Notes from the National College

Farewell…

By Robert Fertitta, Dean

This will be my last message because I am retiring as dean of the National College of District Attorneys this summer.

I have to admit that I could not have imagined when I attended the first Career Prosecutor Course at the University of Houston in 1970 as a young assistant prosecutor that I would one day have the honor of being selected as the dean of the National College of District Attorneys. Now after 12 years as dean, it is time to hand over the reins to a new dean. That new dean, Mary Galvin, is a graduate of the 1975 Career Prosecutor Course and has been involved with the college ever since—she received the Distinguished Faculty Award—the college’s highest faculty award in 1999. She has not only been a great supporter of the college but also has been an important reason for its success. I wish her well—knowing that under her direction, the college, as an integral part of NDAA, will enter a new era with a new vision, new ideas and new energy.

The new dean will direct a different college in many ways than the one I encountered in 1974. Although I always considered the college to have been a part of NDAA, many others were confused about the relationship between the two organizations. Now that the college has officially merged into NDAA as its Education Division, that confusion should be over. Of course, the merger did not take place to end confusion but more importantly it was the logical and right thing to do. Another major difference between the college in 1974 and the college today is the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina. Certainly no one could have imagined in 1969 when the college was established by NDAA, the American College of Trial Lawyers and the ABA that there would ever be such a place to train the nation’s prosecutors—let alone side by side with the Department of Justice. 

The continued vitality of the college through the years is due to the interest and dedication of many people—the support staff and the lawyers of the college, the elected and appointed prosecutors and their assistants and deputies who have served as faculty of the college and attended courses as students, the members of the Board of Regents and my predecessors who served as dean before me. 

I will miss my everyday activities at the college that have been a part of my life for such a long time and I will miss seeing all the great people that I have been fortunate to know through my position at the college. However, I look forward to working with NDAA, an organization that I joined as a new assistant almost 40 years ago, on the Prosecution Standards revision project, as a liaison for NDAA to the ABA, to expand the publications of NDAA and to help establish a Master of Laws program for prosecutors.

I am now going to take this opportunity to mention a few people that I want to thank by name. The current chairman of the Board of Regents, John Justice, in sickness and in health, has always been there for me with sage advice and direction. When I was selected dean, there had been three deans of the college before me. The first was William Walsh, an attorney in Houston, who was the chair of the Criminal Law Section of the American Bar Association. He was the true organizer of the college. He created the Career Prosecutor Course with the assistance of Frank Coakley, who had recently retired as district attorney in Alameda County, California, after 47 years of service. As an aside, when Bill Walsh’s mother passed away, she left a substantial bequest to the college. Bill Walsh was succeeded by George Van Hoomissen who became the dean immediately after being re-elected district attorney in Portland, Oregon. Although George was dean for only two years—he was elected to the Supreme Court of Oregon—he expanded the role of the college beyond the Career Prosecutor Course to regional training across the country. He was succeeded by John Jay Douglass, who, at the time, was the commandant of the U.S. Army JAG School at the University of Virginia. During his tenure the college matured into the respected institution that I was fortunate to be asked to direct. He was truly my mentor. All prosecutors owe a deep debt of gratitude to these men for their foresight and diligence.

There are two others, first Tom Charron, who was the chairman of the Board of Regents when I was selected as dean and who continued to serve in that position until he was selected to serve as the director of education at the National Advocacy Center for NDAA and who then enticed me to relocate to Columbia from Houston and then proceeded to move to Washington as our executive director. We have remained friends and colleagues through it all. His vision and leadership have been instrumental in the vitality of the college and will do the same for NDAA in the years to come. The other person is my wife Diane. She has put up with me through almost 35 years of marriage—need I say more?

An Update on the National Center for Prosecution Ethics

The National Center for Prosecution Ethics has several projects underway of interest to state and local prosecutors: the publication of a second edition of Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Guide to Ethics and Professional Responsibility, updating the center’s Web site, and support work for NDAA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Revision of the Prosecution Standards.

The first edition of Doing Justice was published in 2002. While it was published just after the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates acted on Ethics 2000 and issued amendments to the Model Rules, it was unable to address the impact of the new rules. Now that several years have passed and a large majority of states have undertaken reviews of their rules, we have only recently been able to begin to see the impact of Ethics 2000 and the impact of rule changes on prosecutors across the country. The authors for the second edition, all of whom are sharing their experience and knowledge in the area of ethics and professionalism on a volunteer basis, have reviewed the new rules in the different states as well as the ethics advisory and disciplinary opinions that affect prosecutors. The goal is to have a new edition of Doing Justice that will be even more useful to prosecutors in the performance of their day-to-day duties. Look for the second edition to be published this summer.

The center’s Web site, www.ethicsforprosecutors.com, continues to be its major project. Most of the time dedicated to the work of the center is spent doing research—finding, reading and summarizing ethics advisory, disciplinary and appellate opinions for posting on the site’s “research” pages. If you haven’t yet visited the site, you should. The “research” pages include topical indexes of ethics advisory, disciplinary and appellate decisions as well as a topical index of secondary resources, a listing of quotations relating to prosecutors or the prosecution function, and a state-by-state index of all of the opinions posted on the site. Some of the opinions, for which we have obtained permission to post, are available in PDF format on the site. And, for those who want to conduct their own research, we have a “links” page with links to publicly accessible sites in most of the states where rules, ethics advisory and appellate opinions can be found. We have also finished a revision of the site’s forum, which is restricted to members only (membership is free and open to all prosecutors), and we are now using Yahoo in an effort to make the forum more user friendly.

The last major project of the center is providing support for NDAA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Revision of the Prosecution Standards. We have conducted a number of working group meetings since December 2004 for the purpose of reviewing the current standards and getting feedback on changes from state and local prosecutors. The committee is currently working on the revision and is expected to complete its work within the next two years.

We also continue to be available to provide assistance to state and local prosecutors. While we cannot provide opinions or legal advice, we share research with members so they can determine appropriate resolution of issues under an individual state’s rules and law.

The National Center for Prosecution Ethics welcomes comments and suggestions, as well as information on opinions that we do not already have posted on our Web site. Please contact us at ethics@law.law.sc.edu.