophisticated and violent crimes like drug trafficking, meth labs and homicide.” Although his job is largely administrative, the courtroom lawyer instinct persists and Alsobrooks still prosecutes most of the homicide cases in his district, which average between three and eight a year.
Looking, as president of NDAA, at the challenges facing all prosecutors, Alsobrooks considers the internationalization of crime near the top. “The problems of prosecutors today, whether they’re in New York, Los Angeles or Dickson, Tennessee,” he says, “are no longer just local problems. You’re dealing now with people who are importing drugs from foreign countries and criminals in other countries who are using the Internet to embezzle money from banks and defraud senior citizens.”
Another of his concerns is that “victims’ expectations of prosecutors are much greater today, and rightfully so.” Noting that victim assistance now is an integral part of what prosecutors do, he says, “The challenge to prosecutors is to meet those expectations and get victims to feel that they are having not only their day in court, but a fair and reasonable day in court.”
Referring to the terrorist threat, he added, “Our jobs have become more international and complicated in scope as we are being attacked from without and within by people who have no regard for the traditional safeties and freedoms that we have come to expect in this country.
“My number one goal as president of NDAA this year,” he adds, “will be to make every effort to support the war on terrorism, both domestic and international.”
Alsobrooks has three additional goals for NDAA during his term:
• “To protect and expand educational training and service by APRI and NCDA at the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina.”
• “To improve our legislative efforts, including seeking loan forgiveness for new prosecutors.”
• “To establish an appropriate memorial to prosecutors killed in the line of duty.”
To further these goals, Alsobrooks declared, “We will be meeting with prosecutors from our international neighbors, Canada and Mexico. I know it sounds strange to hear a prosecutor from a small jurisdiction in Tennessee talking global, but it’s essential that we explore and expand relationships in this historic time period. Prosecutors as a group have no small amount of experience hunting down criminals and bringing them to justice. We all want to be patriots in this war.”
Dan Alsobrooks is a native Tennessean. He was born in Erin, a small rural community in Houston County, part of his district, and populated largely by residents of Irish descent. His father was his first school principal and his mother was one of his high school teachers. Except for law school and college he has lived in the area he now serves all his life. For the last 20 years he has lived in Dickson (population: 12,244), in the center of his district.
Asked about his relations with the news media, Dan Alsobrooks replies, “I have a very close relationship with the media, because I live with the investigative reporter for a Nashville TV station.”
It’s a great line. He is referring to his wife, Dana Kaye (Alsobrooks). He says, “I think the relationship has been good for me. I thought I understood what the media did in preparing their stories each day, but I know it intimately now, for I watch my wife in her business and the challenges she faces. I’ve learned a lot from her. Our relationship with the press is one we prosecutors are not comfortable with. But I have found from watching her work and from working with the press myself with both the print and TV media that if you’re open with them and tell them the truth and work with them in a professional manner, you’ll be treated reasonably well most of the time.” At the time of the interview for this article, Dana Kaye Alsobrooks had just returned from Afghanistan, where she accompanied units of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, which is partially located in Alsobrooks’s district.
The Alsobrookses have a 19-year-old son, a 16-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old daughter.
As he goes back over his prosecutorial career, he keeps referring to NCDA and especially Dean Bob Fertitta and Jim Dedman, for whom he has the highest regard.
“I’m humbled to be associated with them, he says, “and I hope they’re a little proud of what I’ve done.”
They are. Says Dean Fertitta:
“The college has long believed that diversity of jurisdiction and experience in prosecutor training workshops provide a much richer training experience for all involved. Dan Alsobrooks is a good example of why the college has maintained that belief. Dan’s trial skills and understanding of the role of the prosecutor, honed from his multi-county, often very rural experience, brought a perspective and wisdom to workshop sessions that benefited even those from the very largest offices.
“The college takes very seriously the responsibility of choosing those Career Prosecutor Course graduates who are invited back the following year to assist with the training. Hours are spent going over lists and details. Dan Alsobrooks was an easy choice to be invited back for the 1989 course because of the leadership skills he demonstrated in the workshops the previous year. Even a massive tropical storm didn’t dampen his spirits.”
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