Women’s History Month Profile: U.S. District Court Judge Natasha Merle

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Women’s History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable women whose work was sig­nif­i­cant in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The first entry in this series is U.S. District Court Judge Natasha Merle. 

Judge Natasha Merle was nom­i­nat­ed to the bench by President Biden in 2021 and became his 100^th con­firmed judi­cial appoint­ment. She has served on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York since August 2023. 

Judge Merle grad­u­at­ed with a B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin with hon­ors and received her law degree from New York University, cum laude. Before her appoint­ment to the bench, Judge Merle ded­i­cat­ed most of her legal career to advo­cat­ing for civ­il rights in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and pro­tect­ing vot­er rights. Judge Merle’s career began as a law clerk for Judge Robert L. Carter of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 2008 to 2009. From 2009 to 2011, she was a staff attor­ney at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE). Judge Merle then became an assis­tant fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er in Arizona at the Office of the Federal Public Defender. She also served as a law clerk for Judge John Gleeson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York from 2012 to 2013. From 2013 to 2015, Judge Merle was a lit­i­ga­tion asso­ciate and civ­il rights fel­low at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson.

In 2016, Judge Merle joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) as assis­tant coun­sel, ulti­mate­ly becom­ing the Deputy Director of Litigation in 2021. At LDF, she was a part of the legal team rep­re­sent­ing Texas death row pris­on­er Duane Buck. During Mr. Buck’s tri­al, his coun­sel neg­li­gent­ly prof­fered expert tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist who claimed that Mr. Buck was more like­ly to com­mit sub­se­quent vio­lent crim­i­nal acts because he was Black. The jury sen­tenced Mr. Buck to death. Despite the Texas Attorney General’s con­fes­sion of error regard­ing the expert’s tes­ti­mo­ny in oth­er death penal­ty cas­es, Mr. Buck’s repeat­ed appeals were denied by Texas courts. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied Mr. Buck’s request, Judge Merle co-authored the briefs that were essen­tial to Mr. Buck’s suc­cess­ful appeal to the United States Supreme Court. 

The Supreme Court ruled 6 – 2 in favor of Mr. Buck. The major­i­ty opin­ion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts char­ac­ter­ized the expert’s tes­ti­mo­ny alleg­ing that race pre­dicts future dan­ger­ous­ness as tox­ic. “[W]hen a jury hears expert tes­ti­mo­ny that express­ly makes a defendant’s race direct­ly per­ti­nent on the ques­tion of life or death, the impact of that evi­dence can­not be mea­sured sim­ply by how much air time it received at tri­al or how many pages it occu­pies in the record. Some tox­ins can be dead­ly in small dos­es,” he wrote. “[O]ur law pun­ish­es peo­ple for what they do, not who they are.” Mr. Buck was lat­er resen­tenced to life in prison. 

Judge Merle was also lead coun­sel in the 2017 case NAACP LDF v. Trump. LDF, along with vot­er rights and racial equal­i­ty orga­ni­za­tions, argued that President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, cre­at­ed by exec­u­tive order, was formed to dis­crim­i­nate against vot­ers of col­or. Judge Merle also led LDF’s Prepared to Vote cam­paign, a non-par­ti­san cam­paign that edu­cates vot­ers, specif­i­cal­ly vot­ers of col­or, to pro­tect their right to vote and pre­pare them for election day.