I fight for the
wrongfully convicted
I’m a law professor, an innocence litigator, and a former federal prosecutor. I have exonerated wrongly convicted clients, founded the West Virginia Innocence Project, obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses, and co-edited a guide
to causes of wrongful convictions, The Wrongful Convictions Reader.
I fight for the rights of wrongly convicted people, and to expand the idea of who is “wrongfully convicted” beyond factual innocence. Many people we identify as “criminals” and prosecute are wrongly convicted in our system, over-sentenced for drug offenses, and criminalized for their identities. I’m grateful that my job is to fight for them, and teach others about how to change our criminal legal system.
I co-lead the Academy for Justice,
a criminal justice center at ASU
I teach at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and I co-lead the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center at ASU connecting research with policy reform. My experiences as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., and as an innocence litigator in Mississippi and West Virginia, shape my writing and advocacy on wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, prosecutors and incarceration. I have served as an elected board member of the national Innocence Network, an invited board member of the Research Center on Violence, and an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor’s Indigent Defense Commission.
Courses Taught
I also litigated as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
Early in my career, I clerked for the Honorable Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for the Honorable Chief Judge James G. Carr of the Northern District of Ohio. I also litigated as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. My B.A. and J.D. are from the University of Chicago.
My Expertise
