Marshall L. Dayan is the State Strategies Coordinator of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. He was born in Miami, Florida and grew up in Macon, Georgia. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia in 1984, and his J.D. from Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C. in 1986. After two years at a small law firm in Washington, D.C., where he represented Virginia and Florida death row inmates on a pro bono basis, Dayan became the staff attorney for the North Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center in January, 1988. After ten years with the Resource Center and the North Carolina Office of the Appellate Defender, Dayan went into the private practice of law in Durham, North Carolina, where he continued to engage in capital litigation at all stages from trial through post-conviction. He became a visiting professor of Constitutional Law at North Carolina Central University School of Law in August, 2001, and served as Assistant Professor of Law through Spring Semester, 2006, when he accepted the position with the national ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Dayan served on the Board of Directors of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty from Fall 1991 to Summer 1997, and served as Chair of the Board of that organization for two years. He also served as President of the North Carolina-based People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. He served for several years on the Commission on Social Action for Reform Judaism and as Vice-Chair of that organization for two years. In 1998 he received the Paul Green Award for his efforts to abolish the death penalty in North Carolina from the ACLU of North Carolina and the Paul Green Foundation. In 2003, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.