ACS, ILS, and NLG Present: Permanent States of Exception with Tom Durkin

ACS, the International Law Society, and NLG Present:

Tom Durkin: “Permanent States of Exception: A Two-Tiered System of Criminal Justice Courtesy of the Double Government Wars on Crime, Drugs & Terror”

Join ILS, ACS, and NLG for a conversation with nationally renowned criminal defense attorney Tom Durkin—who has been called "A Terror Suspect's Best Hope in Court"—on defending those accused of national security-related crimes and the effect of fear-driven war rhetoric and policies on procedural due process rights and civil liberties. 

Tom Durkin is a nationally known trial lawyer specializing in the defense of prosecutions involving national security, domestic terrorism, and civil rights related matters. Mr. Durkin and his firm’s pro bono efforts to defend several Guantanamo Bay detainees have attracted national attention and praise. He served as counsel, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, for two detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have since been returned to their home countries. Mr. Durkin was also selected in 2008 to be a participant in the John Adams Project to provide civilian defense counsel to assist the military lawyers in the trial of the five High Value Detainees charged in U.S. v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, et al., in the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with conspiring to orchestrate the September 11th attacks of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Among his other notable cases, in 2016 Mr. Durkin attained a forty month sentence for Mohammed Hamzah Khan, an eighteen-year-old suburban Chicago man who was charged with providing material support to ISIS by attempting to travel to Syria along with his two juvenile siblings. He is a partner in the Chicago law firm of Durkin & Roberts.