NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE
FACULTY DIRECTORY
For a list of NCDC faculty who have taught in prior years, please click here.
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Brian Hewlett
Boyd County DPA Trial Office
Christina Hunt
Assistant Federal Public Defender
Christina L. Hunt is an Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Defenders, Northern District of Oklahoma. Prior to this role, she was the Executive Director for the Federal Defender Program, Middle District of Georgia. Before joining that office, she was Senior Litigator with the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho where she had worked for 14 years.…
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Christina L. Hunt is an Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Defenders, Northern District of Oklahoma. Prior to this role, she was the Executive Director for the Federal Defender Program, Middle District of Georgia. Before joining that office, she was Senior Litigator with the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho where she had worked for 14 years.
A graduate of Furman University and Mercer University Law School, since 1985 Tina has devoted her career to representing indigent people accused of crimes and training those who represent them. She began her practice in Macon, GA as a private practitioner who specialized in criminal defense after she did one, just one, divorce case. She learned she far preferred the stories of those accused of crimes. After eleven years in Macon, she picked up everything and moved to the Eastern District of Washington to become a career federal defender. Before moving to Washington, Tina taught Trial Practice and Georgia Criminal Practice and Procedure at Mercer Law School and was the Associate Dean of the National Criminal Defense College. She served as a member of the National Criminal Defense College Board of Regents and Faculty, is on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Federal Defenders and is a member of the Training Expert Panel for the Federal Defender Offices. She has a wealth of training experience and has taught at the Western Trial Advocacy Institute, the Institute for Criminal Defense Advocacy, the Georgia Institute of Trial Advocacy, the Federal Trial Skills Academy, the Colorado Alternate Defense Counsel Trial Skills program the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy Litigation Persuasion Institute, fondly known as Faubush, as well as at the New York State Defender’s Association. She taught trial advocacy at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, WA and has spoken at numerous seminars around the country on trial skills, persuasive sentencing stories and storytelling.
Beyond learning from other lawyers, which is the real reason she agrees to speak at seminars, her true passions are her new husband, Steve, their blended family of two dogs, Winston and MaddieDog, who were both clients in their former lives. (Those who have met them agree). She and her husband also have a well-behaved cat, MaddieCat, who was obviously a public defender in a former life as she has managed to put up with two dogs who think she may be an appetizer.
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Recent Teaching History
Abe Hutt
Attorney, Recht Kornfeld PC
Biography
Abe Hutt has been a criminal defense lawyer and NACDL member in Denver, Colorado since 1984. He is on the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College and since 2000 has taught at all of NCDC’s programs, including Advanced Cross-Examination, Theories, Themes and Storytelling, and each summer’s Trial Practice Institute. He has lectured around the country on trial tactics subjects, especially cross-examination and jury selection, as well as teaching courses on trial practice at the Law Schools of the University of Denver and the University of Colorado.
Abe has defended clients including sitting judges, elected district attorneys, and public defenders as well as the writer Hunter S. Thompson and innumerable lower profile people accused of serious crimes, from traffic offenses to capital murder. He has also represented attorneys, teachers, physicians, nurses, pilots, veterinarians, and dentists in disciplinary proceedings concerning their professional licenses.
Abe is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. 1980) and the University of Southern California Law Center (J.D. 1984). He currently serves on the Colorado Supreme Court Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure and on the Colorado Legislature’s Interagency Task Force on Drunk and Impaired Driving. He is probably best known for his work in the area of DUI defense. He has authored numerous articles on the subject and served as an expert witness in the area as well. He is the only non-judge who is a contributing author to the Colorado County Court Judge’s DUI Benchbook and has written the DUI and Motor Vehicle Law section of The Colorado Bar Association’s Annual Update of Colorado Law since 1991.
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Recent Teaching History
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Joshua Jones
Director, Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy
Biography
Joshua Jones is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Bartlit Center for Trial Advocacy. Most recently, he helped start the first full-service public defender office in Austin, Texas, serving as the Director of Trials and Training. Prior to that, he served as Senior Litigator with the Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc., He previously served as a Trial Team Leader and Trial Attorney in the same office. In addition, he worked for several years for a small firm doing complex criminal and civil litigation. Professor Jones has extensive experience teaching and coaching trial advocacy, including coaching the winners of the 2015 National Trial Competition. He received his B.A. in English, Philosophy, and Political Science from the University of Iowa in 2003, and received his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2008. As a student trial advocacy competitor, his teams won four national championships.
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Recent Teaching History
2023 Deryl Dantzler Trial Practice Institute (June Session)
Omodare Jupiter
Federal Public Defender – Mississippi
Biography
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Richard Kammen
Of Counsel, Kammen & Moudy
Biography
Richard Kammen is a criminal defense lawyer with his office in Indianapolis, Indiana. He concentrates his practice in serious felonies, white-collar defense, complex crimes and death penalty defense. He is of Counsel to the law firm of Kammen and Moudy. He graduated from Ripon College cum laude in 1968 and New York University School of Law in 1971. Admitted to the Bar in 1971, he began his practice after service in the United States Army.
During his professional career, Mr. Kammen has served as a public defender in the Marion County Courts on two occasions, 1972-1974 and 1978-1979.
Mr. Kammen has represented clients charged with offenses ranging in seriousness from felony drunk driving to Racketeering and Capital Murder.
Mr. Kammen has defended over three hundred homicide cases including approximately forty death penalty cases in both State and Federal courts. No client that Mr. Kammen has represented at trial has been sentenced to death. Mr. Kammen has been trial counsel on six State death penalty cases, including State of Indiana v. Charles Smith, a retrial of a reversed death penalty conviction in which the defendant was found not guilty. He has been appointed by United States District Judges to represent capitally charged defendants throughout the United States including such cases as United States v. Raymond Cheely (Government’s request for death penalty dismissed as improper) United States v. Reginald Brown (Government’s request for death penalty and underlying Murder charges dismissed because the defendant is innocent) , United States v. Joe Minerd, in which the defendant, convicted of killing his pregnant girlfriend and her three year old with a bomb received a life sentence. He was appointed “learned counsel” in United States v. Donnell Young, which was, until it was resolved by a plea the longest Federal capital case pending in the United States.. Mr. Kammen was appointed as “learned counsel” in the Federal capital case, United States v. Timothy O’Reilly. Mr. O’Reilly received a life sentence after a trial lasting three months. He was lead counsel on the defense team that represented David Camm who was exonerated and freed by acquittal, after being imprisoned for thirteen years, and two prior convictions of killing his wife and two children.
Until October of 2017, Mr. Kammen served as “Learned Counsel” in United States v. Abdul Rahim Al-Nashiri who is charged before a Military Commission at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Al-Nashiri is alleged to have been a central figure in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 in Aden, Yemen. This is likely to be the first capital military commission. Mr. Kammen and other Civilian counsel withdrew from the case after the Commission refused to address possible intrusions into the attorney client relationship.
A frequent speaker and lecturer on criminal defense issues, Mr. Kammen has spoken in almost every state and federal circuit. He has been a member of the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College since 1982 and the Trial Lawyers College since 2001.
Mr. Kammen is the recipient of the Pro Bono Award given by the Indiana Bar Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Indiana Public Defender Council.
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Recent Teaching History
Michael Kennedy
Partner
Biography
Mr. Kennedy has worked almost exclusively in federal courts in the west (Nevada, California and Washington state) since 1992 defending individuals accused of a variety of federal crimes (guns, drugs, murders, rape, white collar offenses, RICO, VICAR, artifacts and anthrax to name a few) in some high profile, more low profile and often no profile cases. In March of 2016, he left the Office of the Federal Defender in Nevada and opened his own law practice. Mr. Kennedy teaches trial skills each year at the National Criminal Defense College, the Federal CJA Trial Skills Academy and/or other similar programs.
Mr. Kennedy has successfully defended numerous individuals accused by the government of committing crimes. In 1998, he successfully defended Larry Wayne Harris (identified in an 1997 US. News & World Report article asthe “Next Unabomber”) in Las Vegas and Columbus, Ohio against charges identifying Harris as a domestic terrorist in an alleged plot to use anthrax as a weapon. In 2006, he obtained a complete victory for Sohn Regas in both the 14 defendant state – and 44 defendant federal – Hells Angels prosecutions in Las Vegas arising from an incident in Harrah’s Laughlin casino between the Mongols and Hells Angels which left 3 dead. In 2008, he obtained acquittals in Reno in two attempt murder prosecutions, one of which arose from a shoot-out inside his client’s (David Lantry) home where two law enforcement officers were shot. In 2014, he obtained an acquittal on all four federal murder charges in a DOJ, Civil Rights Division, double homicide prosecution against an alleged former skinhead leader.
In March of 2016, he and his co-counsel obtained an acquittal in a federal mortgage fraud conspiracy and wire fraud prosecution in Las Vegas. Most recently, on February 24, 2020, following 7 trial months, he obtained an acquittal for Ernesto Gonzalez on all counts (two federal murder counts and a 12 year plus RICO conspiracy charge) arising from the Department of Justices’s failed attempt to prove that the Vagos Motorcycle Club is a criminal RICO enterprise engaged in racketeering activity.
Mr. Kennedy has been selected for inclusion in the Nevada Super Lawyers, and recognized nationally by the National Academy of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Trial Lawyers Association, for the practice of criminal defense. He began his career in 1988 as an associate with Holland & Hart in Denver, Colorado after graduating from the University of Minnesota Law School cum laude and is an active member of the Colorado, California and Nevada state bars.
Christine Koehler
Christine A. Koehler, Atty. at Law
Biography
Since graduating cum laude from Georgia State University College of Law in 1995, Christine has dedicated her career to vigorously defending people accused of crimes. Her unyielding dedication to her clients led to the three month halt of jury trials in Gwinnett County, Georgia, after she successfully challenged the compilation of Gwinnett’s jury system in a death penalty case.
For 17 years Christine’s peers have voted her a Georgia Super Lawyer. She has been named “Best of Gwinnett” by Gwinnett Magazine, multiple times. Christine is a founding member of the Georgia Innocence Project and a life member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Christine is the past President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Stonewall Bar Association. She is the past Chair of the Investigative Panel of the State Bar of Georgia. She served on the State Bar Investigative Panel for eight years. Christine is a member of the Defense of Drinking Drivers Network of Georgia and she is a founding member of The DUI Defense Lawyers Association.
Christine has been an instructor with GACDL’s Bill Daniel Trial Advocacy Program since 2000. She is on faculty at the National Criminal Defense College and is a frequent lecturer at criminal defense seminars nationwide.
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A.J. Kramer
Federal Public Defender
Biography
A. J. KRAMER has been the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia since 1990. He was the Chief Assistant Federal Public Defender in Sacramento, California, from 1987-1990, and an Assistant Federal Public Defender in San Francisco, California, from 1980-1987. He was a Law Clerk for the Honorable Procter Hug, Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Reno, Nevada, from 1979-1980.
Mr. Kramer received a B.A. from Stanford University in 1975, and a J.D. from the School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1979. He taught Legal Research and Writing at Hastings Law School from 1983-1988.
He is a permanent faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia; and, was a permanent faculty member of the Western Trial Advocacy Institute in Laramie, Wyoming.
He is Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a member of the Department of Defense Advisory Committee on the Investigation, Prosecution, and Defense of Sexual Assault Cases in the Military; and, the ABA Criminal Justice Section Council. He was a member of the United States Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, 2012-18; and, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Scientific Approaches to Understanding and Maximizing the Validity and Reliability of Eyewitness Identification in Law Enforcement and the Court, 2013-14. In December 2013, he received the Annice M. Wagner Pioneer Award from The Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
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Recent Teaching History
Bridget Krause
Trial Division Director, Office of the State Public Defender of Wisconsin
Biography
Bridget Krause graduated from Marquette Law School in May 2000 and began working at the Milwaukee Public Defender’s Office, Trial Division, after graduation. Bridget briefly left the Public Defender’s Office for two years to work in private criminal defense. After two years, she rejoined the Milwaukee Public Defender’s Office as a Local Attorney Manager. In 2018 she was promoted to Deputy Regional Attorney Manager in the Milwaukee Trial Office. As a Deputy Regional Manager, Bridget worked with younger attorneys to increase the litigation in the Milwaukee Trial Office and brainstorm motion and trial issues. She also set up training in the Milwaukee Trials Office for new attorneys and experienced attorneys. Bridget was recently promoted to Trial Division Director in the WI Public Defender’s Office.
Bridget has been an Adjunct Professor at Marquette University Law School since 2009. She has taught Trial Advocacy 1 and the Public Defender Workshop. Bridget is faculty on the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Trial Skills Academy, New Jersey Public Defender’s Program, and the National Criminal Defense College. She also presents on topics dealing with criminal defense work at the WI Public Defender Conference, Florida Public Defender Conference, Oregon Public Defender Conference and numerous NACDL programs.
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Recent Teaching History
La Mer Kyle-Griffiths
Training Director, Los Angeles County Public Defender Office
Biography
La Mer Kyle-Griffiths is the Training Director with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office. Prior to this role, she was the Assistant Public Defender of the Santa Barbara Public Defender’s Office. Before that she was the Director of Training and Complex Litigation with Still She Rises in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
She has been a lifelong public defender amplifying the voice of the poor in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Washington and now California.
In Seattle, she was responsible for designing, organizing, and facilitating trainings for the over 400 team members of the Department of Public Defense. There she gained an appreciation for the need for defense teams to actively engage with their own implicit bias. She became certified with King County to teach and facilitate on issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Before that she practiced for over 17 years as a public defender in both Kentucky and Boston. In Kentucky, she was part of the Capital Defense Unit and litigated several death penalty cases.
She has sat on many case reviews on death penalty cases and continues to teach nationally and at various state programs on capital litigation, voir dire, and mitigation. She has taught investigators, attorneys, mitigation specialists, and law students across the country in the areas of capital litigation, litigation with a racial and gender lens, investigation, sentencing, trial skills, and forensics. She has litigated juvenile, capital, felony, and misdemeanor cases as well as arguing two cases to the Kentucky Supreme Court. She has been an adjunct professor at the Seattle University College of Law, the Iowa University of Law, Boston College and currently teaches at the Darrow Baldus Death Penalty College, the National Criminal Defense College, Gideon’s Promise, and Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. She has taught in various organizations in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as well as leadership and supervision with an inclusive lens.
A graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law she has been a lifelong advocate and is looking forward to her continuing adventure with Tom, her Chucks-wearing, crusading, capital defender husband and three young women who all learned to crow “Acquittal” early!
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Recent Teaching History
2019 Trial Practice Institute in Bristol (July Session)
2018 Trial Practice Institute in Macon (July Session)
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Christian Lamar
Deputy Director of Litigation of the Georgia Capital Defender
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Desiree Lassiter
Attorney Advisor
Biography
Desiree Lassiter received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where she was awarded the Institute’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership
Award. Following MIT, Desiree continued her chemical engineering studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles, where she was awarded the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Fellowship and received a
Master of Science degree. Desiree went on to earn her Juris Doctor from the University of California,
Berkeley School of Law. At Berkeley Law, Desiree received the Francine Diaz Memorial Award and was a
member of the California Law Review, Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, and the La Raza Law
Students Association. While in law school, Desiree interned for Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Public Defender Service for the District of
Columbia, and the Southern Center for Human Rights. After graduating law school, Desiree was
admitted to practice law in the state of New York and before the United States Patent and Trademark
Office. Desiree began her legal career as a trial attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a holistic public
defender office in New York City. At the Bronx Defenders, Desiree was one of two experts to handle and
litigate all cases pertaining to adolescents charged as adults for violent felony offenses. Desiree has
since transitioned to federal practice and served as an assistant federal public defender in the District of
Maryland for several years. Desiree is currently serving as an attorney advisor with the Defender
Services Office, Training Division.
Jeff Lee
The Law Office of J. Jeffrey Lee
Biography
Jeff Lee is a Certified Criminal Trial Specialist in Memphis, Tennessee. He began his career as a state public defender, and currently has a private practice with a number of appointed cases. He has studied at the National Criminal Defense College, the Trial Lawyers College, and the Tennessee Criminal Defense College. Jeff recently obtained an LL.M. in Advocacy and is working toward licensure as a clinical mental health counselor. He lives in Memphis with his wife, Lindsey, and their pug, Biscuit.
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Recent Teaching History
John Lentine
Partner, Sheffield & Lentine, P.C.
Biography
John received his B.A. with honors from the University of West Florida and his J.D. from Cumberland Law School in 1987. He practices exclusively criminal defense work on the trial and appellate levels throughout the State of Alabama and in a variety of Federal trial and appellate courts. He is a Past President of the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, the Greater Birmingham Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and the Legal Aid Society of Birmingham. He is a Life Member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and he has been Board Certified as a Criminal Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and has served as the Board’s State Coordinator in Alabama. He was the CJA Panel Representative and Resource Counsel for the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama for ten years and also served as the 11th Circuit’s Representative to and for 3 years. He served as the Chief CJA Panel Representative in the United States to the Defender Services Advisory Group for the Administrative Office of Courts in Washington.
He has been appointed by the Alabama Supreme Court to serve on the Alabama Criminal Rules Committee and the Alabama Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions Committee and was appointed by the President of the Alabama State Bar in 2013 to serve as the Chair of the newly restored Criminal Justice Section of the State Bar and as Vice Chair of the Appointed Counsel & Indigent Representation Committee. He has also served on the Executive Committee of the Birmingham Bar Association and Birmingham Bar Foundation.
He is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia, and the Georgia Criminal Defense Association’s Bill Daniel Trial Advocacy Program. He is an adjunct faculty member at Cumberland School of Law where he teaches trial advocacy and the Birmingham School of Law where he teaches criminal law, criminal procedure and the death penalty. He has also been an adjunct professor at Miles Law School and has lectured at Faulkner and the University of Alabama schools of law.
He has been a Fellow in the American Board of Criminal Lawyers and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Criminal Defense Attorneys. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America specializing in Non-White Collar and White Collar Criminal Defense, Alabama’s SuperLawyers in the area of criminal defense, and The Birmingham Magazine’s and The Birmingham Business Journal’s Best Lawyers in Birmingham and acknowledged by The National Trial Lawyers as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in Alabama and by the American Society of Legal Advocates as one of the Top 100 criminal defense lawyers in Alabama.
He is the 2010 recipient of the Judge Walter P. Gewin Award from CLE Alabama for his contributions to the development and presentation of CLE programs. The Best Lawyers in America has selected him as Birmingham’s “Lawyer of the Year” for 2012 in Non-White Collar criminal defense and in 2018 as Birimingham’s“Lawyer of the Year” in White Collar criminal defense.
In 2012 he received the “Lawrence B. Sheffield, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Greater Birmingham Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. In 2013 he was selected as a Master Bencher in the inaugural group of Masters of the Bench in the Judge James Edwin Horton Inn of Court at Cumberland School of Law. Also John has recently been listed in the Top 50 Alabama Super Lawyers for 2013-18 and listed in the Top 10 criminal defense attorneys in Alabama by the National Academy of Criminal Defense Attorneys. In March of 2014 he was named to membership in the National Association of Distinguished Counsel in the area of criminal defense. In May of 2014, he received the “Roderick Beddow Sr. Award” from the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. The Beddow Award is the ACDLA’s highest honor and recognizes a lifetime achievement and service in the field of criminal defense.
John has spoken at numerous CLE programs over the last 30 years in Alabama and across the country devoted to the teaching and training of criminal defense lawyers.
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Recent Teaching History
Mark Loudon-Brown
Senior Attorney, Southern Center for Human Rights
Biography
Mark Loudon-Brown is a senior attorney in the Capital Litigation Unit of the Southern Center for Human Rights, where he represents people facing a death sentence at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction. Prior to that, Mark was a public defender in the Criminal Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders. While there, Mark served as a Supervising Attorney for two years and the Forensic Practice Supervisor, overseeing the office’s Forensic Practice Group and consulting on cases involving DNA evidence. After earning his J.D., he completed two years as a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown Law, representing indigent clients charged with crimes and supervised third-year law students doing the same. He teaches a forensic science seminar at Georgia State College of Law.
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Recent Teaching History
Andrea Lyon
Attorney, Lyon Law LLC
Biography
Ms. Lyon is a renowned lawyer, author, speaker, professor and former Dean of the Valparaiso University Law School, who has been featured on national news and media outlets. Dubbed “The Angel of Death Row” by the Chicago Tribune, she was the first woman to serve as lead attorney in a death penalty case, and she holds an unparalleled 19 wins in 19 capital cases.
Ms. Lyon has dedicated her career to advocating and upholding justice for all. Her legal work began in the Cook County Public Defender’s Office where she rose to become Chief of the Homicide Task Force. Managing a 22-lawyer unit, she tried over 130 homicide cases and defended more than 30 potential capital cases at the trial level, including taking 19 capital cases through penalty phase. In 1990, Ms. Lyon founded and directed the Illinois Capital Resource Center representing all of the death row inmates in Illinois.
She is leader of academic reforms in both curriculum development and mentoring diversity in law school student and faculty populations. Ms. Lyon brought her depth of criminal justice experience to enrich legal education at University of Michigan Law School as assistant clinical professor; DePaul University College of Law as clinical professor of law, Associate Dean of Clinical Programs, and Director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases; and as Dean of Valparaiso University Law School.
In January of 2015, Ms. Lyon was awarded Operation Push’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson Dream-Makers Award. A winner of the prestigious National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Reginald Heber Smith Award for best advocate for the poor in the country, she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of death penalty defense and a frequent Continuing Legal Education (CLE) teacher throughout the country. She has been designated as learned counsel in the federal defense system.
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Recent Teaching History
2021 NCDC Trial Practice Institute (July Session)
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Shawna Mackey Geiger
Director of Engagement, Colorado Office of Respondent Parents’ Counsel
Biography
Shawna Mackey Geiger is the Director of Engagement for the Colorado Office of the Respondent Parents’ Counsel. Her focus is on supporting and improving family defenders in Colorado and around the country, as well as working to improve and abolish the family policing system. Before moving to ORPC she was the Director of Training for the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Denver and was previously the Training Director for the Colorado Office of Alternate Defense Counsel. Prior to her role as a trainer, Ms. Geiger represented clients as a public defender as well as in private practice where she focused on indigent criminal and juvenile defense. Ms. Geiger teaches trial advocacy, storytelling, persuasion, leadership, trauma-informed practice, equity and diversity training, and client communication skills across the country. She also serves on the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College. Shawna works with national defender organizations to ensure that family defenders advocate in an anti-racist manner and are consistently working to create equity for clients with disabilities and those of the LGBTQ and BIPOC communities.
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Recent Teaching History
Sean Maher
Attorney, The Law Offices of Sean M. Maher, PLLC
Biography
Sean Maher has been a criminal defense attorney for over 27 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 New York City, but has devoted a significant amount of his time as appointed indigent defense counsel. During his career, he 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.
