Overview
Geovanny Martinez is a Senior Lecturing Fellow and the Executive Director for the Center on Law, Race & Policy. At Duke Law, Martinez teaches Ethics and the Law of Lawyering – Criminal Justice (previously, Criminal Justice Ethics), Race and the Legal Profession, and Police Accountability. Martinez developed the latter two courses as new offerings at Duke Law, and the Police Accountability course is among some of the first throughout the country with not many law schools offering a course on the law of policing. Martinez also serves as supervisor with the Faculty-Mentored Externships, and he has taught Externship Seminars with the Externship Program and with the PreLaw Fellowship Program. In 2023, Martinez received the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) Faculty Member of the Year Award.
Prior to joining Duke Law, Martinez served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, prosecuting federal crimes, including organized crime drug enforcement, firearms related matters, tax fraud, wire fraud and postal service cases. Before then, Martinez served as an Assistant City Attorney in South Bend, Indiana. There he counseled and advised several city departments on matters such as contract negotiation and drafting, collective bargaining matters, police discipline, labor and employment concerns, civil litigation, and policy. In particular, Martinez helped the City successfully negotiate a multi-year police union contract, establish a new employee police discipline matrix, and update the City on community policing efforts, such as use of force considerations.
Martinez also previously served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Elkhart County, Indiana. There, he helped found and establish the first ever Elkhart County Problem Solving Court (Drug Court) while also prosecuting felonies and misdemeanors. Before then, he was an Assistant State’s Attorney for Prince George’s County, Maryland, prosecuting felonies and misdemeanors.
In the legal community, Martinez was instrumental in founding the Indiana Latino Bar Association, for which he served as the Founding President. In the past, he also has served as Vice President of External Affairs for the Hispanic National Bar Association Region IX and as Vice President of Internal Affairs for the Hispanic Bar Association for the District of Columbia. Martinez is a graduate of Georgetown University and Howard University School of Law, where he was a research assistant to Dean Kurt L. Schmoke. After law school, he was a law clerk to the Honorable Sheila R. Tillerson Adams in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, Maryland.