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Jason W. Smith, District Attorney

​The Team 

The District Attorney's office is the largest law firm in the Sixth District. We have 23 Assistant District Attorneys and 29 non-lawyers, made up of victim witness assistants, investigators and court liaisons for law enforcement agencies, for a total of 52 dedicated public servants who represent the nearly 300,000 people living in these two counties. All of them serve at the will of the elected District Attorney, which means they can be hired or fired without cause. The experience among this team is unbelievable: among the lawyers alone, for example, we have well over 200 combined years of experience prosecuting crime. To learn about the office structure and to contact individuals, see the Staff Directory. 

 

Sworn Duties 

We have two primary responsibilities in the District Attorney’s Office: first, to advise local law enforcement, and second, to prosecute every criminal matter in the territorial jurisdictions of both New Hanover and Pender Counties. There are more than 1,000 sworn law officers in over 20 different state and federal law enforcement agencies with whom we work every day. We employ a police/prosecutor team approach and proactively work with officers during all phases of a case. When cases come to trial, we set the calendar and have the burden of proof in all cases from simple traffic offenses to first degree murder. There are more than 50,000 traffic offenses, 20,000 misdemeanors, and 5,000 felonies calendared each year in the Sixth District. We keep the courts running five days a week. 

 

Setting Priorities and Setting the Tone 

If everything is a priority then nothing is. Our priority has been, and will continue to be, the prosecution of violent crimes and career criminals. We will always be defined by the cases we try in front of juries; however, winning murder trials not only gives justice to victims in those individual cases, it sets the tone for the whole District. When you consistently win the big cases in front of juries, then the drug dealers, thieves and other violent offenders line up to plead guilty to their charges. This saves valuable resources and court time. The truth is, around the state, 98% of all cases result in a plea--a non-jury disposition in front of a judge. We are no different in this District and with the case volume we have, it is the only practical way to keep the docket moving.

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