Criminal Procedure: A Comparative Approach, First Edition

Professor Thaman got an M.A. in German in 1968, and a J.D. in 1975, both from the University of California, in Berkeley. He then was an Assistant Public Defender in California for 11 ½ years from 1976-1987 and defended in around 60 jury trials, from misdemeanors to death penalty cases.

He was a Fulbright scholar at the Free University of Berlin from 1987-1988 and was an attorney-trainee at the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France in 1988. From 1991-1992 he worked at the International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy. In 1992 he was awarded a Dr. iur from the Univesity of Freiburg, in Germany, with a dissertation on Environmental Criminal Law in the U.S. (written in German). From 1992-1995 he was IREX fellow at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences and later as liaison for the ABA Central and Eastern European Law Initiative in Moscow. He was Professor of Law at Saint Louis University from 1995-2017, where he taught criminal law and procedure, comparative law, comparative criminal procedure, and international criminal law, and directed a summer law program in Madrid from 2000-2013.

From 2018-2014 he was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. He was on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Penal Law from 2014-2024 and, since 2025, has been a Vice-President of that organization. He is currently Of Counsel at Oehmichen International in Berlin.

Professor Thaman has written authoritative studies of new jury systems in Russia, Spain, and Argentina, and about lay participation in Venezuela and Japan. The second edition of his book Comparative Criminal Procedure: A Casebook Approach was published in January 2008 and was later translated into Chinese. He has contributed chapters to some 60 books and written some 50 articles dealing with U.S. and comparative criminal law and procedure. He has edited or co-edited four books on comparative plea bargaining, exclusionary rules, and right to counsel, as well as on comparative criminal procedure in general. Besides English, he is fluent in German, Spanish, Russian, French, and Italian, and has written and published, lectured, and taught in all of these languages around the world.

Professor Thaman has consulted with Working Groups responsible for drafting new codes of criminal procedure in Russia (2001) and Latvia (2004) and worked on the reform of codes of criminal procedure in Georgia, Kakazhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

He has taught classes in comparative and U.S. criminal law and procedure as a visiting professor in Japan (2001), Nicaragua (2003)(in Spanish), Orleans, France (2004)(in French), Bologna (2005)(in Italian), Buenos Aires (2009)(in Spanish), Bern (2010), Rome (2010)(in Italian), Paris (2010), Modena, Italy (2013)(in Italian), Istanbul (2012), Chongqing, China (2013), Trento, Italy (2015, 2019), Szeged, Hungary (2017), Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2018, 2019, in Russian), Lisbon (2016, 2019), and Lucerne, Switzerland (2019, in German). He taught Comparative Legal Systems at the National University of Singapore from Aug. to Dec. 2008.

In 2019 he was awarded the Hans-Heinrich Jescheck Prize by the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Comparative Law and the International Association of Penal Law “in recognition of sustained innovative and outstanding research that has contributed significantly to the advancement of comparative, international or supranational criminal law.”