Jim M.

Background

About Jim M.

Jim is the Interim Co-Executive Director of the Innocence Project Delaware, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Delaware Law School at Widener University. Jim supervises a small but growing staff and a burgeoning caseload. Prior to becoming the Interim Executive Director, he served as an officer on the Board of Directors since the Project's inception in 2018. Before joining the Innocence Project Delaware, Jim spent thirty years as a death penalty defense attorney, the last twenty-five of those years as an assistant federal defender with the Philadelphia Federal Community Defender’s Capital Habeas Unit. The Capital Habeas Unit represents death-sentenced people throughout the country in both state and federal court. The Capital Habeas Unit has reversed over 120 death sentences, mostly in Pennsylvania. Jim has been a practicing public interest attorney for over thirty-six years. He spent the first five years of his career with the Legal Aid Society of Hartford County, where he worked on housing and habeas corpus cases. During his career, Jim was part of teams consisting of a veritable army of lawyers, investigators, and paralegals who represented eight innocent men, six who faced execution. Five of these men were exonerated. On the flip side, he has been involved in eight cases where his clients were executed. Jim and his family have lived in the Lehigh Valley for 27 years. Sarah Nicklin, his partner, is the medical director of hospice at the Lehigh Valley Hospital. Sarah and Jim have three children and three dogs. Jim graduated from Vermont Law School in 1988 and later earned a master’s in environmental law, also from VLS. Jim is also very interested in renewable energy and environmental justice.