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(AP)
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr., left, and Raymond Morrogh, chief deputy prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Virginia, brief reporters after an evidence hearing for sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo outside U.S. Circuit Court in Fairfax in a file photo from Oct. 31, 2003. Horan, 74, announced Tuesday that he will retire after 40 years as the top prosecutor in Virginia’s most populous county.

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Filed under: Fairfax County , William C. Flook , Law

Fairfax County (Map, News) - Robert Horan Jr., who has served four decades as Fairfax County’s top prosecutor, announced Tuesday he will not seek another term in office.

The 74-year-old commonwealth’s attorney is the longest-serving prosecutor in Virginia. In an interview with The Examiner, Horan said he wrestled with not running again for the past month, faced with a deadline on Friday to register for the Democratic Party primary.

He said his deteriorating hearing led in part to his decision.

“I’ve been having hearing problems in recent years, and it’s really begun to worry me that I’m missing things in the courtroom,” he said.

The move sets the stage for the first open contest for Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney since 1967. Horan has endorsed his deputy, Raymond Morrogh, who is reportedly gathering signatures to meet Friday’s deadline.

No candidates had registered for the race as of Tuesday, Fairfax County General Registrar Jackie Harris said.

Horan oversaw two of the region’s highest-profile prosecutions: Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the men responsible for the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, and Mir Aimal Kasi, who killed two people outside the CIA headquarters in Langley in 1993. Both were convicted.

But of the cases that stick with him most, Horan remembers one of his first, when a Navy commander and his son were shot to death on the median strip of Columbia Pike on the Fourth of July after an altercation with an aggressive motorist.

“I still think about it today,” he said.

The criminal justice landscape has, in some ways, changed since Horan began trying cases. The number of pretrial motions, he said, has grown. Horan began work as a prosecutor before the Miranda rights were established in the landmark Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona in 1966.

“[The case] changed the rules of the game, that’s all it did,” he said. “I’m absolutely sure any police officer who would beat somebody before Miranda would beat them after Miranda.”

In his 10 terms, the prosecutor has faced opposition only four times, Harris said.

“I love the job,” he said. “Nobody could have a better job than this one. It’s interesting, it’s fulfilling, at times it’s very exciting. But there comes a time when it’s done. And I think I’ve gotten there.”

wflook@dcexaminer.com