Carlson on Georgia Evidence

Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Law, Emeritus, University of Georgia School of Law,

Ron Carlson was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, as well as the Federal Bar Association’s highest honor, the Earl Kintner Award. The ABA recognized him with the ALI-ABA Harrison Tweed Award, their top award for CLE contributions at the national level. He has received every faculty honor presented by the law school student body at least once: the Student Bar Association Faculty Book Award for Excellence in Teaching, which is now the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching, the John C. O'Byrne Memorial Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations and the Student Bar Association Professionalism Award. He was the first Georgia Law professor to receive the Josiah Meigs Award for Teaching Excellence from UGA. He also was awarded the 1987 Roscoe Pound Foundation's Richard S. Jacobson Award, honoring a single national law professor for the teaching of trial advocacy. Professor Carlson was the lead and sole attorney for indigent prisoners in two significant U.S. Supreme Court appeals, Long v. District Court (establishing indigent habeas applicant’s right to transcript) and Johnson v. Bennett (prisoner freed after 34 years of confinement). He is the author of 15 books on evidence, trial practice and criminal procedure, including the book Carlson on Evidence, co-authored with son Mike Carlson. Carlson regularly comments on WSB radio on high-profile Georgia criminal cases.

Executive District Attorney, Major Crimes Division, Office of the Fulton County District Attorney

Judge, Georgia Court Martial Review Panel,

Mike Carlson, who holds an “AV Preeminent” (highest possible) Martindale-Hubbell peer review rating, received his A.B degree from the University of Georgia and his J.D. degree from Washington and Lee University in 1992, where he earned, among other distinctions, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association Award for his “excellence in demonstrating the talents and attributes of the trial advocate.” After first engaging in private practice, where he focused on civil litigation and media law, Carlson started as an assistant district attorney working in various district attorneys’ offices. During his career as a prosecutor to-date, Carlson has successfully handled many high-profile cases and appeals, including death penalty trials and landmark cases under Georgia’s new Evidence Code. Immediately prior to accepting his current appointment, Carlson served as chief counsel and ethics officer for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation – Georgia's Statewide Law Enforcement and Investigative Agency – also serving as Deputy Director of the Legal Division of the GBI when that division was created by statute in 2020.

An author and frequent speaker on issues of evidence, trial practice, and criminal procedure to Georgia’s bench and bar, Carlson has served on the adjunct faculty of Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and Emory University School of Law, and is a mentor and lecturer at the Gary Christy Memorial Trial Skills Clinic at the University Of Georgia School Of Law. In 2015, Governor Nathan Deal appointed Carlson to the Georgia Court Martial Review Panel. Among the professional awards and recognition that Carlson has received include: Eagle Award, the highest honor bestowed upon a state-level attorney by Georgia’s three United States Attorneys; Faculty Medallion from the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education of Georgia for consistently outstanding presenter ratings; Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia’s J. Roger Thompson (now Thompson-Jones) award for training beginning level prosecutors; selection as a Master in the Joseph Henry Lumpkin Inn of American Court; named by James Magazine as one of “the most influential lawyers in Georgia”; and special recognitions from the District Attorneys’ Association of Georgia and the Georgia Gang Investigators Association.