Ms. Williams has worked in the Office of the Federal Defender for the District of Arizona since 1994. Prior to her appointment as FPD in 2013, she had served as first assistant federal public defender since 2006. She led the Tucson Criminal Defense Unit and assisted in supervision of staff in district offices in Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Yuma, and an out-of-district office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ms. Williams also helped manage the district’s Capital Habeas Unit. The Office of the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California, which opened 1,966 new cases in fiscal year 2016, is headquartered in Sacramento and maintains a fully-staffed branch office in Fresno.

Ms. Williams began her career in public service in 1988 as an assistant public defender for Pima County Office of the Public Defender in Tucson, Arizona, where she handled felony cases including death penalty homicides, drugs, sex crimes, and child abuse. Prior to that, she worked as an associate attorney in San Diego, California, from 1986 to 1988. A Tucson native, Ms. Williams received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Pittsburgh State University in 1982 and her J.D. from the University of San Diego Law School in 1985.”

Brett Willis has defending people since birth. His entire legal career has been dedicated to defending people who are accused of committing crimes. From 2005 to 2022 he worked as a Georgia Public Defender in Hall County. In 2022, he opened his own law firm.

He is a member of the inaugural class of Gideon’s Promise. At present, Brett serves as an instructor for: the Harvard Law School, the Georgia Public Defender Council, and GACDL’s Bill Daniel Program.

He is the author of Georgia’s only practice guide on defending against the charge of failure to register as a sexual offender. In 2008, Brett successfully challenged the constitutionality of the sex offender registration law as applied to homeless persons in Santos v. State, 284 Ga. 514 (2008).

In 2010, Brett was selected as one of ten Georgia lawyers under forty “On the Rise” in a review by The Fulton County Daily Report. In 2011, he was recognized for securing a dismissal for a woman accused of poisoning her husband with arsenic; the case had been slated to appear on TruTV. In 2013, he was featured in the HBO documentary Gideon’s Army. Also in 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Foot Soldier award by Gideon’s Promise. In 2014 Brett was named the Georgia Public Defender of the Year. He earned his J.D. from the University of Georgia (2003) and his Master of Laws from New York University (2004).

Boyd Young is the Director of the Capital Trial Division of the South Carolina Commission of Indigent Defense where he has practiced since 2008.  He and his office, have successfully resolved over 50 capital cases through plea and trial.  Based on his devotion to his clients and his efforts in starting and leading statewide training, he was selected as the inaugural “Andrew David Grimes Public Defender of the Year” for 2015.

From 2005-2008, Boyd was a trial attorney with the Georgia Capital Defender Office in Atlanta, Ga. where he defended people accused of capital murder throughout the State of Georgia. While at the Georgia Capital Defender Office he was featured in a series of articles published by the McClatchy Newspapers written by Steven Henderson.  This series was later turned into a PBS documentary titled “Death is Different.”

Prior to joining the Georgia Capital Defender Office, Boyd was a public defender in Charleston, SC.

Boyd got his law degree in 1999 from South Carolina and his undergraduate degree from The Citadel in Charleston, SC.