Edie Fortuna Adjunct Professorial Lecturer Department of Justice, Law & Criminology

Degrees: B.A. in Public Policy and Political Science, St. Mary's College of Maryland
J.D., University of Maryland School of Law
Bio: J. Edie Fortuna is a career public defender in Maryland. She worked as a trial lawyer in Baltimore City for 11 years, then in Southern Maryland for 6. She has had approximately 100 jury trials, defending against charges from marijuana possession to murder.

Since 2020, she has been assigned to the Post Conviction Defenders within Maryland's Office of the Public Defender (OPD) where she protects her clients' rights to effective assistance of counsel and fundamental fairness. She litigates issues arising from errors that occurred in the pretrial, trial, and post-trial process.

She has served on the faculty of Gideon's Promise since 2014, and helps to train new attorneys with OPD.

Publication:

Fortuna, Edie; Makar, Zina; and Novak, Natalie (2014) "Charm City Televised & Dehumanized: How CCTV Bail Reviews Violate Due Process," University of Baltimore Law Forum: Vol. 45: No. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/lf/vol45/iss1/4

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