Nick Hentoff graduated from Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences with an A.B., cum laude, in Philosophy. After graduating from Cornell, Nick Hentoff w...ver maisNick Hentoff graduated from Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences with an A.B., cum laude, in Philosophy. After graduating from Cornell, Nick Hentoff worked as an investigative reporter, a criminal defense trial attorney and as the managing director of an online advocacy and publishing company.
In 1987, while still in law school, Nick Hentoff had the opportunity to work for seven months as a law clerk in the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. During this time he contributed significant medical and legal research to a Memorandum for the White House Counsel concluding that people with HIV/AIDS infection were protected from discrimination under the Rehabilitation Act. By the time he graduated from law school in 1988 Nick Hentoff had already published a bylined front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, multiple op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as articles in a number of other national publications.
From 1988 to 1990 Nick Hentoff served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Charles L. Hardy, a United States District Court Judge for the District of Arizona. Following his clerkship, Nick Hentoff joined the Maricopa County Public Defender's Office where he worked as a trial attorney handling everything from misdemeanors to capital murder cases. Nick Hentoff operated a private law practice, Hentoff Law Office, from 1993 to 1998 and 2001 to 2008.
Hentoff Law Office focused on criminal defense, police misconduct, civil rights and constitutional litigation in state and Federal courts. Hentoff Law Office also conducted and assisted with investigations into human rights violations impacting marginalized and vulnerable populations including poor communities being victimized by the police. Nick served on the Board of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union during the 10's and as a member of the AzCLU's Legal Committee for over a decade.
At any given time an average of 25% to 35% of the firm's active caseload was devoted to pro bono cases, including the representation of Native American defendants in two murder trials (one of them a death penalty case), and the representation of prison inmates in individual civil rights cases and two class action lawsuits challenging the conditions of their confinement. In the first prison class action lawsuit, Does v. Stewart (D. Ariz. 1996), Nick Hentoff was one of seven attorneys who were appointed by United States District Court Judge Charles L. Hardy to represent a class of prison inmates who had been denied protective segregation and were facing imminent death or serious physical injury if they were transferred back into the general population.
In 1994 Nick Hentoff won an acquittal for a man who had falsely confessed to sex crimes that he did not commit. The client was charged with crimes that carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted. The jury took just three hours of deliberations to return a not guilty verdict on all counts after an eight week trial. An analysis of the case was published as a front-page feature article in The Phoenix Gazette. A letter from a family member of the client can be found here.
Nick Hentoff has also hosted a well-regarded public affairs radio talk show - Citizen Lawyer Radio - that was broadcast on the Air America affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the shows featured Ray Krone, a man falsely convicted of capital murder who was exonerated after spending several years on death row.
In 2008 Nick Hentoff closed his law practice and moved to Central Asia where he worked as a Long Term Legal Specialist for the ABA's ROLI program. Based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Nick Hentoff designed and conducted training programs for lawyers, judges and prosecutors on issues relating to human rights, the rule of law and trial practice skills.ver menos