Mimi Wesson

Mimi Wesson (known to readers of her novels as Marianne Wesson) is a legal commentator for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, as well as Professor of Law, Wolf-Nichol Fellow, President’s Teaching Scholar, and Senior Scholar of the Womens Studies Program at the University of Colorado. She has also served as a federal prosecutor, university administrator, and acting law school dean. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Texas Law School.

Wesson got her start in radio during the Oklahoma City bombing trials in Denver in 1997 and 1998. She began attending as a spectator and trial lawyer teacher, but before the first day of the trial had ended she found herself explaining legal points to several of the journalists in attendance. Before the first week was over, she found herself asked to appear on camera and speak for radio by numerous news organizations. Those trials coincided with the early years of the JonBenet Ramsey investigation, which generated even more requests for punditry. She soon grew weary of the talking-head lawyer business and returned to academic life and her writing, and now rarely accepts television or radio invitations. But she has maintained a relationship with NPR -- especially Weekend Edition Sunday -- and she was particularly proud the morning Liane Hansen described her on-air as that program’s “legal eagle.”

At the University of Colorado, Wesson teaches criminal law, evidence, trial practice, and law and literature. She is also a novelist whose three novels featuring Boulder lawyer Cinda Hayes have been national bestsellers. Wesson’s first book, Render Up the Body, was inspired by her representation of a California death row prisoner in the mid-1990s. The second, A Suggestion of Death, takes on the subject of recovered memory and anti-government militias. Her newest, Chilling Effect, considers the tension between the First Amendment and the responsibility of a pornography producer for the evil acts inspired by his film. Her new writing project is a nonfiction account of a famous 19th century mystery, the Hillmon case.

Wesson and her husband Ben Herr raise llamas on their ranch in southern Larimer County, Colorado. She loves downhill telemark skiing and hopes her knees hold out for at least another ten years of it. She also loves her motorcycle, a Kawasaki 800 Drifter, which she rides whenever she has an opportunity.