Pamela Metzger is the inaugural director of the Deason Family Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University (SMU). She comes to SMU from Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, where she had taught since 2001.
Professor Metzger received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law. A nationally recognized Sixth Amendment and ethics scholar, Professor Metzger combines theory and practice in seeking improvements in criminal justice. Most recently, she has explored how a data-driven systems approach to high-risk practices can improve the implementation of public defense services.
Professor Metzger captured a national spotlight for her round-the-clock work to help 8,000 indigent defendants who remained incarcerated without legal representation after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. She was interviewed recently on 60 Minutes, in a segment titled “Overburdened NOLA public defenders say innocents went to prison because they lacked resources and time to defend them properly.”
Professor Metzger’s work has appeared in publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Review, Southern California Law Review, and Northwestern University Law Review, and has been widely cited by leading authorities and by the U.S. Supreme Court.