Texas Tech Law Meet the Faculty Biographies

Professor Daniel H. Benson

Adjunct Professor of Law
Adjunct Professor of Sociology
Former Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Law
(806) 742-3990 x231
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Admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Texas.

Following graduation from law school, Professor Benson served for three years as an officer in The Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States Army, assigned to the Defense Appellate Division of U. S. Army Judiciary, Washington, D.C. From 1964 to 1965 he served as an attorney with the Appeals and Research Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. Thereafter he returned to active duty with the Army and from 1966 to 1969 he served as a JAGC officer at Headquarters, V Corps, Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army, Heidelberg, Germany. From 1969 to 1970, he served as a Military Judge in the rank of major, assigned to the Army's 7th Judicial Circuit, with duty station at Fort Bliss, Texas, and responsibility for hearing court-martial cases at Fort Bliss, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, the Joint Atomic Support Command at Albuquerque, New Mexico, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. From 1970 to 1973, he was in private law practice in Lubbock, until joining the law faculty in the fall semester of 1973.

Professor Benson renders pro bono legal services on a continuing basis to the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, as he has since 1981, as legal counsel to hearing panels in various cases involving terminations, grievances, tenure disputes, and similar matters pertaining to School of Medicine faculty members.

Professor Benson's commitment to significant pro bono legal work in federal court began with his service as one of three attorneys representing the successful plaintiffs in a local jail abuse reform case, Vest v. Lubbock County Commissioners Court, 444 F.Supp. 824 (N.D. Tex. 1977), and continued when he served as one of several pro bono co-counsel to minority plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit that achieved redistricting and the establishment of a single-member-district election system for Lubbock City Council members, Jones v. City of Lubbock, 727 F.2d 364 (5th Cir. 1984).

In 2003-2005, Professor Benson served pro bono as co-counsel with Lubbock attorney Floyd Holder, Dallas attorneys Charles Meadows and Lezlie Allen, and Washington, D.C. attorneys Daniel Schwartz and Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University School of Law, in the defense at trial of a research scientist accused of several federal offenses arising from the shipment and disposition of samples of bubonic plague bacteria. United States v. Butler, 429 F.3d 140 (5th Cir. 2005).

Professor Benson and co-author Professor Brian Shannon have published the fourth edition of their book, Texas Criminal Procedure and the Offender with Mental Illness: An Analysis and Guide, Fourth Edition (2008). Benson and Shannon have also published a third edition of Mental Illness, Your Client, and the Criminal Law: A Handbook for Attorneys Who Represent Persons with Mental Illness (2005). Professor Benson published a national criminal law casebook, Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, Fifth Edition (1993), with co-authors John S. Baker of the Louisiana State University Law Center, Robert Force of the Tulane University School of Law, and B. J. George of the New York Law School.

Professor Benson serves regularly on dissertation and thesis committees of Texas Tech University students doing graduate work in Sociology. He was appointed an Adjunct Professor of Sociology in 1999 by the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, College of Arts and Sciences, Texas Tech University.

Degrees

B.A., University of Texas, 1958

J. D., University of Texas, 1961

M.A., Texas Tech University (Sociology), 1974

Courses

Criminal Law, Military Criminal Justice

Selected Publications

Texas Criminal Procedure and the Offender with Mental Illness: An Analysis and Guide, Fourth Edition (2008) (co-author Professor Brian Shannon)

Mental Illness , Your Client, and the Criminal Law: A Handbook for Attorneys Who Represent Persons with Mental Illness, Third Edition (2005) (co-author Professor Brian Shannon)

Environmental Protection Deskbook, Second Edition (1995) (co-author Professor Frank Skillern)

Teacher's Manual, Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, Fifth Edition (1994)

Hall's Criminal Law: Cases and Materials, Fifth Edition (1993) (co-authors John S. Baker, Robert Force, B. J. George)

The Crime Control Act of 1990 and Other Criminal Laws Affecting Banks and Bank Counsel, 46 Consumer Fin. L. Q. (1992)

Capital Sentencing Evidence after Penry and Payne, 17 T. Marshall L. Rev. 1 (1991)