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| Law Enforcement & Legal | 2026-05-01 | 2026-10-14 |
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Thomas A. Flannery was U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1967 to 1970, commissioned the system that became PROMIS in 1969, and was a federal district judge from 1970 until 1993. | 1918-01-05 | 1993-06-25 | Washington, D.C. |
Thomas A. Flannery was born January 5, 1918, in Washington, D.C. He served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1967 to March 1970, appointed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. In that capacity, he directed the formation of the team that designed the PROMIS, the case management software that became the center of the PROMIS Software Scandal a decade later.1
Role in PROMIS Development
In 1969, Flannery commissioned a team from Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co to design a computer-based case management system for the U.S. Attorney's office, funded by a $60,000 grant (70-DF-047) from the Office of Crime Analysis of the District of Columbia administered through the LEAA. The team was co-directed by Joan E. Jacoby (Director of the Office of Crime Analysis) and Charles R. Work (Deputy Director of the Superior Court Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office), with Bill Hamilton serving as project manager.12 The system, named the Prosecutor's Management Information System, was deployed on January 1, 1971.2
Judicial Career
President Richard Nixon nominated Flannery to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in July 1970. He was confirmed by the Senate and began judicial service in December 1970. He served as Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 1977 until approximately 1987, and continued as a senior judge thereafter. He died June 25, 1993.3
Footnotes
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U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report. House Report 102-857, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, September 10, 1992. ↩︎
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Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., System Overview and Report Formats for PROMIS (May 1971), prepared for the District of Columbia Government Office of Crime Analysis under LEAA Grant No. 70-DF-047, note 1 to the passage on the design team, NCJ 32469. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/32469NCJRS.pdf ↩︎
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Federal Judicial Center. "Thomas A. Flannery." History of the Federal Judiciary. fjc.gov. ↩︎