On Wednesday, January 30, the Program in Criminal Law & Policy is pleased to welcome Mark Osler, Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. He will be here to discuss Commutation in Federal Criminal Law – 2013 as part of PCLP’s weekly speaker series.

Professor Osler was lead counsel on the case of Spears v. United States (2009) in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Court held that sentencing judges can categorically reject the 100:1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine in federal sentencing guidelines. His work frequently strikes at the intersection of law and faith. His book, Jesus on Death Row (Abingdon, 2009) challenges the death penalty based on the experience of Christ as a criminal defendant. He writes regularly on religion and law for the Huffington Post, CNN.com, and Sojourners, and has been interviewed as an expert on CNN, NPR’s “Morning Edition” and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and in hundreds of newspapers and news sources.

We will meet in Room 156. Pizza will be served at 12:05pm, with the discussion beginning at 12:15pm and ending by 1:20pm.