Eldridge sworn in as U.S. Attorney

William Conner Eldridge Jr., 33, was formally sworn in as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas during a Friday (Mar. 18) investiture ceremony at the Judge Isaac C. Parker Federal Building in Fort Smith.

Eldridge, along with his wife Mary Elizabeth and children, were joined by a courtroom packed with friends, family, attorneys and several state and federal judges. U.S. District Court Judge Jimm Larry Hendren presided over the ceremony.

Eldridge fills a post vacant since Jan. 4, 2009, when former U.S. Attorney Bob Balfe resigned to serve in the Northwest Arkansas law offices of Mitchell Selig Gates & Woodyard. Balfe served as the U.S. Attorney since November 2004. He previously served as the elected state Prosecuting Attorney for Benton County from 2001 to 2004. Deborah Groom has worked as acting U.S. attorney in the interim.

Asa Hutchinson, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas (1982-1985) and former 3rd District Congressman, said in his remarks that Eldridge would find the job the most challenging and rewarding of his career. Hutchinson told the audience that Eldridge possesses the “good instincts and good judgment” required to be a U.S. Attorney.

Hutchinson, pointing a mistake he made as a young U.S. Attorney, told Eldridge: “Don’t call a grand jury on the first day of deer season.”

Following law school, he was a law clerk for the Honorable G. Thomas Eisele of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas from 2003 to 2004.  Eldridge graduated from Davidson College in 1999 and from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2003.

Eldridge has served as a Special Deputy Prosecutor for the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office of Clark County, Arkansas since 2009.  Eldridge previously worked for Summit Bank and Summit Bancorp, Inc., serving in various senior management positions.  He was ultimately named CEO in 2008.

According to this report from Main Justice, Eldridge reported on his Senate Judiciary financial disclosure that he had assets valued at $15.7 million, mostly from the Whipple Family partnerships, and $507,000 in liabilities mostly from mortgages, for a net worth of $15 million.

In his remarks, Eldridge stressed the importance of fairness and working hard each day to uphold the law. To exemplify his thoughts about he office, he recited — mostly from memory — the words of Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland (served between 1922 and 1938):  “The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor– indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”