JaneAnne Murray - Ensuring Justice for All
JaneAnne Murray is a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and sentencing-related courses. She is also a practicing criminal defense attorney and the founder and director of the University of Minnesota Law School's Clemency Project Clinic, which advocates for people serving disproportionately long prison sentences.
Murray joined the University of Minnesota Law School in 2011 and founded its clemency project in 2014. What began as a response to President Barack Obama's clemency initiative eventually became an official law school clinic in 2022. Today, Murray's work encompasses clemency, second-look sentencing, compassionate release, sentencing reform, and broader efforts to address systemic inequities in the criminal justice system. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Murray received her B.C.L. degree from University College Cork in 1989 and her LL.M. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1990, both with first-class honors.
After law school, Murray moved to New York City, where she gained extensive experience on both sides of the legal system. She worked as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; as a trial attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York in Manhattan; as an assistant federal public defender in the Eastern District of New York; and later as litigation counsel at O'Melveny & Myers.
She also served as an International Advisor for the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Cambodia.
Eventually, Murray opened her own criminal defense practice. She has represented individuals in numerous high-profile cases and investigations, including matters involving executives and directors at Tyco, A.I.G., and Lehman Brothers, as well as individuals facing terrorism charges. She has served as lead counsel in more than 25 jury trials. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Murray's career has earned her numerous honors. She received the University of Minnesota's Stanley V. Kinyon Teacher of the Year Award in 2015 and again in 2024. In 2022, she received the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Champion of Justice Legal Award, an honor recognizing individuals who have staunchly preserved or defended constitutional rights. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Murray also served on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers from 2018 through 2025, where she co-chaired its sentencing committee and second-look task force. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The Clemency Project
Murray is perhaps best known for her extraordinary clemency advocacy.
In 2014, she became a member of the steering committee of Clemency Project 2014, a collaboration among the American Bar Association, NACDL, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the ACLU, and federal defenders. The initiative recruited and trained volunteer lawyers to represent eligible federal prisoners seeking clemency from President Obama.
Murray helped create training materials and lead training programs. But she did far more than work behind the scenes. She fielded phone calls and answered letters and emails from prisoners and family members as thousands of people sought help through the initiative. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Then Murray did something particularly important: she brought the clemency effort into the classroom.
In the fall of 2014, she established the Clemency Project at the University of Minnesota Law School. Under her supervision, 15 students drafted 35 clemency petitions for eligible federal prisoners.
Fourteen of those applicants ultimately received grants of clemency.
The project became one of the country's most significant law-school-based clemency programs. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Former Minnesota Law Dean Garry W. Jenkins described Murray's efforts as advancing the school's educational mission, connecting the law school with the community, and helping meet a critical legal need for Minnesotans and the nation.
The clients represented by Murray and her students were largely low-level participants in nonviolent drug cases who had received extraordinarily long sentences. Many were serving sentences that would be substantially shorter today because of changes in federal sentencing law, guidelines, and policy.
Murray has explained the human cost of those sentences:
“All of these clients were serving excessive sentences that devastated their lives and the lives of their families.”
She also emphasized the bipartisan nature of clemency, saying that presidential grants demonstrate that criminal justice reform is not inherently a partisan issue.
The Work Didn't End With Clemency Project 2014
What makes Murray's story especially relevant today is that she did not stop when the Obama clemency initiative ended.
The University of Minnesota reports that, following the original 14 grants, its Clemency Project Clinic has secured the release of an additional 36 individuals through various clemency and second-look mechanisms. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The clinic's work has also expanded beyond federal presidential clemency.
In 2024, Murray's clinic successfully obtained a federal sentence reduction for a 74-year-old woman who had been released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic but still faced years of incarceration. The clinic argued that continuing to treat her brother's home as her prison for years after her medical vulnerability had prompted home confinement was inconsistent with the purpose of compassionate release. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The clinic has also pursued state-level remedies and second-look opportunities.
In one remarkable case, Murray and her students helped secure relief for a New York man who had been sentenced to two consecutive 25-years-to-life terms for murder. He had already served 35 years. The clinic revisited the decades-old case and identified potential ineffective-assistance-of-counsel issues involving plea negotiations and sentencing advocacy. The Brooklyn District Attorney supported the clinic's effort, and the sentence was ultimately reduced to 42 years to life, leading to his release in December 2024. (University of Minnesota Law School)
In Minnesota, the clinic also secured its first pardon in 2024. The Minnesota Board of Pardons unanimously granted a pardon to a former client who had completed her sentences, paid restitution, raised two children, worked full-time, and volunteered in her community. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The message is clear: when one avenue for relief closes, Murray and her students look for another.
Presidential Clemency Under President Biden
The clinic's work produced another extraordinary chapter in late 2024 and early 2025.
In December 2024, six clients of Murray's Clemency Project Clinic received commutations from President Joe Biden. All six had been released to home confinement under the CARES Act because of their vulnerability to COVID-19. They had rebuilt their lives, reconnected with their families, found employment, and complied with the conditions of home confinement. The commutations spared them the possibility of being returned to prison for technical violations. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Then, on January 17, 2025, five additional incarcerated clients represented by Murray's clinic received presidential commutations.
All five were women serving lengthy sentences for nonviolent participation in drug-distribution cases. Their sentences would be significantly shorter today because of changes in federal statutes, sentencing guidelines, and policies.
Among them was Francisca Vargas, who had served 20 years of a life sentence. Others had served approximately 10 to 15 years of sentences ranging from 15.5 to 30 years. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Murray described the clients as exemplary prisoners who had made the most of the opportunities available to them in prison and were ready to return to society.
She also pointed to something larger than any individual case: the extraordinary growth of the federal female prison population and the particular consequences incarceration has for women and their children. (University of Minnesota Law School)
And Then Came President Trump
Murray's clemency advocacy continued across presidential administrations.
On January 15, 2026, President Donald Trump granted a full commutation to Angela Reynolds, a client of the Minnesota Law Clemency Project Clinic.
Reynolds had served 10 years of a 23-year sentence for her nonviolent, unarmed role in a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy.
A major component of her sentence was a federal sentencing enhancement based on the purity of the methamphetamine involved in her case. The University of Minnesota noted that, had the purity enhancement not applied, Reynolds' sentence would effectively have amounted to the time she had already served. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The case is particularly significant because it demonstrates that Murray's clemency work has continued to produce results under presidents from both political parties.
Her work has never depended upon a particular administration.
It has depended upon the belief that people serving unjustly long sentences deserve to be heard.
Fighting the Sentencing System That Creates Excessive Sentences
Murray's work has now evolved beyond individual clemency applications.
She is increasingly challenging the systemic mechanisms that produce excessive sentences in the first place.
In February 2026, Murray and five of her students submitted a 13,500-word letter to the U.S. Sentencing Commission concerning the federal sentencing guidelines' treatment of methamphetamine.
The clinic challenged the distinction between “methamphetamine actual” and “methamphetamine mixture,” arguing that the outdated purity distinction can produce extraordinarily long sentences and significant geographic disparities. (University of Minnesota Law School)
The clinic paid particular attention to female defendants.
According to the clinic's research, women now account for approximately 20 percent of federal methamphetamine prosecutions each year, while women remain comparatively understudied in federal sentencing research. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Murray later expanded that work in an essay titled “The Silent Tragedy of Female Incarceration in U.S. Federal Prisons,” examining the rise of female incarceration and the unique consequences long federal sentences have for women and their families. (University of Minnesota Law School)
Her research has also examined geographic disparities in sentencing and the ways in which seemingly neutral sentencing rules can produce dramatically different outcomes depending upon where a person is prosecuted.
Looking Beyond the Sentence
Perhaps the most important development in Murray's work is her increasing focus on how a sentence is created in the first place.
In August 2026, Murray submitted comments to the U.S. Sentencing Commission concerning its research priorities as the federal Sentencing Guidelines approach their 40th anniversary.
Her argument was both simple and profound:
Federal sentences are not produced by judges alone.
Murray argued that sentencing outcomes are shaped by a chain of discretionary decisions that occurs long before a judge pronounces sentence—including prosecutorial charging decisions, mandatory-minimum decisions, plea bargaining, cooperation agreements, sentencing enhancements, defense advocacy, and the individual philosophies of prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges.
She warned that examining only the final sentence can obscure the forces that actually produced it. (University of Minnesota Law School)
This is an important evolution in Murray's work.
She is no longer simply asking:
“Was this sentence too long?”
She is also asking:
“Why did this person receive this sentence in the first place?”
And that question has enormous implications for anyone trying to understand sentencing disparities in America.
For Humanity's Sake
Thanks to people like Professor JaneAnne Murray, real change is taking place in America's criminal justice system.
But there is still an enormous amount of work to be done.
There are thousands of living, breathing human beings behind bars serving sentences that have become increasingly difficult to justify as laws, sentencing guidelines, policies, and society's understanding of justice evolve.
Some committed serious crimes. Some played minor roles. Some were first-time offenders. Some were women separated from their children. Some have spent decades in prison and have become entirely different people from the people who entered the system years or decades ago.
And some are serving sentences that would be dramatically shorter if they were sentenced today.
That is where people like JaneAnne Murray make such an extraordinary difference.
She doesn't simply argue that the system should be changed.
She finds the people trapped inside it and fights for them.
She gives law students the opportunity to experience justice not as an abstract concept in a textbook, but as a human being sitting on the other side of a prison wall.
And perhaps most importantly, she demonstrates that justice does not have to end when a sentence is imposed.
There must always be room for a second look.
A second chance.
And, mercy.
