It takes about 3 hours to drive from Greenwich, Connecticut to the Federal Correctional Institution,  Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania. Jeffery D. Grant knows this because he took that drive on an Easter Sunday in 2006. A lawyer whose life has taken a wrong turn on  the road to addiction, Jeff Grant left the upscale life he had cultivated in Connecticut to enter what would be his new home for the duration of his 18-month Federal criminal sentence. The story of his rise, fall, and redemption is recounted in an article by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker. Jeff Grant has also been featured in Forbes, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Greenwich Magazine, and Business Insider. Jeff was released from custody in 2007 and was able to recover from addiction, obtain a divinity degree, start a law firm, and start a number of non-profit support groups focused on reentry to society in support of defendants and their families.

Read The New Yorker article here

Read Jeff's CJS Magazine article, "A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: Progressive Diversion and Reentry, 'Problem-to-Pardon' Case Management" here

Our guests have spent their careers advocating for some of the most vulnerable citizens in our country's legal system-our nation's children. Kristin Henning is the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic Initiative at Georgetown Law School and the author of "The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth". Marsha Levick is the co-founder and Chief Legal Officer of the Juvenile Law Center, which has been advocating for young people's rights for nearly 50 years. 

In this episode, Joe Whitley and Lynsey Barron discuss corporate monitorships with Ling-Ling Nie,  who is the Deputy General Counsel, Chief Compliance & ESG Officer, Head of Government Affairs at Aura and Scott Marrah, Partner at White Collar Criminal Defense & Internal Investigations  at Kilpatrick Townsend. 

Gurbir Grewal has been the Director of the Enforcement Division at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since 2001.  Prior to that, he had the distinction of being the first Sikh American to be Attorney General in any of the fifty states, and only the second South Asian to hold such an office after the former Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris.  Gurbir was the Chief Prosecutor of Bergen County in New Jersey, and before that the Head of the Economic Crimes Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey.  Justin and Gurbir sat down for a “fireside chat” at the annual White Collar Conference of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (PACDL).  The episode was recorded in front of a live audience, with PACDL’s permission.

T. Markus Funk, a Partner at Perkins Coie in Denver, Colorado, was a Section Chief with the U.S. State Department in the Balkans, following the war in Kosovo, where he represented the United States in diplomatic negotiations and participated in the restructuring of Kosovo's post-war justice system.  Markus graduated from Northwestern School of Law, and later received a doctorate in law from the University of Oxford, where he taught as a law professor.  Markus was also a federal prosecutor in Chicago, where he prosecuted members of the Chicago mafia, most notably in a case called Operation Family Secrets, the subject of our discussion today. 

Representing criminal defendants with mental disabilities comes with a range of challenges that make these representations different from the usual criminal representation in important ways.  Elizabeth Kelley is an expert in the field, and the Editor of Representing People with Dementia:  A Practical Guide for Criminal Defense Lawyers, recently published by the American Bar Association.  The book is a collection of 16 essays by lawyers, psychiatrists, and psychologists. You can purchase the book here. 

Our guest is Richard Saenz, who is a senior attorney in the criminal justice and police misconduct strategist at Lambda Legal. He focuses his work on the criminal legal system, coordinating litigation and policy work on behalf of incarcerated people and against the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people. Richard has been featured in the Washington Post, NBC News, USA Today, Newsweek, and The Advocate. 

The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation was founded in 2010, in Philadelphia.  The Center provides advice and counsel in death penalty cases around the country, as well as in federal death cases, and represents the Government of Mexico in death penalty cases involving Mexican nationals here in the United States. Justin and Geonard interviewed the Center’s co-founder and Executive Director, Marc Bookman, and the President of its Board of Directors, Patrick Egan. Marc and Pat are long-time members of the Philadelphia criminal defense bar, and have, themselves, litigated numerous death penalty cases.  Marc is also the author of the recently published book by The New Press, called a Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays.  Marc has also published in The Atlantic, and Slate, among other publications.  

For three decades, since its founding in 1992 at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, the Innocence Project has led a national effort to exonerate wrongly convicted defendants through scientific advances in DNA technology. That work has led to the exoneration of hundreds of wrongly convicted defendants, some of them on death row. Justin and Geonard interviewed the founders of the Innocence Project, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. 

On this episode, Nina and Joe have a discussion with Jim Felman on the United States' sentencing guidelines.