Washington, DC (August 13, 1996) -- Judy Clarke, the Executive Director of Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho, was sworn in as President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers at the association's annual meeting in Santa Monica August 11. Ms. Clarke is the first public defender elected president of NACDL and the second woman to be so honored.

Ms. Clarke has extensive federal trial and appellate court experience in a wide variety of areas, including white collar crime, drug defense, immigration offenses, bank robbery and other violent and nonviolent crimes. She has argued cases before the United States Supreme Court. In July 1996, she was appointed co-counsel for UNABOM suspect Theodore Kaczynski in federal court in Sacramento, Cal.

A South Carolina native, in 1995 Ms. Clarke took a leave of absence from her federal defender work in the Pacific Northwest to serve as co-counsel for Susan Smith, the Union, S.C., mother who faced the death penalty for killing her two sons in a case that horrified the nation. She received her law degree in 1977 from the University of South Carolina Law Center in Columbia and was awarded her bachelor's degree in psychology from Furman University in Greenville in 1974.

Ms. Clarke is widely acclaimed for her lectures on criminal law and procedure. She has made presentations on virtually every subject from bail to sentencing in over 30 states, speaking to lawyers, judges and students. She a member of the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Ga., and has served on its Board of Regents since 1985.

A widely published author of legal articles, Ms. Clarke is co-author, with Gerald McFadden and Jeffrey Staniels, of Federal Sentencing Manual, the benchmark treatise on the federal sentencing guidelines system.

Contacts

NACDL Communications Department

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's many thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal legal system.