For Immediate Release
Date: July 31, 2008
Contact: media@famm.org
WASHINGTON: Deborah T. Fleischaker, a lawyer with a background in public interest advocacy and legislation, has been named the director of state legislative affairs for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). FAMM is a national, nonpartisan organization working for fair and proportional sentencing laws on the federal and state levels.
Fleischaker will orchestrate FAMM’s state-based sentencing campaigns in Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Kansas and lead FAMM’s work to identify additional states where our work to reform costly and ineffective state mandatory minimum sentencing laws can bear fruit.
“Deborah joins FAMM at a time when many states are questioning the wisdom of mandatory minimum sentencing laws and looking for new approaches,” said Mary Price, vice president and general counsel of FAMM. “We are delighted to add her legislative, legal and organizing experience to our team.”
Before joining FAMM, Fleischaker served as the director of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project from 2001 to 2008. As the project’s first director, Fleischaker organized a national network of lawyers and advocated for a nationwide moratorium on executions. The project released major death penalty assessment reports, and worked for moratorium and reform, in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Fleischaker’s work on death penalty issues also includes three years as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, teaching an annual criminal justice seminar on the death penalty. In addition to her work on the death penalty, Fleischaker served as the coordinator for a U.S. Congressional campaign and worked at the Maryland General Assembly. She was an associate at the Baltimore, Maryland, firm of Brown, Goldstein & Levy LLP and as an Equal Justice Fellow at Public Citizens Congress Watch. Fleischaker earned her bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and her law degree from the University of Maryland.
FAMM was formed in 1991 by Julie Stewart after her brother was sentenced to five years in federal prison for a first-time marijuana offense. FAMM advocates for state and federal sentencing laws that are individualized, humane and result in punishment no longer than needed to ensure just punishment, public safety and rehabilitation. FAMM provides policy makers and the media with sentencing policy analysis and profiles of people serving mandatory prison sentences.
For more information, visit: www.famm.org or contact Monica Pratt, communications director, at media@famm.org or call FAMM’s headquarters at (202) 822-6700. To contact Deborah Fleischaker, email dfleischaker@famm.org.
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