The Mobile County District Attorney's Office is the first governmental agency in Alabama ever to be named as a finalist in this prestigious national awards program, since its inception in 1985. It was created to provide a safe alternative for new mothers in crisis after a local mother and grandmother were convicted of drowning a newborn baby boy in a toilet. 13,510 felony and misdemeanor cases effectively handled in 2000. 8,323 juvenile crimes prosecuted or reviewed in 2000. The teachers are usually first to identify the kids who are going to be a problem.
Teachers often know who they are even when they are in elementary school.
Not gut instinct, but data will drive the effort to identify wayward youth in the early stages of potentially criminal behavior. The murder trial for which Assistant District Attorney Caroline Siderius was preparing would be anything but a slam-dunk. The accused murderer was a young woman with a disability, who claimed that she killed her husband in self-defense because he abused her. Kimberly McDonald's trial for the same offense a year earlier had ended in mistrial. Time spent in preparing for a case pays off in faster and more successful prosecution of criminal cases, a major goal of the Mobile County District Attorney's Office.