NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Bob Pepin started his 39-year criminal defense career as a work study intern with the Public Defender’s office in Boulder, Colorado during his first year of law school. He tried a case to a jury that summer and was hooked.

By then, his tour as an army infantryman in West Berlin, its infamous Wall still imprisoning an entire population, had sharpened Bob’s sense of how jealously our freedoms, our Constitutions, must be protected. He considers criminal defense in general, and public defense in particular, to be deeply patriotic commitments.

Bob was a Deputy Colorado State Public Defender for eleven years. The head of an office for 5 of those years, he was extensively involved in training new defenders and was added to the NCDC faculty in 1991. His state defender trial experience included the wildly polarizing first significant Colorado Make My Day Case and capital work.

Bob was in private practice for six years; focusing on criminal defense and serving as co-editor of the Criminal Law Column of the Colorado Lawyer, on the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar (CCDB) board of directors, and as president of the CCDB. In 1998 Bob joined the team that successfully stopped El Paso County from sentencing Lucas Salmon to death.

In 2000 Bob joined the Colorado Federal Public Defender as a trial attorney. Over the years he has trained attorneys in workshops and clinical programs across the country, lectured extensively on jury selection, cross and direct examination, evidence, opening statements, closing arguments, and various aspects of federal and state criminal practice. He is the 2020 recipient of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar’s Jonathon Olom Award presented “…for remarkable personal sacrifice made without regard to personal gain in the defense of the accused…”

Bob retired June, 2019 and moved to Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula where he spends his time hiking, fishing, and writing for his own entertainment. Bob is still training at trial advocacy programs and doing some legal work. He and his wife, Sharlene, also a defender, have a daughter and son, neither of whom intend to permanently weather the gray skies of the Pacific Northwest, no matter how green the forests or mighty the rivers.

In summer 2022, Ms. Heather Pinckney was named the incoming Director of Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (hereinafter PDS)- widely recognized as the premier public defender office in the country. Prior to this exciting move, she was a partner at Harden and Pinckney, PLLC, a boutique law firm specializing in the areas of criminal defense litigation, civil litigation, contract and family law. She was the Co-chair of the D.C. Bar Criminal Law and Individual Rights Section Steering Committee for 3 years.

Before entering into private practice, Ms. Pinckney served as the Deputy Chief of the Trial Division for the PDS. As Deputy Trial Chief, Ms. Pinckney assisted in the management and day to day operations of the trial division and supervised over 60 attorneys litigating criminal cases in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Prior to becoming Deputy Trial Chief, Ms. Pinckney served for eight years as a staff attorney at PDS. She also served for four years as the Chair of the D.C. Public Defender Service Hiring Committee.

During her tenure, Ms. Pinckney represented juvenile and adult indigent clients on criminal matters ranging from misdemeanors to homicides before both, the D.C Superior Court and the United States Parole Commission. Her representations have included individuals charged with homicide, sex offenses, arson, firearm violations, and obstruction of justice. She has tried numerous jury trials to verdict and has represented individuals at every stage of criminal litigation, including pre-indictment, grand jury, trial and post-conviction.

Prior to beginning at PDS, she worked for the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. She also worked for The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and TransAfrica. She served as chair of the 2005 PDS Criminal Practice Institute Conference, acted as faculty for numerous PDS Summer Series Training Sessions and was an active member of the PDS Forensic Practice Group, which dealt with areas involving blood spatter and DNA.

Ms. Pinckney teaches litigation skills at Trial Skills Programs all around the country, including the states of Colorado, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin. She has also served as a guest lecturer at Howard University School of Law, American University School of Law, George Washington University School of law, The David A. Clarke School of Law (UDC) and the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop. She currently serves as a faculty member for Gideon’s Promise and the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia.

Ms. Pinckney is the proud recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Alumnus Award from D.C. Law Students in Court, in recognition of her commitment to pro bono criminal defense work on behalf of indigent clients. In 2017 and 2018, she and her business partner were each named one of Washington D.C.’s Best Lawyers for Criminal Defense by the Washingtonian Magazine.

She is a native Washingtonian and received her B.A. from Marymount University and her J.D. from George Washington University School of Law. Ms. Pinckney is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.

Larry Pozner
lecturer, author, and trial consultant

Larry is a solo practitioner, with his time spent on lecturing, writing and case consultation. He is co-author of Cross Examination: Science and Techniques (Lexis 3rd edition 2018, Pozner and Dodd). His lectures on trial techniques, principally Pozner on Cross: The Chapter Method, have taken him to 48 states, throughout Canada, and (inexplicably) Brazil. Delaware and South Dakota are missing.  Know anybody there?

Larry is also a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, which honored him with its highest recognition; the Olom Award. He graduated law school (UC Hastings, summa cum barely) knowing nothing about how to defend. Thankfully, he landed his dream-job as a Colorado public defender. It was there that he had a great training director, Steve Rench, who patiently taught Larry how the elements of trial fit together.

After his years as a public defender, Larry had a solo criminal defense practice, which eventually grew to a 3 -lawyer firm, including fellow NCDC Faculty member, Abe Hutt.  In 2000 Larry assembled a firm, eventually 30 lawyers, and added to his criminal defense practice the representation of plaintiffs and defendants in commercial litigation. This commercial litigation practice includes an $111 million verdict against PNC Bank, recently affirmed, and the successful defense of Pat Bowlen in a trial challenging Mr. Bowlen’s purchase and ownership of the Denver Broncos.

For many years Larry has taught criminal law at the University of Denver College of Law, where he was voted Best Professor.  That may have had something to do with his “Nobody Flunks” policy. He also writes a column for the NACDL Champion, entitled Cross Country. It is practical advice, so he never sites case law.

Larry is excited to be rejoining the NCDC faculty after too long an absence.