Adam Murphy is an Assistant Counsel, who joined LDF in 2021. At LDF, Adam served as lead counsel for a client—initially sentenced to life without parole as a teenager—who was ordered released by the Mississippi Parole Board. Adam continues to represent and advocate for the release of people who were re-sentenced pursuant to Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), and works to eliminate racial discrimination in the jury selection process. In addition to being part of the legal team seeking to improve conditions of confinement in Arkansas prisons, he has filed amicus and merits briefs challenging qualified immunity and racially biased sentencing in federal appeals courts and an amicus brief in a death penalty case in the United States Supreme Court.
Prior to LDF, Adam was a Staff Attorney and Law Fellow with the Equal Justice Initiative, where he represented people on Alabama’s death row and clients sentenced to death-in-prison as children. Most recently, Adam was an appellate public defender with the Office of the Appellate Defender, where he was counsel-of-record in People v. Murray, 197 A.D.3d 46 (1st Dep’t 2021). In that case, the New York State Appellate Division reversed his client’s conviction after concluding that the trial level prosecutor excluded Black prospective jurors on the basis of race in violation of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
Adam has advocated successfully for the release of seven people at various state parole boards throughout the United States, including three people who were serving life sentences. He also co-founded and served as the licensed bail bond agent for the Washington Square Legal Services Bail Fund, a not-for-profit organization that posted bail for dozens of people who could not afford their freedom.
Adam graduated from the New York University School of Law in 2017, where he was an Arthur Garfield Hays Fellow. During law school, Adam was a member of the Juvenile Defender Clinic, the Equal Justice and Defender Clinic, and served as co-president of the Solitary Confinement Project. For his work, Adam received the Vanderbilt Medal, Ann Petluck Poses Memorial Prize, and the Eric Dean Bender Prize.
Adam is a member of the state bars of Alabama and New York, as well as the United States Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit, Third Circuit, First Circuit, Northern District of Alabama, and Eastern District of Arkansas (pro hac vice).
