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Taylor Porter attorney Michael Walsh will serve as a guest panelist on the Louisiana Practitioner Roundtable for a Louisiana Law Review Symposium, “Throw Away the Key: Criminal Sentencing Reform in the 21st Century,” co-sponsored by the LSU Law Center and the Pugh Institute for Justice, and to be held on Friday, January 22, 2016, in the McKernan Auditorium at the LSU Law Center.

The symposium includes seven hours of CLE credit for Louisiana and Texas and is free to attend, but registration is required.

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration, with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails - a 500 percent increase over the last 30 years. Louisiana has a higher incarceration rate than any other state or nation in the world. One out of 87 adults are behind bars in Louisiana, which is more than twice the average rate of all 50 U.S. states and significantly higher than every other country in the world. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and state governments being overwhelmed by the burden of funding a rapidly-expanding penal system. The increased prison population has led to a nationwide discussion concerning whether it is now time to retrench from the stringent mandatory sentencing laws adopted during the 1980s and 1990s. Many believe that criminal sentencing guideline reform is long past due, while others say that pro-reformers are underestimating the severity of the crimes committed by individuals sentenced to an extended term in state or federal prison.

In this Symposium, the LSU Law Center and experts from across the nation will gather to discuss sentencing reform on a state and national level, and panelists will consider the history behind the current Louisiana state and federal guidelines for sentencing, examine what those systems have achieved, and offer new and innovative perspectives on sentencing practices.

Walsh has more than 30 years’ experience representing individual and corporate clients in complex criminal and civil litigation and enforcement cases throughout the country. His practice involves public corruption, antitrust, healthcare, False Claims Act, Lacey Act, and environmental matters. His experience also includes federal and state trials, with primary trial responsibility in more than 100 cases including commercial, domestic, personal injury, federal civil rights actions and products liability cases, complex criminal cases, such as death penalty cases tried to verdict, and internal investigation matters.