Mark E. Overland

Mark E. Overland has been lead counsel in over 200 jury trials.  He was named 2002 Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Criminal Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.  Mr. Overland represents clients in both state and federal criminal proceedings, including capital prosecutions, as well as civil litigation.  Among his recent jury trials, he represented the defendant charged with ten counts of vehicular homicide that occurred in 2003 at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, as well as defendants in a multimillion dollar federal wire and bankruptcy fraud case and a state murder prosecution involving the defense of insanity.    
           
Mr. Overland graduated in 1965 from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall).  After graduation he received a Ford Foundation Fellowship from Boalt to study Juvenile Criminal Law in Germany.  From 1966 to 1981, Mr. Overland was a deputy with the Los Angeles County Office of the Public Defender, where he was a member of the Special Trials Unit, representing clients in complex criminal and capital cases.  He supervised the office training program for approximately 400 attorneys and became Chief, Central Superior and Municipal Court Trials, supervising approximately 80 trial attorneys.
           
Mr. Overland is a past Chair of the State Bar of California Criminal Law section, and has been an advisor to the Law Reform Commission, a member of the California Bail Reform Evaluation Advisory Commission, the Obledo Committee that implemented California's determinate sentence legislation, and a member of the California Senate Advisory Commission on Criminal Procedure.  He has also testified numerous times before California legislative committees on bills relating to constitutional issues, the death penalty, evidence, and criminal law and has drafted legislation on behalf of the California State Bar.

Mr. Overland is the co-author of the leading criminal law treatise California Criminal Procedure, Motions and Jury Instructions (5 volumes) (1983-2007) Thomson West Publications and The Complete Sentencing Handbook (1983-1993).  He has been a lecturer on Continuing Education for Superior Court judges, and has lectured throughout the state on substantive and procedural criminal law matters, evidence, and constitutional issues.  He is a member of the New York and California Bars.