(12/22/17)
Richard H. Schmack, former DeKalb County State’s Attorney, was presented with the 2017 Norm Maleng Minister of Justice Award by the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association at the Section’s annual meeting in Washington, DC on November 3. The award is presented annually to a public prosecutor for service which exemplifies the obligation to ‘seek justice, not merely to convict’. In September, he was also awarded the Northern Illinois University College of Law Public Service Award. Both awards were in recognition of his role in the exoneration of Jack McCullough, who had been wrongfully convicted in 2012 of a 1957 murder. His article on the case, ‘Unmaking a Murderer: The Prosecutor’s Duty to Remedy Wrongful Convictions’, was published in the Summer 2017 edition of the NIU Law Review. Rich recently joined the faculty of the National Drug Court Institute to provide training and assistance, in maintaining best practice standards, to treatment courts throughout the nation.