Aram Byer James is a former Santa Clara County, CA Assistant Public Defender, , social activist, and civil rights attorney. As an expert on the defense of necessity, he headed the team of attorneys defending Stanford University students and professors arrested in anti-apartheid protests in 1980’s. He is an advocate of jury nullification, educator in the use of the Marsden Motion to fire ineffective public defenders, a critic of the prison industrial complex, and critic of police use of tasers and racial profiling.