Mark Hasse, Lay At Rest, And With Honor

In the courtyard of the National Advocacy Center, the premier US training facility for prosecutors in Columbia, South Carolina, there is a monument to prosecuting attorneys who have been killed in relation to their official duties. A section of it is shown above, including the name of Sean Healy, a bright, rookie ADA in the Bronx, New York who was gunned down senselessly in August of 1990 near the same office I worked in on E. 161st Street.Fallen prosecutors constitue an honored and thankfully small group. Like judges, they aren't frequently targeted by the defendants they interact with in court. Most criminals consider the justice process a cost of doing business. Over the years I encountered men I prosecuted, whether successfully or not, in the communities where I lived and worked, sometimes months or years after the fact. The vast majority were polite and cordial, some actually friendly. Where they were concerned, it wasn't personal. And they were right; even in my work where facts can be horrific and emotions run high, it wasn't.I got one death threat in over ten years as a trial attorney that I thought was credible. It arose out of a misdemeanor domestic violence case I tried that was from my perspective unremarkable. I'm sure it had little to do with me as the prosecutor and more to do with the wandering focus of the defendant who threatened a few times to kill me, once on a DC street where I somehow crossed his path on the way to a hockey game with a friend. For a while I ignored it, until one day at a post-trial hearing where he stared at me until he caught my eye, then drew his index finger over his throat and pointed at me. At that point I told Randy Sengel, the Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Alexandria, Virginia where I was then a junior ACA. Randy is a deeply respected, honorable public servant and brilliant man, but perhaps known most for his sphinx-like reticence and un-rattled, deadpan approach to just about everything. When I gave him the details, he told me it was rare but that it happened, and that I should call a detective nicknamed Scotty and make a report.But Scotty was a homicide detective, I pointed out."Yeah," Randy said with a shrug. "If someone threatens your life, that's what you do."I made the report, Detective Scott did his job, the guy eventually turned his focus elsewhere, and I'm still here. Mark Hasse, a veteran and apparently well-respected assistant district attorney from near Dallas, Texas, is not. Hasse was gunned down, execution style, outside of his office last week, very possibly in relation to his duties as a felony ADA. Investigators are searching desperately for answers, but eight days later they appear to remain elusive. He will be laid to rest tomorrow. Hasse appears to have been a valued prosecutor and a well-liked figure in both the courtroom and the community. If his service was cut short by murderers out to silence him and and thwart the process he sought to uphold, that act is indeed "an attack on our criminal justice system" as a Texas judge referred to it. Targeting those in the system, whether police, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys or jurors, is the final assault on the rule of law.Of course, front line responders like police officers remain in far more danger. I drove extensively through Southern California this past week and was sobered to see how many highways are dedicated to members of the California Highway Patrol who died in the line. For now, at least, most of us in the system who practice law are far safer in our duties. Still, if Hasse was killed in the name of blurring the line between civil society and what lies beneath, then everyone- within Kaufman, Texas and far beyond- should be gravely concerned.