NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Terence MacCarthy was elected Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois in 2010. He first served in the Traffic division where he presided over numerous trials and hearings currently serves in the Domestic Violence Division where he presides over both Civil and Criminal cases, including felonies, misdemeanors, Orders of Protection and Stalking No Contact Orders, as well as bench and jury trials.

Judge MacCarthy has dedicated a significant amount of time teaching and training experienced lawyers as well as law students. Through lectures and small group teaching, in areas such as Trial Advocacy, Evidence, Impeachment, Storytelling and Persuasion, he has earned a reputation as an excellent and effective teacher. He has served as a faculty member for many distinguished Trial Advocacy programs around the country in addition to the National Criminal Defense College , including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, and the University of Chicago Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the DePaul University College of Law where he teaches Advanced Trial Advocacy.

Before election to the bench, he served for twenty years with the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender, working as an Assistant Public Defender, and for his last seven years, as an Attorney Supervisor in the Felony Trial Division at the Criminal Courts Building at “26th and California.” He tried more than 500 cases including complex felonies and capital cases. While trying bench and jury trials, he earned a reputation as an excellent trial lawyer and advocate. Terence was certified as a First Chair member of the Illinois Capital Litigation Trial Bar.

Terence graduated from The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign (B.A. English-1986) and The DePaul University College of Law (Juris Doctor-1990).

He is the co-author of “MacCarthy on Impeachment: How to Find and Use these Weapons of Mass Destruction,” published by the American Bar Association, and the author of “Improv for Lawyers: A Lawyer’s Guide to Ignoring the Inner Critic, Listening Empathetically and Telling Winning Stories at Trial.”

Sean Maher has been a criminal defense attorney for 24 years. Sean started his career in indigent defense at the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office in Atlanta, where he became a senior trial attorney. He then moved to New York City and joined the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem (NDS), eventually supervising NDS’s criminal defense division. Since 2005, Sean has been in private practice in Manhattan defending people against criminal charges levelled by various governmental entities.

Sean has defended people charged with almost every type of crime, including terrorism offenses related to al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Shabaab, and the Khalistan Commando Force. Sean is on the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) panels for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and serves on the faculty of Gideon’s Promise, the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC), Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop, and several trial skills academies.

I started my career as a public defender in Colorado. After leaving the PD’s office, I have maintained and dedicated my career to criminal defense. I am fortunate to be able to continue to represent indigent clients through court appointments in both state and federal court, along with private clients. I can not imagine doing any other kind of work!