Alan Rosenthal Bio

ALAN ROSENTHAL

Alan Rosenthal is a criminal defense and civil rights attorney with over 40 years of experience.  A graduate of Syracuse University College of Law, he has litigated cases involving serious felonies, police misconduct and violations of civil rights in both jails and prisons.  For seven years he served as the Director of Justice Strategies, the research, training and policy initiative of the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA).  As the Director of Justice Strategies, he supervised and provided mitigation services in capital cases as well as all levels of sentencing advocacy.  He is currently in private practice providing sentencing consulting services to defense attorneys throughout New York State.  He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Onondaga County Bar Association Assigned Counsel Program.  He has presented to lawyers at CLE programs for the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, New York State Bar Association, National Legal Aid & Defender Association, National Alliance of Sentencing and Mitigation Specialists, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, New York State Judicial Institute, New York County Defender Services, New York State Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives, the New York State Defenders Association, and many County Bar Associations, and for Public Defenders in Maryland and Florida.  His CLE programs have included such topics as sentencing, sentencing advocacy, mitigation, plea negotiations and client-centered counseling of a plea, the collateral consequences of criminal convictions, Rockefeller Drug Law Reform, SORA, judicial diversion, challenging the probation report at a sentencing hearing, understanding the interplay of a sentence and DOCCS early release programs, ethics, and the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act.  Mr. Rosenthal has also written many practice articles on sentencing in New York and practice manuals.

Mr. Rosenthal has served on the New York State Bar Association Special Committee on Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions and the Special Committee on Reentry.  In March 2006 he was honored with the Outstanding Service to the Criminal Bar Award by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and in 2014 he was the recipient of the Wilfred R. O’Connor Award presented by the New York State Defenders Association.