Data for Defenders is a project created by Michigan Law’s MDefenders program that promotes creative and evidence-based advocacy through strategic and effective use of social science research. Social science draws on a wide range of disciplines – including psychology, public health, statistics, communication studies, and economics – to explain how and why people, groups, and societies do the things that they do. These studies and statistics allow defenders to communicate more effectively with judges and juries, better understand the implicit biases that impact the court system, and support the substantive legal arguments they raise on behalf of clients.
This project is founded on the belief that high-quality defense work starts and ends with people: giving context to the circumstances of the people we represent, giving consideration to the ways that people think and learn, and giving the right information to the people tasked with decision-making inside the courtroom.
From research on eyewitness memory to studies on how jurors perceive expert testimony to how junk science undermines the truth-seeking process, Data for Defenders is designed to broaden a defender’s toolbox and build a stronger foundation of advocacy for the clients we represent.
Eve Brensike Primus teaches Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and Habeas Corpus at the University of Michigan Law School, where she also writes about structural reform in the criminal justice system. She is the founder and director of the Public Defender Training Institute, a year-long skills-based program that trains law students to be zealous, creative, and client-centered advocates who fight for individualized justice and argue for systemic change in the criminal legal system.
Her scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court as well as lower appellate courts. She also has won the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching on more than one occasion. Before joining the Michigan Law faculty, she was an attorney in the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. In that office, Professor Primus worked both as a trial attorney and as an appellate litigator, appearing several times before the state’s highest court.
Sofia Nelson is a program director of MDefenders and a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School. They co-teach the Public Defender Training Institute with Professor Eve Primus.
Before joining Michigan Law, Nelson spent a decade as a public defender, litigating trial and appellate matters. Nelson’s experience includes jury trials, juvenile lifer resentencings, and arguments before the Michigan Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Nelson’s academic interests include abolition, public defense as harm reduction, and the evolving jurisprudence of gun rights. Nelson is particularly committed to mentoring students interested in careers in public defense.
Designed to mentor and train aspiring public defenders, the MDefenders Program provides an opportunity for law students to learn about indigent defense practice, build community with like-minded peers, and develop the skills they need to effectively advocate as a public defender. With a robust alumni network spanning from coast to coast (and beyond!), the MDefenders Program is proud to graduate 20-30 incoming public defenders each year.
