Professor Catherine M. Grosso

Catherine Grosso is a professor at the MSU College of Law. Her interdisciplinary scholarship examines the role of race and other extralegal factors in criminal investigations, trials, and the administration of capital punishment. She teaches criminal procedure, capital punishment law, and a seminar on criminal juries.

Her recent work examines the persistent role of race in jury selection and in charging and sentencing decisions relating to capital punishment. Her National Science Foundation-sponsored project with Prof. Barbara O’Brien analyzes the ways stereotypes influence voir dire in capital cases. A third line of work empirically evaluates the success of death penalty statutes in fulfilling the Eighth Amendment narrowing requirements.

Prof. Grosso is also a contributing editor to the National Registry of Exonerations. The Registry “collects, analyzes and disseminates information about all known exonerations of innocent criminal defendants in the United States, from 1989 to the present.” The Registry provides a virtual home for exoneration stories and also an accessible, searchable statistical database about the cases.

Prof. Grosso was co-President of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) from 2020-22 and remains an active board member.  

Grosso received a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies with a Middle East concentration from Earlham College and a J.D. from University of Iowa College of Law.