NIU Law Professor Dan McConkie, a criminal law expert, was recently interviewed by an ABC WQUAD8 reporter regarding the Whiteside County State’s Attorney’s plea-bargaining practices in child sex assault cases. Several serious cases have recently pleaded out for unexpectedly low sentences, without any public explanation. View the interview.
Professor McConkie joined the NIU Law faculty in 2015. He teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure and professional responsibility. His primary research interest is criminal procedure.
Professor McConkie was a prosecutor in California for eight years, first for the state and then for the federal government. As a federal prosecutor, he specialized in taking down large drug trafficking organizations and served as his office’s ethics advisor. As a scholar, he now writes about plea bargaining, which has almost entirely replaced jury trials in our justice system.
Professor McConkie holds an Honors B.A. degree in history from the University of Utah (2001), where he graduated cum laude, and a J.D. degree from Stanford Law School (2004), where he was a Public Interest Fellow. From 2013 to 2015, Professor McConkie was a visiting professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.
