NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Cathleen L. Bennett recently moved to Anchorage, Alaska from Boston, Massachusetts where she was a public defender with the Committee for Public Counsel Services (the Massachusetts Statewide Public Defender) for 30 years. She was the Criminal Defense Training Director at CPCS for 17 years. As a trial lawyer in the CPCS Public Defender Division, she defended clients charged with murder and other serious felonies. She now works as a training consultant for the National Association for Public Defense and for Gideon’s Promise, and she intends to accept appointments to represent criminally accused people in the Alaska Courts soon.

Cathy is on the faculty and the Board of Trustees of the National Criminal Defense College. She is a Core Faculty member of Gideon’s Promise (formerly the Southern Public Defender Training Center), which was the subject of the award winning HBO documentary “Gideon’s Army,” and she has taught for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers  and criminal defense training programs across the country.

She received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Committee for Public Counsel Services in 2007, the Scholar-Mentor Award from Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (MCLE) in 2008, the Outstanding Faculty Award in 2011 and the Stephen B. Bright Award in 2018 from Gideon’s Promise, and the Gideon Award from the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in 2017.