Ric Simmons

Professor Ric Simmons joined The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law faculty in 2003. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was a Stone Scholar and a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Laughlin E. Waters of the Central District of California and then served for four years as an assistant district attorney for New York County. He was an acting assistant professor at New York University School of Law from June 2000 through June 2003 before coming to Moritz.

Professor Simmons’ research focuses on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and new technology. He has written about the use of big data in the criminal justice system, searches of cell phones and other electronic devices, and hyper-intrusive surveillance devices. He has also written about the privatization of the criminal justice system and the role of the prosecutor. He is a national expert on the grand jury and served on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Grand Jury Task Force. Professor Simmons is frequently cited in the local and national media on criminal procedure issues.

Professor Simmons is the author of Smart Surveillance: How to Interpret the Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge Press 2019), and he has co-authored three casebooks: Learning Evidence: From the Federal Rules to the Courtroom (4th ed. West 2017), Learning Criminal Procedure (2nd ed. West 2019) and Learning Criminal Procedure: Adjudications (2nd ed. West 2019). He is also the co-author of the hornbook Understanding Criminal Procedure: Investigations (7th ed. Carolina Academic Press 2017).

Professor Simmons teaches Evidence, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Computer Crime and Surveillance. He is a six-time recipient of the Morgan Shipman Outstanding Professor of the Year Award and he has won the University-wide Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.