Notes from the National College
the Education Division of NDAA

By Thomas J. Weilert, Assistant Director, National Center for Prosecution Ethics

National Center for Prosecution Ethics
Activity Report

The National Center for Prosecution Ethics (NCPE) is taking an active role in the project to revise the NDAA National Prosecution Standards. The publication’s second edition, which is no longer in print but is available on the NDAA Web site, is being updated into what is hoped will be a useful and persuasive statement of guidelines for prosecutors in areas of ethics and professionalism. The NCPE has conducted a survey of the NDAA board to identify the areas of concern that should be addressed by the new standards. The NCPE is currently working with the NDAA committee appointed to revise the standards by providing research and editing assistance.

The NCPE continues forging toward its goal of providing prosecutors with a valuable source of information to deal with ethical and professionalism issues that arise during the performance of their duties. The NCPE Web site, www.ethicsforprosecutors.com, has been recently updated to add three new indexes to assist in research. The new indexes are: “Topical Index of Secondary Resources,” “Topical Index of Appellate Decisions” and “State-by-State Index of Ethics Advisory Opinions, Attorney Disciplinary Opinions and Appellate Opinions.” The latter index allows prosecutors to easily direct their research to resources in their home jurisdiction. All of these additions are still works in progress and are being updated to include more states and more resources on a regular basis. The NCPE welcomes input from prosecutors regarding advisory opinions, disciplinary opinions and appellate decisions that should be included in the Web site indexes. Please send your suggestions for inclusion to ethics@law.law.sc.edu.

The NCPE staff is also reviewing the members’ forum section of the Web site in an effort to make it more user-friendly and to increase its usefulness to prosecutors. Our goal is to make it easier for prosecutors to communicate, thus enabling discussion of ethical concerns without compromising the security of the forum. Watch for further developments.