GET CLEMENCY NOW
CONTRIBUTORS
Part One Contributing Writer
Courtney M. Oliva is the Executive Director of the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at NYU School of Law. Before joining NYU, Courtney served for several years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey and as a Special Assistant Attorney General with the New York State Office of the Attorney General. Prior to becoming a prosecutor, Courtney spent several years in private practice representing individual and corporate clients in government, regulatory, and internal investigations and securities litigation. She received her BA from Brown University and her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.
Part One Contributor
Mark Osler is a law professor at the University of St. Thomas (MN) whose work advocates for sentencing and clemency policies rooted in principles of human dignity, ideals of the Christian Faith, and is considered a leading expert on clemency. A former federal prosecutor, he played a role in striking down the mandatory 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine in the federal sentencing guidelines by winning the case of Spears v. United States in the U.S. Supreme Court, with the Court ruling that judges could categorically reject that ratio. In 2011, Mark founded the first law school clinic specializing in federal commutations, and he trained hundreds of pro bono lawyers who were filing petitions during President Obama’s Clemency Initiative.
Part Two & Three Contributing Writer
Jessica Sandoval, MPA, is the National Campaign Strategist for the Unlock the Box Campaign to End Solitary Confinement at the ACLU's National Prison Project. She is the campaign lead and is responsible for the development and implementation of campaign strategies, provides technical assistance to campaign states, oversees the Jurisdiction-based Campaign fund, and manages the national campaign steering committee. She has 25 years' experience reforming the youth and adult justice systems, she uses her organizing and advocacy expertise to develop and administer strategies and tools to support state campaigns aligned with the mission of the "stop solitary"
movement.