About the author
Michael A. Jacobs was an Orange County Deputy District Attorney for just a few months under 30 years. During his career he spent 25 years in trial units. He worked on the Felony Panel, Career Criminal, Sexual Assault, Narcotics/Special Assignments, and Homicide units. He worked in the Homicide Unit for 13 years and supervised it for three years. Highlights of his career include being the trial attorney for seven capital cases and being chosen as Prosecutor of the Year for his office in 1996. He also successfully prosecuted the first case in Orange County utilizing DNA evidence, the first case under the Three Strikes legislation, and the first case in which a defendant driving a motor vehicle was convicted of second-degree murder.
In 1996, his efforts led to the formation of the unsolved homicide project TRACKRS (Task Force Review Aimed at Catching, Killers, Rapists, and Serial Offenders). The project’s initial investigation solved six homicides from the 1970s and also resulted in the exoneration and freedom from prison of a man wrongly convicted of one of the cases. In 2001, he created the Orange County Innocence Project. This was a program by which prisoners sentenced to state prison from Orange County, without the assistance of counsel, could petition the District Attorney’s Office claiming innocence based upon DNA or other newly discovered evidence. Both projects have received nationwide acclaim.
Originally from Long Island, New York, the author has been a resident of California since 1967. He attended Occidental College and Loyola University School of Law in Los Angeles. He was admitted to practice law in California in December 1974. His initial employment after graduation from law school was as an associate attorney with the Los Angeles civil litigation firm Bodkin, McCarthy, Sergeant and Smith. Having retired from the District Attorney’s Office in 2006, he is currently engaged in private civil practice in Orange County, California. He is also writing a second book about our criminal justice system.