Law Student Wins Criminal Law Paper Writing Competition Bryce Thornburg ‘25L won the competition for his paper on California’s resentencing and plea-bargaining procedures.

By Law Communications
February 7, 2025

Bryce Thornburg ‘25L, a third-year law student at Washington and Lee University School of Law, won the grand prize in The Marshall Manne Schulman Competition for Student Papers in Criminal Law and/or Procedure. The nationwide competition is sponsored by the Criminal Law Section of the California Lawyers Association.

Thornburg’s paper, titled “Plea Bargaining, Racial Bias, and Recent Changes to California Sentencing Law,” examines California legislation SB 483, which provides retroactive effect to all ameliorative changes to sentencing laws and also impacts sentences that were the result of a plea deal.

“Courts disagree over whether SB 483 prohibits prosecutors from withdrawing plea deals that have been reduced by statutes that confer judicial discretion to strike certain sentence enhancements upon resentencing. This article contends that SB 483 does so prohibit prosecutors. More specifically, this article argues that the only interpretation of SB 483 that can accomplish the legislature’s clearly expressed goal of combating systemic racial bias is one that both gives meaningful retroactive effect to all ameliorative sentencing legislation and curtails prosecutorial power in the context of plea bargaining,” writes Thornburg.

For winning the competition, Thornburg received a cash prize and will also have his paper published in the Criminal Law Journal, the official quarterly publication of the Criminal Law Section of the State Bar of California.

Thornburg is originally from Manteca, California. He is a lead articles editor for the Law Review, treasurer for the Art Law Society, and president and co-founder of Law Students of California. He spent his 1L summer as an extern for Justice Jim Humes of the California Court of Appeals and his 2L summer with the Complex and Affirmative Litigation Team of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

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