Nancy Hoppock is new executive director of Center on the Administration of Criminal Law

Nancy Hoppock, who became the executive director of NYU Law’s Center on the Administration of Criminal Law (CACL) on October 15, brings 18 years of prosecutorial experience to her new role. She had served most recently as the executive deputy attorney general in the Criminal Justice Division of the State of New York’s Office of the Attorney General, overseeing more than 350 attorneys, investigators, and staff. Before that, she spent a decade at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark, eventually rising to chief of the Criminal Division. Her caseloads have included organized crime, child exploitation, national security, drug trafficking, gang violence, and white-collar crime.

Nancy HoppockHoppock’s career began in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office upon her graduation from law school in 1994. Working for the legendary Robert Morgenthau (along with Anne Milgram ’96, the former New Jersey attorney general, who is now a senior fellow at CACL), Hoppock prosecuted a range of offenses including sex crimes, domestic violence, robberies, and assaults. Her experience is an invaluable asset in pursuing the center's goal of promoting best practices in prosecutors' offices.

“The integrity of our criminal justice system depends on prosecutors doing the right thing,” Hoppock says. “By studying the best way to train prosecutors and by studying tools they may use to help them do their jobs fairly and carefully, we hope to contribute to the ultimate goal: achieving justice and avoiding wrongful convictions. As the center moves forward, we hope to look at all of the institutional participants in the criminal justice system—police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, the courts, and our prisons—and consider ways we can all do better to achieve security and justice. The center hopes to promote these ideas—ideas about better government and a better criminal justice system—through articles, reports, and briefs, and through our conferences.”

Since Hoppock’s arrival, CACL has filed amicus briefs in two Supreme Court cases: Alleyne v. United States and United States v. Burwell. The center argues in each case for higher procedural and legal standards before imposing mandatory minimum sentences. In October, Hoppock was appointed chair of the Anti-Corruption Subcommittee of New York’s White Collar Crime Task Force. The task force was formed to recommend penal code changes that would give state prosecutors stronger enforcement tools against white-collar crime, including official corruption. Hoppock says that New York State law has not kept pace with federal law in this area. Accordingly, as she embarks on her new role as CACL’s executive director, Hoppock would like to expand the center’s focus on criminal law at the state level in addition to its current focus on the federal level, and bolster educational efforts regarding best practices for prosecutors.

Posted on January 7, 2013