NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

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.

Frank believes that good trials are much like good movies: good stories, good acting, and damn good directing. He feels that a good trial lawyer should bring to the show every possible talent: singing, dancing, miming, etc. Whatever it takes to get the point across is important. But, he feels, as a faculty member, that imparting these qualities requires from his ‘students’ an ability to know and appreciate that we are in a constantly changing matrix. We are constantly evolving and our evolution as people can make or break our evolution as trial lawyers: if we remain close-minded, we shut ourselves off to learning and honing our talents. We must never stop learning. And, at the end of the day, Frank learns just as much from his ‘students’ as they do from him. And, for that, he is eternally grateful.

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!

Anthony J. Natale, “Tony” is lead capital counsel for the defense team representing Abdul Rahim Al Nashiri, the individual charge with masterminding the bombing of the USS Cole, the Military Commission Tribunal being held in Guantanamo, Cuba. Previously he was a Supervising Assistant Federal Public Defender in Miami, Florida. Tony was also the training coordinator for the Federal Defender Office and the CJA panel lawyers for the Southern District of Florida.

Prior joining the Federal Defenders Office he was in private practice for over twenty years concentrating in criminal defense and civil rights trials in both State and Federal courts. The cases he has taken to trial include capital murder, terrorism, complex fraud matters, large drug conspiracies, civil rights violations and personal injury actions.

He has been a member of the National Criminal Defense College faculty since 1982, and lectures extensively throughout the United States on criminal defense topics such as voir dire, advanced cross-examination, cross-examination of experts and theory of the case. Tony has been instrumental in the development of trial practice training programs for the Federal Defender and CJA Training Division and has helped to organize and teach in criminal defense training programs in China, Zimbabwe and Vietnam.

He is a member of the Florida and District of Colombia Bars, NACDL, FACDL and has been admitted pro hac vice in several jurisdictions throughout the country. He is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University and the Antioch School of Law.

Aaron Nelson graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School in 1996. He is the owner of Nelson Defense Group, LLC, in Hudson, Wisconsin, where he devotes 100% of his practice to defending people accused of crimes or charged with drunk driving. He has been an instructor at the WI SPD Trial Skills since 2012 and an instructor at the National Criminal Defense College (“NCDC”) since 2014. Aaron still dreams of becoming a public defender and appreciates all the incredibly hard and life-saving work all of Public Defenders do on a daily basis.

David Patton has been the Executive Director of the Federal Defenders of New York for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York since July 2011. From 2002 to 2008, he worked at the Federal Defenders as a trial attorney in the Manhattan office.

From 2008-2010, he was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Alabama where he taught Criminal Law and directed the Criminal Defense Clinic. From 2010 to 2011, he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford Law School and founded the school’s first trial-level criminal defense clinic. He currently teaches Professional Responsibility in Criminal Law as an Adjunct Professor of Law at N.Y.U. Mr. Patton is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Law Institute. Among other publications, he is the author of The Structure of Federal Public Defense: A Call for Independence, 102 CORNELL L. REV. 101 (2017) and Federal Public Defense in an Age of Inquisition, 122 YALE L.J. 100 (2013). Since 2008, Mr. Patton has been a faculty member for Gideon’s Promise, a non-profit organization dedicated to training new public defenders and fostering a community of client-centered lawyers.

Mr. Patton is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as an editor of the Virginia Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to joining the Federal Defenders in 2002, he was an associate at the law firm Sullivan &Cromwell.

Martin Pinales has been successfully defending individuals and companies in federal and state courts throughout the United States for over 50 years. In addition to his impressive trial and appellate experience, he also has extensive experience representing clients who are involved in criminal investigations and who have been called to testify before a grand jury.

Martin is a frequent lecturer throughout the United States to various bar associations on a wide array of subjects, including trial techniques and ethics. He also teaches at the National Criminal Defense College, part of Mercer Law School, in Macon, Georgia, as well as the Intensive Trial Advocacy Program at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Martin had the privilege of teaching trial skills at Legal Aid of China and lecturing for the doctor of laws program at the prestigious Peking Law School. He has also published articles in legal periodicals and books.

After the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were enacted, Martin was appointed by the United States Sentencing Commission to train other defense attorneys on the Guidelines. In addition, he served on the Practitioner’s Advisory Group to the Sentencing Commission, which acts as a liaison between defense attorneys and the Sentencing Commission. He was also appointed by former Chief Justice Rehnquist to serve on the United States Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services.

He has earned the Martindale-Hubbell AV® Preeminent Peer Review rating, which is the highest rating attorneys can achieve in both legal ability and ethical standards.