The status of the National Advocacy Center.

• Author: Burns, Scott

IN 2008 ALONE, the Department of Justice reported more than 16,000 murders, 89,000 forcible rapes, 441,000 robberies, and 9,750,000 property crimes. The burden of prosecuting these cases, and the burden of representing defendants charged with these crimes, falls overwhelmingly on state and local prosecutors and on state public defender systems. (It is estimated that over 95 percent of all criminal cases in America are handled by state and local prosecutors.) Yet, federal funding to train prosecutors is virtually nonexistent. As many of you know by now, funding for the state and local side of the National Advocacy Center (NAC) in Columbia, South Carolina, has steadily decreased over the years (from a high of $4.75 million to an earmark in Congress this year at $500,000), and unfortunately, $500,000 is not enough to keep the doors open. It has also become abundantly clear that the Department of Justice intends to expand its presence in Columbia and at the NAC as it has moved a substantial portion of its Executive Office of United States Attorneys to South Carolina and recently leased two buildings from the University of South Carolina for $100 million over a 20-year period; moreover, the U.S. Attorneys received $15.3 million for the NAC in fiscal year 2009 and its budget seems to increase every year. The final blow is the fact that our NAC funding has always been by earmark (the federal side has always been a line item) and both Democrats and Republicans have pretty much said there will be "no earmarks" for the next couple of years.

Fortunately, the NDAA Executive Committee and the NDAA Board of Directors saw this coming over a year ago. A call for action was sent out and every Board Member was asked to go back to their state and see if it was feasible to try and replicate the NAC in their state--i.e., get support from their Congressional Delegation, a law school and key community stakeholders. On November 20, 2010, presentations were made to the Board in Scottsdale, Arizona, at our fall meeting, and the presentation made by Utah was overwhelmingly supported by a formal vote. The Utah contingency was led by the dean of the University of Utah Law School, Hiram Chodosh, District Attorney Lohra Miller, Professor Paul Cassell and Professor Daniel Medwed. They brought with them strong letters of support from Senator Orrin Hatch as well as Utah's governor and attorney general and Salt Lake City's mayor and Chamber of Commerce.

The next challenge...