Cardozo offers a robust criminal law program with classes in Criminal Law, Evidence and Criminal Procedure, as well as the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Innocence Project, and one of the most comprehensive boot camp programs for trial lawyers--the Intensive Trial Advocacy Program. In addition, the Benedict Morelli Trial Advocacy Program provides students with the opportunity to compete nationally in mock trials and recently hosted the National Trial Competition, one of the largest competitions in the country.
Intensive Trial Advocacy Program
The Intensive Trial Advocacy Program at Cardozo Law is one of the best trial preparation programs anywhere in the country. In his two-week boot camp, students learn skills and experience under the guidance of judges and lawyers from around the country.
The Criminal Defense Clinic
Students grow as defense attorneys by representing clients in Court under direct supervision of Cardozo professors.
Meet our Criminal Law Faculty

Professor Kyron Huigens
Before joining the Cardozo faculty, Professor Huigens practiced in the Seattle-Tacoma area for 12 years, including five as a prosecutor and three as a criminal defense attorney. His primary scholarly interest is the theory of punishment. He has published articles and essays in Harvard Law Review, California Law Review and Georgetown Law Journal, among others.

Professor Kate Levine
Professor Levine earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. She clerked for the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Levine was an Appellate Public Defender at Appellate Advocates. Prior to that, she was an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Professor Kathryn Miller
Professor Miller comes to Cardozo from a three-year clinical fellowship at UC Berkeley School of Law where she taught in the law school's Death Penalty Clinic. Prior to her fellowship at Berkeley, Miller represented individuals convicted of capital crimes at the Equal Justice Initiative and served as a supervising attorney at The Bronx Defenders. Miller has a B.A. summa cum laude from The College of William & Mary and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law, where she participated in the Death Penalty Clinic as a student and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Professor Jonathan Oberman
Professor Oberman is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic. Over his twenty years at Cardozo, Oberman has taught Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Wrongful Convictions, and Ethics of Criminal Advocacy. In addition he teaches the Defense Clinic Seminar and directs the Criminal Defense Clinic, supervises students in the Criminal Appeals Clinic, and in the past litigated cases with the Innocence Project.

Professor Alexander Reinert
Professor Reinert joined the faculty of Cardozo in 2007, after working as an associate at Koob & Magoolaghan for six years, where he focused on the rights of people confined in prisons and jails, employment discrimination, and disability rights. Reinert teaches and conducts research in the areas of constitutional law, civil procedure, and criminal law. His articles have appeared in the Indiana Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the University of Virginia Law Review, and William and Mary Law Review, among other journals. Reinert argued before the Supreme Court in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, and has appeared on behalf of parties and amicus curiae in many significant civil rights cases

Professor Jessica Roth
Professor Roth is the co-director of the Jacob Burns Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law. Previously she was a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. As a prosecutor, she focused on violent crime and securities fraud and conducted numerous jury trials. Her teaching and research interests are in criminal law and evidence. Her scholarship has appeared in the UCLA Law Review, Washington University Law Review, and American Criminal Law Review, among other publications.

Professor Barry Scheck
Professor Scheck is known for his landmark litigation that has set standards for forensic applications of DNA technology. Since 1988, his and Peter Neufeld's work in this area has shaped the course of case law across the country and led to an influential study by the National Academy of Sciences on forensic DNA testing, as well as important state and federal legislation. He and Neufeld coauthored with Jim Dwyer Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted.

Professor Ekow Yankah
Professor Yankah hold degrees from the University of Michigan, Columbia Law School and Oxford University. His work focuses on questions of criminal theory and punishment and political theory and particularly, questions political obligation and its interaction with justifications of punishment. His work has appeared in law review articles and peer reviewed legal theory journals and books including NOMOS, Ratio Juris, Law and Philosophy, Criminal Law and Philosophy and the Illinois Law Review.
The Innocence Project was Born at Cardozo Law School
The Innocence Project was founded at Cardozo. It is only open to Cardozo students and the clinical experience here is unparalleled anywhere. In this video Rachel Pecker '13 talks about the emotional impact of working on a case that successfully overturned a wrongful conviction. See what it's like to work for justice.