Tom Fleener was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, in Economics and Accounting, from Hendrix College
in Conway, Arkansas in 1992, and his J.D., from the University of Arkansas at
Little Rock School of Law in 1995. Upon
graduation from law school, he was commissioned as an officer in the Army Judge
Advocate General’s Corps. For the next
eight years, he served primarily as a criminal defense attorney at Fort Hood,
Texas; Baumholder, Germany; and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 2003, Tom left active duty to take an
appointment as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Cheyenne, Wyoming. While working as an Asst. FPD he continued
serving in the Army Reserves as a defense attorney.
In late 2005, Tom was recalled to
active duty in the army specifically to represent alleged al Qaeda propagandist
Ali Hamza al Bahlul of Yemen. Tom spent
roughly two years in the Office of Military Commissions in Washington,
D.C. During this time, he made several
appearances before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay, until ultimately
convincing Congress to afford detainees choice of counsel. Tom was profiled in the August 2007 edition
of GQ magazine in a story titled, “The Defense Will Not Rest,” and has been an
outspoken critic and public commentator on the use of special military trials
for terrorist suspects. For the past
several years, Tom has taught trial advocacy and legal ethics to lawyers across
the country. He has also lectured at
many of the nation’s top law schools, including Yale, Duke and UC Berkeley.
A veteran of nearly
100 felony jury trials, Tom has achieved dozens of acquittals for criminal
defendants. He is a member of both the
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Wyoming Criminal
Defense Lawyers Association. Tom is
licensed in Iowa and Wyoming.
