Justin Brooks

Justin Brooks (born 1965) is an American criminal defense attorney and professor of law at California Western School of Law in San Diego.  He is well known for his work as director of the California Innocence Project, where he has exonerated several high profile clients including football player Brian Banks.

Brooks is also well known for training criminal defense attorneys in the United States as director of the Institute for Criminal Defense Advocacy and LL.M. in Trial Advocacy Specializing in Federal Criminal Law. He works extensively in Latin America training lawyers as co-director of ACCESO Capacitación and creating innocence programs as co-director of Redinocente.

Early life

Justin Brooks attended Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he obtained a Bachelor in Business Law. He then attended The American University where he obtained a JD. He then obtained a fellowship at Georgetown University Law Center where he earned an LL.M. in Trial Advocacy.

Career

Academic career

Brooks’ first full time teaching job was at Georgetown University Law Center where he taught corrections law and was appointed as the Assistant Director of Georgetown’s Corrections Clinic after completing his fellowship. In that position he co-founded with Professor Richard Roe Georgetown’s Family Literacy Project—a program devoted to teaching inmates how to teach their children how to read and then providing family literacy activities where the children went to the prison and were taught by their parents.

Brooks’ second full time teaching job was at Thomas Cooley Law School where he taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Corrections Law, and Death Penalty Law. He directed a death penalty clinical program and directed the national moot court programs.

Brooks currently teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, federal criminal law, trial advocacy, and comparative criminal procedure at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California. He is the founding director of the California Innocence Project, a law school clinic devoted to freeing the wrongfully incarcerated. He is also the executive director of The Institute for Criminal Defense Advocacy, a program devoted to criminal defense attorney training, co-director of ACCESO Capacitacion, a program devoted to oral skills training for Latin American lawyers, co founder and director of the law school’s LL.M. Trial Advocacy Specializing in Federal Criminal Law, and co-founder and co-director of Redinocente, an organization devoted to creating and supporting innocence programs throughout Latin America.

Brooks has been a visiting professor at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, Universidad Interamericana, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, New England School of Law’s Summer Law Program in Galway, Ireland, and South Texas College of Law’s Summer Law Programs in Malta and the Czech Republic. He has taught multiple times in California Western School of Law’s Chile Summer Program.

Legal career

Brooks began his legal career doing court appointed criminal cases in Washington, D.C. where he practiced for three years. He then practiced in Michigan and Illinois for 6 years where he provided pro-bono representation to death row inmates. Since 1999 he has been representing clients in conjunction with his work as Director of California Innocence Project. The project has exonerated several wrongfully convicted clients including Jason Kindle, John Stoll, Ken Marsh, Adam Riojas, Tim Atkins, Reggie Cole, Rafael Madrigal, and football player Brian Banks.

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  In court with Tim Atkins
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  Brooks and Atkins after release
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  Tim Atkins greeting family

Awards and recognitions

• Roberto Alvarez American Constitutional Society Award (2012)

• Paul Bell Memorial Award (2011)

• California Lawyer of the Year (Criminal), California Lawyer (2010)

• 50 People to Watch in 2010, San Diego Magazine

• Top 100 Lawyers in California, Los Angeles Daily Transcript (2007, 2008, and 2009)

• Post Conviction Lawyer of the Year, San Diego Criminal Defense Bar Association (2006)

• San Diego’s Top Attorneys, San Diego Union Tribune (2006, 2007)

• Brooks’ work has been featured by NBC, ABC, CNN, and other major news outlets.

Academic Publications

Wrongful Convictions: Cases and Materials, Vandeplas Publishing LLC (1st ed. 2011)

Find the Cost of Freedom: The Struggle to Compensate the Innocent for Wrongful Incarceration and the Strange Legal Odyssey of Timothy Atkins, (with Simpson) 49 San Diego Law Review 3 (2012)

¡Inocente! The Challenge of Bringing Innocence Work to Latin America, The University of Cincinnati Law Review (Fall 2011).

Ayudando a Liberar a los Inocentes en Chile y en toda América Latina, Revista 93, Santiago, Chile (Summer 2011).

Blood Sugar Sex Magik: A Review of Postconviction DNA Testing Statutes and Legislative Recommendations, 59 Drake Law Review799 (with Simpson) (2011).

The Hurricane Meets the Paper Chase: Innocence Projects New Emerging Role in Clinical Legal Education, (with Stiglitz and Shulman) 38 California Western Law Review 413 (Spring 2002).

The Politics of Prisons, 77 Michigan Bar Journal 154 (February 1998).

Will Boys Just be “Boyz N the Hood? African-American Directors Portray a Crumbling Justice System in Urban America, 22 Oklahoma City University Law Review 1 (Spring 1997).

Lead article. Reprinted in Screening Justice-The Cinema of the Law: Significant Films of Law, Order and Social Justice, edited by Strickland, Foster, and Banks, Hein and Co (2006).

How Can We Sleep While the Beds Are Burning? The Tumultuous Prison Culture of Attica Flourishes in American Prisons Twenty-Five Years Later, 45 Syracuse Law Review 159 (Fall 1996). Reprinted in Prisoners and the Law by Ira Robbins.

The Dire Wolf Collects his Due While the Boys Sit by the Fire: Michigan Cannot Afford to Buy into the Death Penalty, (with Erickson) 13 Thomas M. Cooley Law Review 877 (Fall 1996).

Justice For Sale: Is a Death Row Inmate Entitled to Discovery After the Judge Who Presided at Trial is Convicted of Taking Bribes to Fix Cases, 7 Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases 433 (April 1997).

Should Sexually Violent Predator Laws Allowing Long-Term Commitment Be Treated as Civil or Criminal? 1 West’s Legal News (Dec. 10, 1996).

Don’t Model Our Correctional System, 106 Prison Service Journal 40 (July 1996).

Policing the Judiciary: When Can a Judge be Convicted of Interfering with a Federal Criminal Investigation?, 6 Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases 287 (1995)

Keeping the Jailhouse Lawyer Out of Jail, 9 Criminal Justice Magazine 18 (Summer 1994).

It's a Family Affair - The Incarceration of the American Family: Confronting Legal and Social Issues, (with Bahna) 28 University of San Francisco Law Review 271 (Spring 1994). Lead article.

Exile on Main Street...Inmate Transfers From Puerto Rico to the Continental United States Violate Due Process, 27 Interamericana Law Review 1 (Spring 1993).

Addressing Recidivism: Legal Education in Correctional Settings, 44 Rutgers Law Review 699 (Spring 1992). Reprinted in South Africa in the University of Bophuthatswana Law Review (Fall 1992).