NDAA President Vows to Respond to Cybercrime and Attacks on Prosecutors

Kevin P. Meenan, district attorney of the 7th Judicial District of Wyoming (Natrona County, including the city of Casper), assumed the presidency of NDAA at the association’s annual summer conference in Boston. He pledged to help the nation’s prosecutors use the latest technology not only to meet the challenge of cybercrime, but also to respond more effectively to any attacks that distort the role or diminish the image of prosecutors. After receiving the symbolic presidential gavel from outgoing president Robert M. A. Johnson, Meenan, the association’s 50th president, pointed out that while technology has provided criminals with new tools and prosecutors with new opportunities as well as challenges, the essential nature of crime has not changed over the years.

“What has changed in crime,” Meenan explained, “is only the way in which it is committed. When someone online has his or her identity stolen and is defrauded of all their money from their bank accounts and credit cards via the computer, that’s not a new crime. It’s just a new way of accomplishing the crime. When young children are stalked on the Internet and people who meet someone on a chat room suddenly find they have a new threat and a stranger in their lives, that’s not a new crime. It’s just a new way to get it done. And when we have a report of a molested child and we go to the soccer coach’s house and discover a massive Internet child pornography ring, that’s not a new crime. It’s just a new way for a criminal to get to it. The question is: are we keeping up (with these new threats)?”

Meenan said in the year of his presidency he intends to explore and utilize all possible ways in which NDAA can assist prosecutors to use technology to fight crime as well as to “allow us to respond more quickly and effectively (to challenges and attacks), and to be an even more effective voice for prosecutors.”

Outgoing President Johnson, in one of his last official acts, presented presidential awards to Robert H. Macy, former NDAA president (1992-93), who retired in July after more than 20 years as the district attorney representing Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Sandra A. Connor, state’s attorney of Baltimore County, Maryland, and a past NDAA vice president, for her work on the National Prosecution Standards; and James Manak, who retired this year after 34 years as a legal writer and editor for NDAA.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, President Meenan presented an award to outgoing President Johnson for “(raising) the sights of this association to new levels, formulating effective responses to challenges, such as the public image of prosecutors and ethics issues that go to the heart of what we are about.”

Meenan named members of his 2001-2002 Executive Committee: Chairman of the Board of Directors Robert M. A. Johnson, Anoka, Minnesota; President-elect Dan M. Alsobrooks, Charlotte, Tennessee; Treasurer John M. (Jack) Bailey, Rocky Hill, Connecticut; Thomas J. Esch, Kalispell, Montana; Mathias H. (Mat) Heck, Jr., Dayton, Ohio; William L. Murphy, Staten Island, New York; J. Tom Morgan, Decatur, Georgia; James C. Backstrom, Hastings, Minnesota; Robert Honecker, Freehold, New Jersey; and Suzanne McClain Atwood, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.