Focus On Criminal Defense

Jim was Chief of the Non-Capital trial Division at the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System from 1998-2007, responsible for supervising public defenders and contract defense attorney in 75 of Oklahoma’s 77 counties. From 2007-2008 Jim was Supervisor of the Oklahoma-Western Capital Habeas Corpus Unit, representing clients in all 3 Oklahoma federal judicial districts. He is licensed in Oklahoma and Arizona, as well as in all Oklahoma federal district courts, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. He has represented four inmates on Kentucky’s death row and one inmate in Oklahoma.

From 2001-2006 he was a voting member the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission, mandated to make recommendations to the Legislature on sentencing policy and to supervise the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center. He also served on the Criminal Justice Act Standing Committee for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2009-2014 Jim served as Chair of the Legal Ethics Advisory Panel of the Oklahoma Bar Association. He was also a longtime board member of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and served a brief stint on the Board of Governors of the Oklahoma Bar Association before moving to Texas to accept a position as a death penalty public defender for the Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases, where he practiced for 3 years, 8 months before re-entering private practice.

Jim has co-produced and co-taught two-day seminars on the topics of the effect of the CSI television series on jury deliberations in criminal cases, defending methamphetamine cases and the forensic science of crime scenes. In Oklahoma he produced and served as moderator for a program on drug courts and another program interviewing some of the jurors in the Terry Nichols case, the co-defendant of Oklahoma City Federal Building bomber Timothy McVeigh.

DEBORAH DRUMMOND, INVESTIGATOR & JIM DRUMMOND, ATTORNEY