Chemung County District Attorney wins Outstanding Prosecutor Award

Kendall LeValley
·2 min read

CHEMUNG COUNTY, N.Y. (WETM) – Chemung County District Attorney Weeden A. Wetmore won the New York State Bar Association Outstanding Prosecutor Award for his contribution to the prosecution community and the bar as a whole at a luncheon this past weekend.

Wetmore received the award on Saturday, Jan. 20, at a luncheon in New York City. According to the Criminal Justice Section Awards Luncheon Annual Meeting program, the Outstanding Prosecutor Award was awarded for the following:

“To recognize a prosecutor who has made special contributions to not only the prosecution community, but to the bar at large, and whose professional conduct evidences a true understanding of a public prosecutor’s duty to advance the fair and ethical administration of criminal justice.”

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Wetmore has been the Chemung County District Attorney since Jan. 1, 2008. After graduating from Albany Law School, he started his career as a law clerk for then-District Attorney D. Bruce Crew III and then became an assistant district attorney upon admission to the bar in January of 1979.

As a prosecutor, Wetmore has secured over 100 guilty trial verdicts, many including serious and violent cases. He has also been a leader in securing convictions in novel cases and with new forensic methods.

Wetmore successfully tried one of the first vehicular assault cases in New York State under the new law, and in 2015, he prosecuted a serial rapist by utilizing automated computer interpretation of complex DNA evidence performed by Cybergenetics TrueAllele casework at trial.

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In 2017, he won the first-degree murder case of People v. Thomas Clayton after a seven-week trial. During this trial, he offered evidence consisting of call detail record analysis and mapping using the TRAX tool offered by Zetx for the first time.

Recently, he has secured guilty pleas from a man for the criminal possession of a weapon and the reckless endangerment of others for possessing and detonating an improvised explosive device in Chemung County.

Wetmore serves as a voting member of the Board of Directors for the New York State District Attorney’s Association. Previously, he was the recipient of the New York Prosecutors Training Institute Prosecutor of the Year Award in 2017.

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