Marc DeSimone has been an adjunct professor and Lecturer of Law since 2007 and was named Adjunct Professor of the Year in 2015. Professor DeSimone is an Assistant Public Defender in the Appellate Division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, and has handled several hundred appeals and presented over fifty oral arguments before the appellate courts of Maryland. Professor DeSimone’s past advocacy includes litigating – on both the trial and appellate level – the final state constitutional challenge to death penalty in Maryland, serving as post-conviction and appellate counsel in a DNA exoneration matter, having the child support collection practices in one county declared unconstitutional, advocating under the Maryland Declaration of Rights for a change to the standard used to suppresses eyewitness identifications, and successfully securing post-conviction relief on behalf of multiple clients who were each incarcerated for several decades before release.
Professor DeSimone graduated from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in 2004. As a student, Professor DeSimone was selected as the best oral advocate in the 2003 Morris Brown Myerowitz Moot Court Competition, co-authored a petition for executive clemency which resulted in the release of a client who had been incarcerated since 1969, and was inducted into the Order of the Coif and the Order of the Barristers at graduation. Professor DeSimone served as a law clerk to the Honorable Vanessa Ruiz, Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Before joining the Office of the Public Defender, Professor DeSimone was in private practice and concentrated in products liability defense and admiralty and maritime law.
Professor DeSimone’s recent publications include a book chapter in Appellate Practice for the Maryland Lawyer and Debunking the Myths Surrounding Student Scholarly Writing, 74 Md. L.Rev. 169 (2014) (with Kristina V. Foherkolb). Professor DeSimone is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of the Loyola Blakefield Alumni Association, and he a past member of the Board of Trustees of Unified Community Connections (formerly United Cerebral Palsy of Central Maryland), where he was recognized as Volunteer of the Year in 2006.