NAWJ ANNOUNCES THE HONORABLE BRENDA MURRAY A 2016 RECIPIENT OF MATTIE BELLE DAVIS AWARD

NAWJ announces the Honorable Brenda Murray  a 2016 recipient of the Mattie Belle Davis Award. The Award recognizes an NAWJ member who has gone above and beyond his or her role as member and volunteer to help make a difference in the organization and furthered its mission, as the Honorable Mattie Belle Davis once did.

Judge Murray,  Chief Administrative Law Judge at the United Sates Securities and Exchange Commission was President of NAWJ 1992-1993. Judge Murray has long shared chairpersonship of NAWJ’s Women in Prison Committee with Justice Betty Williams. She instituted and organized one of the first re-entry conferences for women inmates in Maryland, Women Moving Forward. The leadership she brought to this program has drawn the appreciation of inmates who were better prepared to sustain lives outside prison, and admiration of the facility management. Ever since Judge Murray and other judges pressed the Senate Judiciary Committee for gender-specific policies for incarcerated women back in 1995, she has put forth a strong voice in offense to their neglect. Most recently, Judge Murray has maintained this commitment in advocacy for the federal inmates transplanted from Danbury to Brooklyn.

Judge Murray shares this year’s Mattie Belle Davis Award with New York City Housing Court Supervising Judge, the Honorable Cheryl Gonzales, and with New York State Supreme Court Judge, the Honorable Betty J. Williams.