Woman Strong

Judy Mizner ’76 doesn’t blink in the face of tough cases as the Chief of Appeals at the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the districts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. For her strong track record as an appellate advocate, she was recognized in April as the Eighth Annual Woman of the Year by BC Law’s Women’s Law Center. Among her accomplishments: Mizner handled the initial appeal of Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the First Circuit and successfully argued before the Supreme Court in US v Wurie, in which the court ultimately held a warrant and probable cause are necessary for a police search of an arrestee’s cell phone absent exigent circumstances. Among the dignitaries gathered to honor Mizner were Federal Defender Miriam Conrad, retired US District Court judge Nancy Gertner, and former director of the ACLU of Massachusetts John Rubenstein.