Professor Jenia Turner’s Global Lens on American Criminal Procedure

From Bulgaria’s democratic awakening to SMU Dedman Law’s classrooms, Professor Turner brings a comparative eye to reforming U.S. criminal procedure.

Jenia Iontcheva Turner is the Amy Abboud Ware Centennial Professor in Criminal Law at SMU Dedman School of Law. A globally respected scholar and teacher, Turner brings deep comparative and constitutional expertise to bear on some of the thorniest questions facing modern criminal justice.

Born in Bulgaria, Turner witnessed her homeland’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy—an experience that shaped her view of the law as both a safeguard and a source of transformation. “I grew up at a time when Bulgaria was moving from an authoritarian regime to democracy,” she recalled. “There were a lot of legal issues that came up during that time, and that sparked my interest.”

After immigrating to the U.S., Turner earned her B.A. from Goucher College and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as articles editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law, and as a teaching assistant in courses on civil procedure and democratic theory. During summers in law school, she worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the New York and Paris offices of a major law firm, and the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Houston. She then went on to a fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School, where she taught legal research and writing and comparative criminal procedure.

Since joining the SMU Dedman Law faculty in 2004, Turner has emerged as one of the nation’s most respected voices in criminal procedure and comparative law. Her teaching and scholarship center on two themes: the evolving role of technology in the justice system and lessons drawn from foreign legal systems. She also emphasizes the importance of empirical work:

“I want to move beyond theory to real-world impact. It’s not enough to say a procedure sounds good on paper. I study data about the effects of criminal law reforms, and I survey practitioners about what is working and what isn’t. This empirical approach gives us concrete information about which measures actually improve outcomes and which create new problems.”

Turner often collaborates with scholars from other disciplines, other law schools, and other countries. “These collaborations are very valuable. We bring together legal doctrine, empirical evidence, and comparative insights. No single discipline has all the answers to criminal justice challenges.”

Turner’s scholarship has had real-world influence. Her article “Transparency in Plea Bargaining,” published in the Notre Dame Law Review, was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023. “I was happy to see my work on criminal procedure cited by courts, including a couple of times by the Supreme Court,” she said.

That article is part of a long-running effort to bring more fairness to plea negotiations, which account for over 95% of U.S. criminal convictions. “Those plea negotiations happen behind closed doors, without public oversight and with minimal judicial scrutiny,” Turner said. She argues that this opacity erodes due process and that reforms like written plea offers and earlier evidence disclosure are essential.

Turner’s expertise led to her being invited to provide a statement to the American Bar Association’s Plea Bargaining Task Force, which issued sweeping recommendations in 2023 to improve plea practices across states. Her work on remote criminal proceedings and digital discovery has also been referenced by scholars, courts, and policymakers. “It’s exciting to see momentum behind efforts to improve fairness in our system,” Turner said.

Her perspective is deeply shaped by her early exposure to different legal systems. That international grounding informs her book, Plea Bargaining Across Borders, which explores how other nations and international courts approach negotiated justice. She is also a co-editor of a leading criminal procedure casebook, which emphasizes comparative and empirical approaches to the topic.

“We don’t just teach Supreme Court doctrine; we show students how different states and countries solve similar problems and what the empirical evidence tells us about what works.”

Turner’s scholarship has appeared in leading journals such as the Virginia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and the American Journal of Comparative Law. She is a member of the American Law Institute and an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, and she regularly participates in international justice initiatives.

Students speak of Turner’s calm, clear teaching style and her ability to draw connections between legal rules and democratic values. She remains a faculty mentor for students drawn to public service and international and comparative law.

Turner also closely watches the legal profession’s evolving relationship with artificial intelligence. “Probably my greatest concern is the risk that [AI] might undermine our critical thinking so that we would over-rely on artificial intelligence and lose the skills—especially the new generation.”

For Turner, courts remain a vital democratic safeguard—and their integrity must be protected. “We are seeing our courts being a very important bulwark against the erosion of due process,” she said. “It’s really important to have these fairness protections throughout the criminal process.”

As the legal world adapts to globalization, digitization, and societal shifts, Turner sees hope in reform—but also a need for vigilance.

“Justice systems are human systems,” she said. “We can’t afford to stop learning from each other.”

Now, as SMU expands its commitment to global scholarship and student opportunity, Turner’s insights resonate across borders—and across generations.