Sandra Guerra Thompson is the Newell H. Blakely Professor in Law and Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. She is the recipient of the University of Houston’s Distinguished Leadership in Teaching Excellence Award in 2015, as well as the Teaching Excellence Award in 2003 and the Ethel Baker Faculty Award in 2000.  Her recent book is Cops in Lab Coats: Curbing Wrongful Convictions with Independent Forensic Laboratories (Carolina Academic Press 2015), favorably reviewed in the Michigan Law Review, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, and Boston Review.

She has written articles on subjects including: wrongful convictions, eyewitness identifications, forensic science, civil asset forfeiture, federal sentencing, discrimination in jury selection, prosecutorial ethics, police interrogations, and immigration crimes. Ms. Thompson teaches criminal procedure, criminal law, and prisoners’ rights and prison reform. In 1996, she became the first Latina tenured law professor in the State of Texas. Ms. Thompson received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale University.

(Spring 2020)