My commitments to you.

AuthorFitzpatrick, William J.
PositionNational District Attorneys Ass'n 2015-2016 president - President's page

Thank you President Moore and thank you for your stewardship of this great organization. Serving as president of NDAA is an honor and an opportunity of a lifetime and I will not squander a single moment. For the next 365 days I will think every day on how to make America's prosecutors better at dispensing justice. Although I have a number of objectives, let me make three commitments to you:

  1. We are not spending the next 12 months talking about audits. Jonathan Blodgett has been tasked and limited only by his imagination and skills to obtain private funding streams and create an endowment fund to bring us financial independence. We are never again going to endorse candidates for elected or judicial office merely for the sake of political capital that NEVER materializes. We are going to support our friends professionally, and forcefully criticize our opponents. And from this day forward Fitz' Rule #1: we will speak about the present, and our unbridled future, but not about the past.

  2. I will always search for the truth. If you want to debate a prosecutor's use of the death penalty or any other issue, then let's have an honest debate. Don't tell Americans that Mumia Abu Jamal is a victim of a racist system. Although beloved by Hollywood, he is nothing but a gutless cop-killing coward who is now an honorary citizen of Paris, a city our ancestors liberated twice in the last century. Truth still matters and I promise you no matter how hard I have to fight, this president will speak the truth on your behalf.

    I always recall the sad case of Jack and Marion Fisher. A number of years ago at a cold case meeting, the homicide of Marion Fisher came up. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled with her own stocking. Her husband Jack had been the main suspect for over a quarter century. In fact, at said meeting, a cop opined, "The husband did it ... we just can't prove it." One of our county's DNA technicians suggested she be allowed to test a cloth found near Marion's body. Two weeks later, she called to tell me a full DNA profile had been recovered; only it wasn't Jack Fisher. The killer was a man named Carlton Gary who was then residing on death row in Georgia for strangling over a dozen women. In fact, his nickname is the "Stocking Strangler." One of the first calls I made was to a man I had never met, Jack Fisher, and we talked for almost an hour. He asked if I could send him proof of what I had just told him as one of his children was...

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