NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE ALUMNI

Ben Wolff is the Director of the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, the Texas post-conviction public defender for capital and forensic science cases.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals appointed Ben to this position in 2015 and reappointed him in 2019. Under his leadership, OCFW has represented over 50 clients in dozens of Texas counties and expanded to represent persons serving non-capital sentence tainted by junk science.

Ben has also been appointed to serve as a member of the Court of Criminal Appeals’ Rules Advisory Committee, and the Due Process Review Committee of the American Bar Association.

Prior to joining OCFW, Ben worked as a post-conviction attorney in Austin, Texas with the Texas Defender Service, representing death-sentenced individuals in state and federal post-conviction proceedings.

Before that, Ben worked for a number of years at The Bronx Defenders, a public defender organization in Bronx, NY, as a trial attorney and in a variety of supervisorial positions. In these roles, Ben supervised attorneys, investigators, and other legal advocates in their practice.

Ben is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and Davidson College. Prior to becoming an attorney, Ben worked as a mitigation specialist and defense-initiated-victim-outreach (D.I.V.O.) specialist on behalf of defense counsel in capital cases on the west coast and the south and as an investigator with the Bronx Defenders. A native of Missouri, Ben’s experience also includes work with youth in Nicaragua and service as an Election Observer in El Salvador.