matt-greife // Social and Cultural Sciences // Marquette University

Teaching Assistant Professor

Social and Cultural Sciences

Matt’s research is focused on corporate, white collar, and environmental crime, the death penalty, empathic legal reasoning, legal culture, punishment, evidentiary standards, and civil rights litigation. Matt's current work on corporate environmental crime demonstrates that prosecutorial and judicial sentencing practices (1) increase the likelihood of future environmental law violations, and (2) maintain current levels of environmental injustice and environmental destruction. Recently, Matt published his first book, an ethnographic monograph, about Colorado death penalty defense lawyers and argues that their ideals, practices and styes of litigation created a legal culture of resistance that significantly contributed to the abolition of capital punishment in Colorado (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-46133-0).

Prior to entering academia full time Matt worked as a criminal defense and civil rights trial attorney for over 10 years and specialized in unlawful uses of force by police, cruel and unusual punishment claims, equal protection issues and first amendment lawsuits. He has litigated numerous civil and criminal trials in state and federal courts and is now retained as an expert witness concerning issues of criminal sentencing & mitigation and the scientific invalidity of the standardized field sobriety tests (SFSTs) in drugged driving cases. Matt is also retained as a consultant in federal civil rights law suits. Currently, Matt is consulting on wrongful death cases against police officers who unreasonably used lethal force and abuses of incarcerated individuals in jail and prison by people employed by the Department of Corrections.

Education

2016 Ph.D., Sociology, University of Georgia

2014 M.A., Sociology, University of Georgia

2010 J.D., Whittier Law School

Courses Taught

CRLS 2400. Carceral Systems, CRLS 1001. Introduction to Criminology, CRLS 4180. Empathy, Crime and Justice, CRLS 4930. Environmental Crime, Law and Justice

Research Interests

Law, criminology, social control, deviance, environmental crime, white collar and corporate crime