NACDL - National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Eric McBurney
NACDL Staff, Resource Counsel, Return to Freedom Project
December 20, 2021
Eric McBurney was a literary scholar whose legal career started with a fellowship to attend the University of Iowa College of Law. As a law student, he worked as a research assistant on International Human Rights issues with a particular focus on the trial of Charles Taylor, former Liberian president. Funded by the Midwest Coalition for Human Rights, multiple fellowships provided him with the opportunity to work with the ACLU of Iowa and Michigan. A particular project of note was the Initiative to End Sentencing Juveniles to Life Without Parole in Michigan where he managed a study of over 300 cases and authored two research papers on issues relating to race and criminal justice. The subsequent summer returned him to the Bay Area with a fellowship with East Bay Community Law Center. There, Mr. McBurney worked on issues relating to government assistance while he handled a caseload and, at the same time, conducted policy work on issues relating to General Assistance. This experience ultimately resulted in the publication of his article in Iowa Law’s Journey of Gender, Race, and Justice which was an analysis of how states utilized welfare support to control the population of racial minorities.
After graduating form law school in 1997, Mr. McBurney worked as a volunteer law clerk at the Contra Costa County Office of the Public Defender until he was hired as a misdemeanor attorney. He handled a full misdemeanor caseload, offering vertical representation, and had over fifty jury trials in two years. From 2015 to 2018, he world continue his career as a public defender in San Bernardino county representing the indigent accused in all categories of felony cases. There, he acquired additional jury trial experience in all types of felony cases including three-strikes life exposure trials and murder trials. From September of 2018 until 2021, Mr. McBurney returned to the Bay Area and was hired by the late Jeff Adachi as a felony attorney. In that office, he continued to handle a full felony caseload offering vertical representation to the indigent accused.
