Hon Elected to Serve on Prestigous Board, LIVINGSTON, September 29, 2009 - On Wednesday, September 23, 2009, Polk County Criminal District Attorney William Lee Hon was elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Texas District and County Attorney's Association (TDCAA) at the 2009 TDCAA annual meeting held in Corpus Christi. Hon will serve as the director of Region 5 which covers 27 Southeast Texas Counties. Hon will serve a 2 year term and had been previously appointed by TDCAA Board President Bill Turner, District Attorney of Brazos County, in February of 2008 to fill a board vacancy occasioned by the resignation of former Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal. At Tuesday's annual TDCAA business meeting, Hon was nominated to continue his board service by Ed C. Jones, County Attorney of Angelina County.
The Texas District and County Attorney's Association is the largest organization of its kind in the United States. Its mission is to promote the improvement of prosecution and government representation in Texas.
It accomplishes this by providing educational and technical assistance to prosecutors and their staffs, by providing educational and technical assistance to the law enforcement community, and by serving as a resource in criminal law and government representation matters.
TDCAA was formed in 1905 as a loose knit group of Texas prosecutors who met in conjunction with the Attorney General's Annual Law Enforcement Conference. In 1970, Harris County District Attorney Carol Vance obtained federal LEAA grant funding to establish a prosecutor training organization. In 1971, the Texas District and County Attorney's Association was formally organized as a non-profit corporation whose purpose was to train and offer technical assistance to prosecutors. TDCAA is comprised of over 5000 members including elected prosecutors, assistant prosecutors, criminal investigators and staff.
Hon is presently serving his first term as Polk County Criminal District Attorney and previously served as a felony assistant prosecutor for former District Attorney John Holleman from 1996 until taking office in January, 2007. Hon has served on the TDCAA Legislative Committee since 2003 and was instrumental in obtaining the passage of HB 872 (Otto) by the 80th Texas Legislature, a bill enhancing the punishment for the offense of Tampering With Evidence where the evidence tampered with was a human corpse. That bill was inspired by the 2003 murder of 4 year old Anthony Boone in Polk County. Hon has instructed other prosecutors on the prosecution of capital murder cases and has presented lectures to the Texas District and County Attorney's Association, the Oklahoma District Attorney's Counsel, and the Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation (AGACL). In 2003, he was awarded the AGACL Board of Directors' Trial Advocacy Award for Excellence in the Litigation of Capital Cases at the AGACL annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Hon is a 1984 graduate of Livingston High School. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice in 1987 from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, and his Juris Doctor in 1990 from the University of Mississippi School of Law. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas and the Mississippi Bar.
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