- Email:
- cjcho@iu.edu
- Phone:
- (812) 855-1257
- Location:
- Baier Hall 329
Education
- Indiana University Maurer School of Law, JD 2008
- Cornell University, BS 2004
Biography
Cindy Cho joined the IU Maurer School of Law faculty in the fall of 2023. Before that, she was a federal prosecutor for over a decade, first as a Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Branch, and then as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. She litigated and prosecuted a wide range of cases, including civil and criminal violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and other consumer-related statutes; public corruption; sexual exploitation of minors; white-collar crime, particularly health care fraud, wire fraud, and violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute; illegal opioid distribution; cyber crime; and criminal cases arising from the siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. She has appeared in federal district courts all over the country, and tried federal criminal cases in multiple districts.
Professor Cho’s work as a prosecutor garnered multiple awards during her career with the Department of Justice, including a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force National Award for Innovative Investigation Efforts for the prosecution of a dark web heroin and cocaine trafficking organization; a U.S. Food and Drug Administration Special Achievement Award for the prosecution of a drug manufacturing CEO; and a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General’s Award for Excellence in Fighting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse for the prosecution of a nursing home executive and others who solicited and received millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks. Professor Cho also served as the Chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana, supervising approximately 40 attorneys and all of the complex federal criminal cases in the district’s 60 counties, including cases involving police use of excessive force and the federal response to a mass shooting.
Before joining the U.S. Department of Justice through the Honors Program, she clerked for Judge Danny C. Reeves on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and traveled to Windhoek, Namibia on a Fulbright scholarship.
In the Media
- Quoted in "Lawsuit alleges IN Medicaid overpayments in the hundreds of millions," Fox 59 News (9/19/2024)
- Quoted in "Harris' record as Calif. AG hints at aggressive approach to polluters," E&E News (7/26/2024)
- Co-wrote "Prosecutors Should Charge Big Oil With Homicide for the Latest Heat-Wave Deaths," Slate (7/8/2024)
- Quoted in "Legal Memo Makes Case for Prosecuting Big Oil Over Extreme Heat Deaths," Common Dreams (6/26/2024)
- Quoted in "Legal Memo Makes Case for Prosecuting Big Oil Over Extreme Heat Deaths," Common Dreams (6/26/2024)
- Quoted in "'Climate homicide' architects pitch theory to prosecutors," E&E News (4/9/2024)
- Quoted in "Proposal to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate change gains traction," Interesting Engineering (3/23/2024)
- Quoted in "Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over climate-related deaths, experts say," The Guardian (3/21/2024)
Selected works
- Climate Prosecution as Climate Regulation, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW ONLINE (forthcoming 2025)
- What Fischer v. United States Gets Wrong About Prosecutorial Discretion, OHIO STATE LAW JOURNAL ONLINE (forthcoming 2024).
- Charging Big Oil with Climate Homicide - Preliminary Prosecution Memo for July 2023 Heat Wave, Published by Public Citizen (with Aaron Regunberg, David Arkush, and Donald Braman) (June 26, 2024).
Areas of expertise
- Criminal law
- Criminal procedure
- Legal research and writing