Plea Bargaining Institute Welcomes New Members to Board of Advisors

“I’m very excited and honored to welcome our newest members of the Board of Advisors,” said Lucian Dervan, Founding Director of the Institute. “Each brings a wealth of knowledge and experience about the criminal system and the role of plea bargaining. Importantly, they also bring diverse perspectives that will help guide and inform the work of the Institute.”

You can review the complete list of Board of Advisors here. Biographies on the new members are provided below.

Hon. Michael Donnelly

Former Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court

Justice Michael P. Donnelly served as the 160th justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio until January 2025. Before joining the Ohio Supreme Court in January 2019, Justice Donnelly served as a judge on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, General Division, for 14 years. For eight of those years, he additionally served as a judge on Cuyahoga County’s Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Court. Justice Donnelly served on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism from 2007 to 2012 and chaired the Commission during his final year. During his tenure on the Commission on Professionalism, he helped establish the highly successful Lawyer to Lawyer Mentoring Program, which has received national accolades. He also spent more than a decade personally mentoring new lawyers. In 2011, Justice Donnelly was one of two Ohio judges invited to participate in a two-year program created by the National Judicial College as part of their “Innovative Leadership Skills for Leader-Manager Judges Project,” which aimed to empower future judicial leaders across the United States to improve the functioning of the justice system. Justice Donnelly accepts numerous speaking invitations throughout the year to advocate for comprehensive data-driven criminal justice reform, plea-bargaining reform, and the elimination of wrongful convictions. In 2023 he was invited to speak and participate at the inaugural meeting of the Plea Bargaining Institute at Belmont University College of Law

Amy Fettig

Co-Executive Director, Fair and Just Prosecution

Amy Fettig serves as the acting Co-Executive Director for Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP) which supports a movement of reform-minded elected prosecutors dedicated to creating a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion and fiscal responsibility while building safer and healthier communities. FJP’s network represents nearly 20% of the US population across the country in our largest urban cities, suburban areas, small towns and rural communities. Ms. Fettig previously served as the Executive Director of The Sentencing Project (TSP), a national research and advocacy organization working to end mass incarceration while promoting racial, gender and economic justice by rolling back extreme sentencing; promoting voting rights; and supporting reform and decarceration of the nation’s youth justice systems. At TSP, Ms. Fettig also founded the Second Look Network, a nationwide network of attorneys working to implement second look mechanism for convictions beyond direct appeal.  Prior to her senior executive roles at key national justice reform organizations, Ms. Fettig served as the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project (NPP). At NPP, she litigated federal class action civil rights cases. Her practice focused on claims regarding medical and mental health care in prison, solitary confinement, sexual abuse, and comprehensive reform in youth facilities. She also founded and directed the ACLU’s Stop Solitary campaign seeking to end the practice of long-term isolation in our nation’s prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers through public policy reform, legislation, litigation and public education. A national expert on prisoner rights law, Ms. Fettig provides technical legal assistance and advice to advocacy groups and lawyers around the country and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to law school, Ms. Fettig worked with women who were currently and formerly incarcerated and their families in New York City. She holds a B.A., with distinction, Carleton College; a Master’s from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs; and a J.D. from Georgetown University. Ms. Fettig is a member of the New York State Bar (2002) and the Bar for the District of Columbia (2006).

Jonathan Wroblewski

Lecturer, Harvard Law School

Former Director of the Office of Policy and Legislation, Criminal Division, U.S. DOJ

Jonathan Wroblewski is a lecturer at Harvard Law School and has been the Director of the Law School’s Semester in Washington Program since 2010.  He recently completed a 35-year federal criminal justice career, the last 15 years of which he served as Director of the Office of Policy and Legislation in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.  In that capacity, he led a team of policy analysts and attorneys in developing, reviewing, and evaluating national crime, sentencing, and corrections policy and legislation.  He represented the Attorney General on the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules, and the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Council.

Jonathan began his federal career in 1988 as a prosecutor with the Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he prosecuted law enforcement misconduct, involuntary servitude, and hate crimes cases.  Before that, he served as an assistant public defender in the Alameda County, California Public Defender’s office and represented indigent criminal defendants at all stages of litigation.  In 1994, Jonathan joined the United States Sentencing Commission staff, serving as Deputy General Counsel and then Director of Legislative and Public Affairs.  Jonathan’s previous academic work includes serving as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology and as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University’s National Law Center and George Mason University School of Law.  He graduated from Duke University in 1983 and Stanford Law School in 1986.