JaneAnne Murray

  • Associate Clinical Professor of Law
95-H Mondale Hall

Degrees

  • University College Cork, B.C.L.
  • University of Cambridge, LL.M.

Expertise

  • Criminal Law
  • Criminal Procedure

Professor JaneAnne Murray joined the Law School in August 2011. She specializes in criminal law and government investigations and teaches criminal procedure and sentencing advocacy. Her research interests include plea bargaining, prosecutorial discretion, and sentencing.

Murray received her B.C.L. degree from University College Cork in 1989 and her LL.M. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1990, both with first-class honors. After law school, she worked in New York as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; a trial attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York in Manhattan; an assistant federal public defender in the Eastern District of New York; and a litigation counsel at O’Melveny & Myers, before opening her own practice focused on criminal defense. From 1999 to 2000, she was the International Advisor for the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights in Kampot, Cambodia.

She has defended individuals in many high-profile cases and investigations, including executives and directors at Tyco, A.I.G., and Lehman Brothers and individuals facing terrorism charges, and has been lead counsel in more than 20 jury trials.

In 2014, she became a member of the steering committee of Clemency Project 2014, a joint initiative of the ABA, the NACDL, FAMM, the ACLU, and the Federal Defenders to recruit and train volunteer lawyers to represent eligible applicants for the Obama administration’s clemency program for nonviolent federal inmates. Complementing that role, she established a clemency project at the Law School in the fall of 2014, and, with the assistance of Professor June Carbone, supervised 15 students who drafted 35 petitions for eligible inmates. Fourteen of these inmates received grants of clemency (a 15th received compassionate release, an application also supported by the Law School’s project).

A frequent guest lecturer at CLE programs, she serves on several boards and committees, including the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for which she co-chairs its sentencing committee and its second look taskforce, a member of the ABA taskforce to reform the federal economic fraud sentencing guideline, and a member of the advisory board to the Irish American Bar Association of New York (IABANY). She writes regularly on criminal law and procedure issues for the New York Law Journal, National Law Journal, Atticus, Champion, VI, and White Collar Crime Reporter; she also created and wrote the blogs New York Federal Criminal Practice, and Behind the Eighth. Murray created and organizes IABANY’s  annual Bloomsday Celebration, which showcases Ulysses and James Joyce's contribution to the First Amendment.

Murray, who was practitioner in residence at the Law School from 2011 to 2015, won the 2014-15 Stanley V. Kinyon Adjunct Teacher of the Year Award. She became professor of practice at the Law School in August 2015.

Evidence


Criminal Procedure: Adjudication


Introduction to American Law and Legal Reasoning


Clemency Project Clinic


Clemency Project Clinic Student Directors


Journal Articles

MACDL Weighs in on the Most Consequential Pardon Case in 125 Years, MACDL VI 19 (2021)
Judicial Restoration of Rights as an Auxiliary to the Pardon Power, 33:5 Federal Sentencing Reporter 328 (2021)
Second Look = Second Chance: Turning the Tide Through NACDL's Model Second Look Legislation, 33:5 Federal Sentencing Reporter 341 (2021) 
(with
Sean Hecker
,
Michael Skocpol
and
Marissa Elkins
)
Ameliorating the Federal Trial Penalty through a Systematic Judicial “Second Look” Procedure, 31 Federal Sentencing Reporter 279 (2019)
Terrorism is Different: Experts and Terrorism Representations, MACDL VI 11 (Winter 2018)
(with
Jean Brandl
)
Seeking Clemency for Inmates Serving Outdated Sentences, MACDL VI 14 (Summer 2016)
A Perfect Prosecution: The People of the State of New York v. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 8 Criminal Law and Philosophy 2 (2014)

Documents and Reports

Second Look = Second Chance: The NACDL Model “Second Look” Legislation (National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 2020)
(with
Sean Hecker
,
Michael Skocpol
and
Marissa Elkins
)

Book Reviews

Book Review, New York Law Journal, Dec. 14, 2005, at 2 (reviewing Austin Sarat, Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution (Princeton University Press, 2005)

Editorials, Commentary & Letters

Why Adnan Syed of "Serial" Should Have Pleaded Guilty, New York Times, Jan. 22, 2015 (op-ed)

Other Publications

Commentary II, in Andrew Kim, Prosecuting Chinese “Spies:” An Empirical Analysis of the Economic Espionage Act 14 (Committee of 100, May 2017)
Law School Student Representation of Clemency Applicants, Robina Institute Blog, Oct. 27, 2016
The Never-Ending Search of Digital Data, National Law Journal, Oct. 20, 2014
The Brady Battle, The Champion 72 (May 2013)
Easing Your Client's Experience of Federal Prison, New York Law Journal, Dec. 7, 2006 (reprinted in Rehabilitating Lawyers: Principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence for Criminal Law Practice (David B. Wexler, ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2008))
Proffer at Your Peril, 19 Andrews White-Collar Crime Reporter 2 (July 28, 2005)  

Selected Legal Briefs

Brief for the Felony Murder Law Reform Minnesota as Amicus Curiae, State of Minnesota v. Griffin, No. A24-0859 (Minn. Sup. Ct. filed Aug. 23, 2024)
(with
Sam Buisman
)
Respondents' Brief for Tanya Mae Wagner et al., Minnesota Department of Corrections v. Wagner, No. A23-0031 (Minn. Ct. App. filed Apr. 26, 2023)
(with
Elizabeth Bentley
,
Mary Hill
,
Julia Kasbohm
,
Emma Kruger
,
E. Isabel Park
and
Adam Kolb
)
Brief for the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae, Shefa v. Ellison et al., No. A21-0830 (Minn. Sup. Ct. filed Aug. 23, 2021)
(with
and
Margaret Colgate Love
)
Appellate Brief for Alicia Mofle, United States v. Mofle, No. 20-1212  (Eighth Circuit filed Apr. 3, 2020) 
(with
Connor Shaull
)