[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 1, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E895-E896]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           RECOGNIZING THE RETIREMENT OF ROBERT F. HORAN, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 1, 2007

  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to bring the attention of the 
House to the retirement of Fairfax County chief prosecutor Robert F. 
Horan Jr. Having served 10 terms, he is the longest serving prosecutor 
in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia and one of the very best 
in America. His dedicated service to law enforcement in northern 
Virginia is without equal. I am sure the decision to step down after 40 
years was extremely difficult given his dedication to public service 
and to the people of Fairfax County.
  I have had the pleasure to call Bob my friend for many, many years. 
When Bob was first elected as the county's Commonwealth's attorney in 
1967, he and his wife Monica made the decision to raise their family 
right here in northern Virginia, they have watched Fairfax County grow 
from a rural farm county into a bustling suburb and the most populous 
county in Virginia. Bob and Monica's three boys, Robert F. Horan III, 
Kevin, and Timothy all reside locally and are a testament to their 
father's fondness for the northern Virginia area.
  Bob's accomplishments as chief prosecutor are legendary. He has tried 
and won several high profile cases including the 1993 sniper shooting 
at CIA headquarters as well as the Washington sniper case against Lee 
Boyd Malvo. Bob has received numerous awards and recognitions, and 
rightfully so. I have inserted for the Record a recent Washington Post 
article which details his unparalleled career.
  Perhaps more important than all of his courtroom successes is the way 
that Bob conducts himself both inside and outside of the courtroom. Bob 
is a man of the highest moral character, a true Virginia gentleman, a 
family man, and loyal friend. Bob is a legend in the law enforcement 
and with Bob's retirement, an era is truly coming to an end in Fairfax 
County. I suspect that as Bob prepares for retirement he is looking 
forward to spending more time with his wife, 3 children, and 
grandchildren, T.J., Maggie, and Jennifer. We wish him the best and 
thank him for his dedicated service to the people. I ask that my 
colleagues in the House join with me in recognizing the outstanding 
career of Robert F. Horan, Jr.

                 [From Washington Post, Apr. 15, 2007]

    After 40 Years Prosecuting Crimes, Retirement Is Scary Prospect

                            (By Tom Jackman)

       It's hard to picture Robert F. Horan Jr. as a defense 
     attorney. But there was a time, in the mid-1960s, when the 
     man who would become Fairfax County's chief prosecutor for 40 
     years worked on the other side of the courtroom.
       Then, in 1966, while he was representing a man charged with 
     sexual assault, the Supreme Court ruled that suspects must be 
     advised of their rights, a precursor to the Miranda case. 
     Horan argued that his client's confession was illegal, a 
     judge threw it out and the man ultimately was acquitted.
       ``Which kind of soured me on the system,'' Horan said. 
     ``For the police to have taken an honest statement from the 
     guy, and it gets thrown out, that didn't sit well.''
       A year later, the chief judge of Fairfax asked him to be 
     the commonwealth's attorney. And he has been ever since.
       Last week, Horan (D) announced that he will not seek an 
     11th term. Horan said he will resign in late summer or early 
     fall rather than serve out his term, clearing the way for his 
     chief deputy, Raymond F. Morrogh (D), to run as the acting 
     commonwealth's attorney in the November general election.
       Horan agonized over his decision to step down when he would 
     have been unopposed. He said his declining hearing has 
     troubled him, particularly in whispered bench conferences, 
     and he noted that he would be 75 at election time.
       But still, even after he decided to retire, he was 
     ambivalent about leaving a job he clearly loves. ``I'm not 
     totally happy with it, I concede that,'' he said. ``My wife 
     is happy with it.''
       His wife, Monica, also played a role in keeping the New 
     Jersey native in Northern Virginia in the early 1960s, paving 
     the way for him to become the longest-serving prosecutor in 
     the state and an institution among prosecutors nationwide.
       After Horan graduated from Georgetown's law school in 1961, 
     he was faced with the decision of staying in the area or 
     returning to New Jersey. But to obtain a law license in New 
     Jersey, a six-month clerkship was required.
       Horan and his wife had one child and a second on the way. 
     ``I couldn't afford to be a clerk for six months,'' he said. 
     ``So we stayed in Virginia and never regretted it.''
       Horan spent two years as a Fairfax assistant prosecutor and 
     two years in private practice. He was appointed the county's 
     top prosecutor in March 1967, when Ralph G. Louk stepped 
     down. He faced opposition in 1967, 1971 and 1975 but not 
     again until 1995. And not since.
       In 1967, the county was still partly rural, with vast 
     undeveloped stretches and some large cattle farms. ``There 
     were no stoplights

[[Page E896]]

     in Seven Corners,'' he recalled of the now complicated 
     intersection near Falls Church. Horan had five assistant 
     prosecutors that year. Today, he has 22, still a low number 
     compared with surrounding counties.
       But remarkably, ``the assistants' caseloads are roughly 
     what they were when I had five,'' Horan said. As the county's 
     population exploded from about 450,000 in the late 1960s to 
     more than a million today, the crime rate has steadily 
     fallen. Homicides now number between 12 and 20 annually, the 
     same as in the 1970s. Burglaries and larcenies, which totaled 
     24,000 in 1980, are down to about 15,000 annually.
       Horan has a couple of theories. One is that older, more 
     marginal neighborhoods such as Blevinstown, just outside 
     Fairfax City, where local feuds tended to erupt into 
     violence, have been bulldozed and replaced by communities of 
     higher incomes and education. Another is that ambulance 
     service is faster and better equipped, as are the teams in 
     local emergency rooms. ``Many more people survive gunshots 
     now,'' Horan said.
       One thing that hasn't changed in Horan's four decades is 
     how he runs his office. He keeps the number of prosecutors to 
     a minimum. He doesn't share police reports, witness 
     statements or witness lists with defense attorneys. And he's 
     not afraid to make tough decisions.
       ``His office could use many more assistant prosecutors,'' 
     said Robert C. Whitestone, an experienced Fairfax defense 
     attorney. He said the low number of prosecutors sometimes 
     keeps them too busy and pushes them into courtrooms 
     unprepared. Loudoun County, with a population about one-
     fourth of Fairfax's, has 16 assistant prosecutors.
       Horan said the state Compensation Board determines how many 
     are allocated across the state and sets a starting salary of 
     about $43,000, which Fairfax supplements to about $50,000. 
     ``Virginia does criminal prosecution on the cheap,'' Horan 
     said.
       He said that when he first took office, ``it had become 
     trendy to have your own investigators. I said I don't believe 
     that's the way to do it,'' and he hasn't. Instead, he relies 
     on Fairfax police.
       The officers closely follow Horan's lead, guarding their 
     information more tightly than virtually any other police 
     department in the region, because Horan has insisted they not 
     provide defense attorneys with any ammunition. Those who 
     violate his instructions are prone to severe tongue-lashings.
       Horan said the county police force has maintained high 
     standards and excellent performance throughout his tenure. 
     ``The Washington Post always wants to criticize me because 
     I've never charged an officer with murder,'' Horan said. 
     ``I'm proud of the fact they haven't been charged. It means 
     they're doing their jobs.''
       In recent years, pickets stood outside the Fairfax 
     courthouse to protest Horan's decision not to charge a Prince 
     George's County officer with a fatal shooting, and the family 
     of a slain Fairfax man denounced Horan's refusal to charge a 
     Fairfax officer with his death. But it's nothing new to 
     Horan.
       He cited controversial cases dating to the early 1970s, 
     when an officer fatally shot a man in a 7-Eleven in Herndon, 
     sparking riots, and another when an officer killed a 
     teenage burglar. In both, there were no charges, to loud 
     complaints by some. ``It's part of the job,'' he said with 
     a shrug.
       Another part of the job is successfully taking on a case 
     when the county, or the world, is watching. No one has 
     questioned his skill there, even defense attorneys.
       ``He's a brilliant prosecutor,'' Whitestone said. Said 
     defense attorney Peter D. Greenspun: ``My clients will be 
     glad he's not around to prosecute them.''
       U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft chose Horan to 
     prosecute one of the first sniper cases, against Lee Boyd 
     Malvo, and Horan brought home a capital murder conviction 
     without any witnesses identifying the shooter, although the 
     jury did not impose the death sentence. In 1997, he obtained 
     a death sentence against Mir Aimal Kasi, who killed two 
     people outside the CIA in 1993.
       Horan said his most satisfying case was the prosecution of 
     Caleb D. Hughes for abducting 5-year-old Melissa Brannen in 
     1989. Hughes was convicted of abduction with intent to 
     defile; Melissa has not been found.
       ``That was a really tough case to try,'' Horan said. ``It 
     stayed with me for a lot of years.''
       Of those that have not been solved, the one that bothers 
     him the most is the death of Gwen Ames, 17, who was found 
     strangled near Lake Anne Plaza in Reston in 1972.
       Horan noted some interesting changes in the courts over 40 
     years. The arrival of Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court 
     ruling requiring police to inform suspects of their rights, 
     changed the tenor of pretrial complaints from police beatings 
     to police failure to ``Mirandize.''
       And the introduction of sentencing guidelines, giving 
     defendants a better idea of how much jail time they might 
     face, has reduced the amount of cases that go to trial to 
     perhaps 10 percent, Horan said.
       Horan reduced his own caseload from about 20 a year, mostly 
     homicides that he often began working on the day they 
     occurred, to three or four annually. In recent years, with 
     the increase in guilty pleas, he had no trials.
       But he clearly still loves the courtroom. He will handle 
     the double-murder death penalty trial of Alfredo R. Prieto, 
     set for late May.
       He's leaving reluctantly. ``My only fear is I've known guys 
     who loved what they were doing,'' Horan said. ``They hung it 
     up and they were dead in a year.''
       He loves playing golf; he drives a Mercedes-Benz 240 sedan 
     he won in a charity event in 2002 when he nailed a hole-in-
     one. But he doesn't think golf can fill his time, and 
     ``there's not a job in the world as interesting as this 
     one.''
       ``I haven't even given any thought to what's next,'' Horan 
     said. ``I'm sure I'll find something to do.''

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