With several hundred Washington VIPs, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers and Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi present and applauding, Maricopa County (Phoenix, Arizona) Attorney Richard M. (Rick) Romley was honored at a dinner during the Veterans Day weekend as recipient of the 2001 Unsung Hero Award. The award is given annually to the Outstanding Disabled Veteran of the Year, selected by the Disabled American Veterans organization. Romley was 19 when a land mine blew off his lower legs while he was on a morning patrol in Vietnam with his Marine squad. After undergoing more than 30 operations, he returned to Arizona and learned to walk with prosthetic limbs. He then attended Arizona State University, where he graduated with honors with a degree in business management and began a five-year career as owner-operator of a retail business. During this period he decided on a career change, so he sold his business and returned to Arizona State University to earn a law degree. Early in his law career he decided that he wanted to be a prosecutor and in 1989 he became head of the nation’s sixth largest prosecuting attorney’s office. He has been serving in that post ever since. During his remarks at the Washington dinner, Romley read a letter from his childhood friend, David Schaeffer, who had written before he died in the war in which Americans should never forget those who fought for their country. Romley said earlier that his toughest moment at the dinner would be in trying to read the letter without choking up. In presenting the award to Romley, award founder Lois Pope declared, “Without people like Rick, we wouldn’t be the land of the free.”

After serving more than a quarter of a century as Yakima County (Washington) Prosecuting Attorney, Jeffrey C. (Jeff) Sullivan has resigned to join the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle as chief of the criminal division for western Washington. In his new job, Sullivan, 58, a longtime NDAA member and former vice president, will supervise more than 30 attorneys who prosecute federal cases involving fraud, drugs, terrorism, illegal immigration and organized crime. Sullivan, a native of Yakima, said he is leaving primarily so that he and his wife, Patsy, can be closer to their children and a majority of their grandchildren, who live in the Seattle area. “I have an opportunity to be close to my children and an opportunity to stay in a field I love. Those were the two motivating factors.” Sullivan won a contested race for prosecuting attorney in 1974 and was re-elected six times without opposition. Sullivan’s announcement of his resignation generated widespread expressions of regret in and outside the Yakima legal community, as well as praise for his integrity, honesty, leadership, devotion to his job and appreciation of the importance of family. His top deputy, Ron Zirkle, said, “He has treated everyone who worked for him the way he wanted to be treated. Family has always come first. He put staff members’ families first.” Yakima County Superior Court Judge James Gavin, who has known Sullivan for 30 years, says Sullivan’s departure is a blow to the county, adding that Sullivan “has been a very good prosecutor and has knowledge about the county that no one else possesses.” Supervising Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Kresse of Yakima County, said Sullivan “is a great mentor,” adding that “Yakima County won’t realize its loss until he is gone.” Of his membership in NDAA, Sullivan declared, “I have to say that my time on the NDAA board has been one of the highlights of my professional career. NDAA is the finest organization I’ve been associated with. I feel fortunate to have been in NDAA during the time that it moved forward dramatically in becoming a stronger voice for American prosecutors. It has become a much more active voice in Washington, DC in influencing federal policy in assisting American prosecutors and I have every reason to believe this is going to continue. Along with leaving my office and the close associations that I have had there, one of my deepest regrets will be not being a member of the NDAA board.”

In accepting the Special Achievement Award of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP) at the association’s 2001 conference in Sydney, Australia, Anton R. Ackerman, deputy director of public prosecutions for the Transvaal region of South Africa, described the role of the prosecutor in terms that every prosecutor could appreciate, regardless of nationality. Recalling that a distinguished South African judge had once called him to his chambers and told him, “Anton, if you want to be difficult, you need to be right,” Ackerman declared, “If one is in pursuit of justice and the rule of law, one always is right. And the victims of crime and the community demand of one to be difficult in order to restore the balance that has been upset by the accused. The prosecutor’s profession is a noble one. We might not always be portrayed as the good guys in films or TV shows. Our wives and children might not have all the overseas holidays that the families of our defense counterparts enjoy. And we might not have the same social standing in the community as defense advocates. But saliently and behind the scenes, we are respected and admired by the community, which depends on us to see that justice is done. The reward for prosecuting is the sense of fulfillment and the certainty that one has made a difference for the good. To echo the words of the French playwright Alain LeSage, ‘Justice is such a fine thing that we cannot pay too dearly for it.’” Ackerman received the Special Achievement Award for what the association called “his special dedication in the pursuit of his professional responsibilities and the discharge of same in the face of hardship and adversity in circumstances that deserve special recognition.”

Thomas W. (Tom) Sorrells, has left his longtime position as executive director of the Alabama Office of Prosecution Services and the Alabama District Attorneys Association to become a supernumerary prosecutor, taking prosecution assignments throughout the state. One of the founders of the Office of Prosecution Services and one of the best-known prosecutor coordinators nationally, Sorrells served as DA of Alabama’s 20th Judicial Circuit (Dothan) in the 1980s and as NDAA state director for Alabama. In recent years he served as the National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators’ representative on the NDAA Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He was the first prosecutor coordinator representative on the National Advocacy Center’s advisory committee.

Barbara LaWall, Pima County (Arizona) Attorney and a member of the NDAA and APRI Boards of Directors, has been named Citizen of the Year by the Citizens of Arizona to Prevent Gun Violence (CAPGV). LaWall, whose jurisdiction encompasses Tucson, was recognized for her dedicated prosecution of gun crimes, providing technical and financial support to organizations advocating decreasing gun violence and closing gun show legal loopholes. Gerry Anderson, executive director of CAPGV, said, “Since being elected in 1996, Ms. LaWall has been a fighter for victims and a strong advocate of ways to combat the ever-increasing gun violence in our community.”

Marna McLendon, state’s attorney for Howard County, Maryland, is one of five Maryland legal professionals going to St. Petersburg, Russia, to train Russian prosecutors, judges, law enforcement offices, defense attorneys and court administrators. Other members of the team are two Maryland judges, a Baltimore defense attorney and counsel for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The team’s visit comes at a time when Russia is undergoing a major reform of its court system and is instituting a new criminal code and criminal procedure code. Because of these reforms, the Maryland team will discuss plea negotiations, a new subject for Russian prosecutors and defense attorneys. It will also discuss interagency cooperation among law enforcement agencies and other cooperative efforts within the American criminal justice system. The training program is sponsored by the Vermont Karelia Rule of Law Project and the Russian-American Rule of Law Consortium.

James (Jimmy) Gurule, Treasury’s new undersecretary for enforcement, is a former assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), as well as a former assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, where he was deputy chief of the Major Narcotics Section. Immediately prior to assuming his present position, he was a professor of criminal law and criminal litigation at the Notre Dame University Law School.

Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a former local prosecutor who gained fame in the late 1980s for successfully trying a bizarre murder case in northeast Ohio, has been appointed to the House Ethics Committee seat vacated with the resignation of Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) after Hutchinson’s appointment as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. LaTourette was first elected to the House in 1994. Earlier, as Lake County prosecuting attorney, he came to prominence when he handled the case of the Kirtland cult murders, in which a religious cult killed an entire family and buried the bodies in a barn.

Seattle police and federal investigators have been examining the case files of veteran federal prosecutor Thomas C. Wales, for possible clues to who shot Wales to death as he was working in his home office. Wales, an assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle, was a member of the office’s fraud unit and also headed a prominent gun control group. In the latter role, he had become somewhat of a controversial figure in a state where voters overwhelmingly rejected an initiative to require trigger locks and safety training for gun owners. The initiative lost by a 71-29 percent margin, losing in every county.

Missouri Governor Bob Holden has appointed two new county prosecuting attorneys: Richelle L. Christensen is the new prosecuting attorney for Maries County and Tammy J. Glick is the new prosecuting attorney for Platte County.

Four California prosecutors have received gubernatorial appointments to the bench in their respective jurisdictions. The appointees and their assignments: Assistant DA Susan Breall to the San Francisco County Superior Court; Deputy DAs Martin L. Herscovitz and Cynthia Rayvis to the Los Angeles County Superior Court; and Deputy DA Lydia Villareal to the Monterey County Superior Court.

Deaths:

Washington prosecutors are mourning the loss of Michael (Mike) Redman, former executive secretary of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and a former prosecuting attorney of San Juan County. He died at 59 of pancreatic cancer. One of Redman’s longtime friends, Norm Maleng, King County (Seattle) prosecuting attorney, said that Mike Redman “was a prosecutor’s prosecutor—smart, funny and completely dedicated to the prosecutor’s mission of improving the criminal justice system.” Remarking that Redman’s military experience in Vietnam “shaped who he was,” Maleng said, “He was definitely the guy you wanted in your foxhole when the action started.” .