Washington, DC­ (May 1, 2015) – San Francisco, California-based lawyer Martin A. Sabelli was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) at the Association's Spring meeting in Law Vegas on April 19. Sabelli is a Life Member of NACDL and has previously served on its Board of Directors.

Sabelli currently has his own firm and has served, in the past, as a Federal Public Defender, a partner at Winston & Strawn, the Director of Training of the Office of the San Francisco Public Defender, and as a law clerk to the late Honorable Robert F. Peckham, United States District Judge. He taught Latin American History at Yale College and has taught for the National Criminal Defense College since 2001 and for the Trial Advocacy Workshop of Harvard Law School, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and NACDL, as well as numerous other criminal defense and public defense programs around the country and abroad.

Sabelli has also served as the Director of the Mexico Program for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. He regularly lectures on comparative criminal justice issues and trains judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru (all countries which are transitioning from inquisitorial to adversarial systems). He has also trained judges, prosecutors, and lawyers in numerous other countries including Egypt, Liberia, Nicaragua, and Tunisia.

He received his Bachelor’s degree in 1985 from Harvard College, where he was a John Harvard Scholar, and his M.S. from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1987. Sabelli graduated from Yale Law School in 1990 where he served as Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Contacts

Ivan J. Dominguez, NACDL Director of Public Affairs & Communications, (202) 465-7662 or idominguez@nacdl.org for more information.

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.