Born in Seattle, Mark Murphy attended Washington State University before graduating from the University of Montana School of Law in 1978. He served as an Assistant Attorney General from 1979 to 2003 and tried numerous complex criminal cases around the state. During his time with the Department of Justice, Mark worked on legislative issues involving the department’s budget, DUI and domestic violence. He represented Montana in State v. Moore, the first time that DNA identification evidence was admitted in a criminal case. From 2003 to 2010, Mark served as the Chief Criminal Deputy in the Yellowstone County Attorney’s office. There, he supervised State v. Covington, in which the standards governing DNA evidence were more fully developed.
