Mark Osler

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Osler's family later moved to Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. He attended Grosse Pointe North High School, where he worked on the school newspaper with future AP White House reporter Ron Fournier.[9] He subsequently matriculated at the College of William & Mary, graduating in 1985.[10] Osler received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990 and clerked for District Court Judge Jan DuBois in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania before returning to Detroit. There, he worked from 1992-1995 for the law firm of Dykema Gossett, and then as an Assistant United States Attorney from 1995-2000.

Osler's scholarship and advocacy at Baylor focused on capital punishment and narcotics policy. Some of Osler's work addressed sentencing issues involving crack cocaine.[11] In 2009, Osler won the case (through a 6-3 summary and per curiam decision) of Spears v. United States[12] in the United States Supreme Court, which reversed the Eighth Circuit and clarified a prior sentencing decision, declaring that sentencing judges could "categorically" reject the 100-to-1 ration between powder and crack cocaine which was then embedded in the federal sentencing guidelines. The character of "Professor Joe Fisher" in the film American Violet is based on Osler's work with the ACLU and former student David Moore in confronting unjust crack prosecutions in the city of Hearne, Texas.[13] While at Baylor, Osler published Jesus on Death Row (Abingdon, 2009),[14] which critiques capital punishment in the United States through an examination of the biblical account of Jesus Christ's trial and execution.

Osler was named the 2009 Wacoan of the Year.[15]

Moving to St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Osler's work moved increasingly towards clemency. He was chosen as "Professor of the Year" in 2016, 2019, and 2022.

Following up on Jesus on Death Row, between 2011 and 2014, Osler and collaborators produced a dramatic[16] "Sentencing of Jesus"[17] in eleven states: Texas,[18] Colorado,[19] California,[20] Oklahoma,[21] Tennessee,[22] Massachusetts,[23] Illinois,[24] Virginia,[25] Louisiana,[26] Arizona, and Minnesota.[27] His 2016 book, Prosecuting Jesus[28] recounts that project.

Osler's most recent work[29] has focused on clemency[30] and narcotics policy. His opinion pieces (some co-authored) appeared in The New York Times in 2014,[31] 2016,[32] and 2021,[33] and in the Washington Post in 2014,[34] 2018,[35] August, 2020,[36] and November, 2020,[37] while his arguments in favor of narcotics policy reform appeared in law journals at Harvard,[38] Stanford,[39] Georgetown,[40] Rutgers,[41] and DePaul.[42] An article Osler co-authored with Rachel Barkow for the University of Chicago Law Review was highlighted in a lead editorial in The New York Times, in which the Times' editorial board expressly embraced Barkow and Osler's argument for clemency reform.[43] In 2020, the Times again described the Barkow/Osler plan in a staff editorial.[44] He and Barkow also co-founded the Clemency Resource Center[45] at NYU, a pop-up law firm which hired and trained lawyers for a one-year stint representing clemency petitioners during the heart of the Obama Clemency Initiative.

In 2020, 2022 and 2023, Osler testified before subcommittees of the United States House Judiciary Committee on various aspects of clemency.

He has also commented on the death penalty and other issues for CNN,[46] MSNBC,[47] NPR,[48] ESPN,[49] and the Huffington Post.[50] Osler appeared as a critic of narcotics policy in the 2013 National Geographic series "The 80's,"[51] and as a commentator in the 2014 National Geographic series "The Jesus Mysteries."[52] He is a founding member of Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, a national group of former and current prosecutors and police chiefs.[53]

Osler was also the lawyer for Weldon Angelos, who was freed in 2016 after serving 12 years of a 55-year sentence on a marijuana and gun possession conviction.[54] His criminal law casebook, Contemporary Criminal Law (West) was published in 2018, with a second edition released in 2021.[55]

In August of 2023, Osler began a one-year leave of absence from St. Thomas to serve as Deputy Hennepin County Attorney and Director of the Criminal Division under Mary Moriarty.[56]