Professor Sharon Beckman co-teaches the Boston College Criminal Justice Clinic and supervises the BC Defenders, third-year law students who represent indigent clients charged with crimes in the Boston Municipal Court. She directs the Boston College Innocence Project, where law students work to exonerate innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted. A BCLS faculty member since 1996, Professor Beckman has also taught courses in Criminal and Constitutional Law and seminars on Punishment, White Collar Crime, and the Supreme Court. She is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Teaching Award, the Emil Slizewski Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Ruth-Arlene Howe/Black Law Students Association Faculty Member of the Year Award.

Professor Beckman graduated from Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Law Review. She served as a law clerk to the Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States and to Hon. Frank Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Prior to teaching, Professor Beckman was a trial and appellate lawyer in Boston and Chicago specializing in criminal defense and civil liberties litigation.

An avid swimmer, Sharon Beckman was a silver medalist in the 2009 United States Masters Swimming Championships. She is currently the New England Champion and ranked in the National Top Ten in several events. In the 1980s she was the first New England woman to swim across the English Channel and was ranked 1^st in the United States and 3^rd in the world among professional marathon swimmers. She participates in Swim Across America, which raises money for cancer research.

Professor Beckman is married and the mother of two teenagers.

EDUCATION

B.A., cum laude Harvard College; J.D. magna cum laude University of Michigan Law School.

RECENT ACTIVITIES

Work in Progress: Criminal Profiling and Constitutional Judgment; Mens Rea and Moral Imagination

Other:Supervising Professor, New England Innocence Project; Board Member, Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services (2004-06); Co-counsel (with Harvey Silverglate, Andrew Good, and Barry Scheck) on appeal in Commonwealth v. Louise Woodward

Appointments
Equal Justice Act Panel, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (since 2009)

Professor Beckman was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School in 1998.

COURSES

Fall '09: Criminal Justice Clinic (Class); Criminal Justice Clinic;
Spring '10: Advanced Criminal Justice: Defense Class; Advanced Criminal Justice: Defense Clinic; Boston College Innocence Project

PUBLICATIONS

• "Can Criminal Punishment Survive Christian Scrutiny? A Comment on Jeffrie Murphy's
  'Christianity and Criminal Punishment.'" Punishment & Society 6 (Jan. 2004): 87-98.
• "What Bush's Litigation Teaches Us About Compassionate Conservatism." Jurist: Legal News and Research (November 17, 2000) Available online at: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/electionbeckman.htm
  
• "Court Finds Needle Possession Justified to Limit Spread of AIDS" The Drug
  Policy Letter 2 (January-February 1990): 1.
  
• Review of Selective Nontreatment of Handicapped Newborns, by Weir.
  Michigan Law Review 83 (1985): 894 .