Mike Avery

Mike Avery began his career as an ACLU staff lawyer during the 1970 Black Panther murder trial in New Haven and went on to practice civil rights and criminal defense law for over five decades. He successfully argued cases in the United States Supreme Court, nearly half of the federal Courts of Appeals, and in courts across Massachusetts and Connecticut. He represented victims of police abuse and discrimination, and defended clients charged with everything from peaceful protesting to murder. In 2007, he helped secure a one hundred and two million dollar judgment against the FBI for the wrongful conviction of four innocent men, including his client, Peter Limone, who spent 33 years in prison for a murder committed by an FBI informant.

A former president of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Police Accountability Project, Avery taught for sixteen years at Suffolk Law School, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He’s the author of several non-fiction books and three legal thrillers: The Cooperating Witness, Verdict of Lies, and Assumed Guilty, and co-authored: Small Town Trial, Small Town Judgment and Small Town Conviction. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and he also studied in the former Soviet Union and later obtained a MFA from Bennington College. He resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.