Megan Crane

Director, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

megan.crane@macarthurjustice.org (314) 254-8545

Areas of Focus

Megan G. Crane joined the Missouri office at the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) in the fall of 2018, and launched the Missouri Wrongful Conviction Project, in partnership with the Midwest Innocence Project, in the fall of 2020.  With a background in capital defense, wrongful conviction litigation, and juvenile justice, Megan brings a unique combination of expertise to our Missouri office’s efforts on behalf of youth sentenced to die behind bars, as well as our campaign to reform the parole process for juveniles, and our efforts to improve the state of indigent defense in Missouri.

Before joining the MJC, Megan was the Co-Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY) at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she represented wrongfully convicted youth in post-conviction litigation in state and federal court.  She was lead counsel for the team that exonerated Davontae Sanford, a high-profile case of a 14-year-old who falsely confessed to quadruple murder after multiple days of police interrogation without an attorney or a parent, and who served almost a decade in prison before the true confession of a professional hitman helped exonerate him.  In addition to her individual representation, Megan regularly assisted in litigation across the country involving coercive interrogations and extreme sentencing of youth as amicus counsel and/or a consultant, including amicus briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court.

At Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Megan taught clinical courses on criminal post-conviction defense litigation, juvenile justice, and wrongful convictions, as well as a practicum course on public interest lawyering.  Megan also frequently presents across the country and has published several articles on police interrogations of youth.  She has a particular research and practice interest in childhood trauma as a risk factor for involuntary confessions.

Megan began her post-conviction career in California representing men and women sentenced to death while working with the Habeas Corpus Resource Center (HCRC).  Prior to her work with HCRC, she was a commercial litigator with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in San Francisco.  In 2013, Megan received a California Attorney of the Year award for her successful pro bono representation, in partnership with the Northern California Innocence Project, of George Souliotes, who was wrongfully convicted of arson and triple murder and sentenced to life without parole. Mr. Souliotes was finally granted federal habeas relief after 17 years in prison and released in 2013.

Megan is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Michigan Law School.  After graduating from law school, Megan clerked for the Honorable Noel Anketell Kramer on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Megan G. Crane & Maria Hawilo (Forthcoming in 2024), Confessions & Pleas in Youth, American Psychological Association, Chapter 23: Legal Practice – Working with Youth.

Hayley M.D. Cleary & Megan G. Crane, (2023), Oxford Handbook on Developmental Psychology and the Law, Chapter re Questioning Adolescents.

Megan Glynn Crane, Principal Interrogator, The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 23 J. Gender Race & Just. 77, 97 (2020).

Megan Glynn Crane, Childhood Trauma’s Lurking Presence in the Juvenile Interrogation Room and the Need for A Trauma-Informed Voluntariness Test for Juvenile Confessions, 62 S.D. L. Rev. 626 (2017).

Laura Nirider, Megan Crane, and Steven Drizin, Gerald Gault, Meet Brendan Dassey: Preventing Juvenile False and Coerced Confessions in the 21st Century, reprinted in Rights, Race, and Reform: 50 Years of Child Advocacy in the Juvenile Justice System, Laura Cohen et al., eds., Routledge Press (2018).

Laura Nirider, Megan Crane, and Steven Drizin, Gerald Gault, Meet Brendan Dassey: Preventing Juvenile False and Coerced Confessions in the 21st Century, NACDL Champion at 28-32 (April 2017).

Megan Crane, Laura Nirider, and Steven Drizin, The Truth About Juvenile False Confessions, American Bar Association Insights on Law & Society 16.2 (Winter 2016).