Women’s History Month Profile Series: Miriam Krinsky, Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Women’s History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable women whose work has been sig­nif­i­cant in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is Miriam Krinsky, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and the Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution. Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP) is an orga­ni­za­tion of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors ​“com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing a jus­tice sys­tem ground­ed in fair­ness, equi­ty, com­pas­sion, and fiscal responsibility.” 

Ms. Krinsky’s work has inter­sect­ed with var­i­ous facets of the legal sys­tem. During her 15 years as a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, she worked on orga­nized crime and nar­cotics cas­es, served as Chief of the Criminal Appellate Section in the Central District of California, and served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee on Sentencing. As Executive Director of Los Angeles County’s Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence, she inves­ti­gat­ed and made reform rec­om­men­da­tions relat­ed to exces­sive use of force in Los Angeles County jails. She then worked on imple­ment­ing those reforms as Special Advisor to the Sheriff. She has also worked in sev­er­al roles relat­ed to child wel­fare and foster care. 

Among the many reforms pro­mot­ed by Fair and Just Prosecution is the elim­i­na­tion of the death penal­ty. In a 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Ms. Krinsky said, ​“In my mind, elim­i­nat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment improves pub­lic safe­ty.” Connecting that theme to FJP’s broad­er mis­sion, she said, ​“If we are doing things in the name of pub­lic safe­ty that are failed, that don’t work, and that aren’t moral­ly sound, then we’ve lost the trust of our com­mu­ni­ty, and we’ve lost our moral compass.” 

In 2022, FJP released a let­ter signed by more than 50 pros­e­cu­tors from across the coun­try pledg­ing to work toward abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. It said, ​“Although we hold var­ied opin­ions sur­round­ing the death penal­ty and hail from juris­dic­tions with dif­fer­ent start­ing points on the pro­pri­ety of this sen­tence, we have all now arrived at the same inex­orable con­clu­sion: our country’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is bro­ken. It is time to work togeth­er toward sys­temic changes that will bring about the elim­i­na­tion of the death penalty nationwide.” 

In a March 22, 2024 op-ed for The Oklahoman, Ms. Krinsky urges the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of Brenda Andrew, a woman on Oklahoma’s death row whose ​“tri­al was marred by gen­der bias and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al over­reach.” Prosecutors called Ms. Andrew’s for­mer boyfriends to tes­ti­fy about their sex­u­al encoun­ters with her, read Ms. Andrew’s jour­nal entries regard­ing a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship she had 20 years before the alleged crime, and showed the jury her under­gar­ments dur­ing clos­ing argu­ments. Ms. Krinsky’s op-ed explains that these kind of sex­ist tac­tics have been used against women since the 1600s, and notes that gen­der bias is wide­spread in the legal sys­tem. ​“Women’s incar­cer­a­tion has grown twice as quick­ly as men’s incar­cer­a­tion in recent decades,” she writes. ​“Issues like pover­ty, men­tal ill­ness, trau­ma and gen­der vio­lence are often root caus­es of women’s involve­ment in the crim­i­nal legal system.”