NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

Jeffery Robinson is a deputy legal director and the director of the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality, which houses the organization’s work on criminal justice, racial justice, and reform issues. Since graduating from Harvard Law School in 1981, Jeff has three decades of experience working on these issues. For seven years, he represented indigent clients in state court at The Defender Association and then in federal court at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, both in Seattle. In 1988, Jeff began a 27-year private practice at the Seattle firm of Schroeter, Goldmark & Bender, where he represented a broad range of clients in local, state, and federal courts on charges ranging from shoplifting to securities fraud and first degree murder. He has tried over 200 criminal cases to verdict and has tried more than a dozen civil cases representing plaintiffs suing corporate and government entities. Jeff was one of the original members of the John Adams Project and worked on the behalf of one of five men held at Guantanamo Bay charged with carrying out the 9/11 attacks.

In addition to being a nationally recognized trial attorney, Jeff is also a respected teacher of trial advocacy. He is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, Georgia, and has lectured on trial skills all over the United States. He has also spoken nationally to diverse audiences on the role of race in the criminal justice system. He is past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a life member and past member of the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Jeff is also an elected fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

Heather Rogers (she/her) has been a public defender for 20 years in the state and federal courts. Heather has handled cases at every stage of litigation, from arraignment through trial and appeal. She has represented clients accused of offenses from delinquency to homicide, defended detainees incarcerated at Guantánamo Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and argued cases in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Heather is honored to serve as the first Public Defender of Santa Cruz County, her birthplace and home. Before her appointment, Heather served as a public defender at Biggam, Christensen & Minsloff, the defense firm that previously provided public defense services for Santa Cruz County. Heather is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College, lecturer in Legal Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and frequent trainer at regional and national trial skills programs. Heather has also taught at California Western School of Law and Monterey College of Law. Heather clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before starting her career in public defense at Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. Heather also served as a public defender in Monterey County and at the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of California before coming home to Santa Cruz. Heather has an A.B. in English Language & Literature from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. Heather lives in the Aptos mountains with her husband, children, and pets. In her free time, Heather enjoys traveling, hiking, and snowboarding.

After 33 years as a public defender, David has opened his own law office where he will practice criminal defense and advise attorneys on potential professional conduct issues.

David began his public defender career in 1989 as a trial attorney. He has served as a managing attorney, a major crimes/homicide attorney, and an attorney in the program’s appellate office. He has tried approximately forty cases to a jury, including a capital murder case, and has handled over 150 appeals. In his current position, David continues to handle a small number of trials and appeals and is involved year-round in planning and conducting trainings, including a month-long training for the program’s class of new lawyers, and trainings on case analysis and trial skills for new and experienced lawyers.

In addition to his appointment as NCDC faculty, David is a former adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, the (soon to be outgoing) chair of the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s Professional Conduct Committee, and a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He is a recipient of the New Hampshire Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Champion of Justice Award, and an award for service to the profession from the New Hampshire Bar Association.

Jon M. Sands has devoted his career to the defense of indigent federal criminal defendants at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona. As an Assistant Federal Defender since 1987, and as the Federal Public Defender since 2004, Jon has handled cases at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction habeas corpus litigation. Jon is a graduate of Yale College (1979, magna cum laude), and received his law degree from the University of California, Davis (1984, high honors), where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review.

After graduation, Jon clerked for the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (which brought him to Arizona). Before joining the Federal Public Defender’s Office, Jon was an Associate at Meyer, Hendricks, Victor, Osborn, Maledon (presently Osborn Maledon). Jon served as Chair of the State Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility. He has also served as Chair of the State Bar’s Criminal Justice Section and as Chair of the State Bar’s Criminal Jury Instructions Committee.

Jon is presently the Chair of the Defender Services Advisory Group, which represents all Federal Defender and Community Defender offices in advising the Judicial Conference’s Defender Services Committee and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts on federal indigent defense matters. He has also been Chair of the Federal Defender Committee on the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which is congressionally charged with advising and testifying before the United States Sentencing Commission. Jon has been President of the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice and President of the National Association of Federal Defenders. In addition to his public defender duties, Jon is an adjunct faculty at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, and is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College. He has published numerous legal articles, law reviews, essays, and book reviews, and has contributed chapters to several legal treatises. Jon has lectured and taught on a wide array of legal topics.”

Jennifer Sellitti is Director of Training & Communications for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), where she is responsible for teaching trial advocacy and substantive law to public defenders in all of the agency’s practice areas. She works at the direction of the public defender on special projects that impact OPD clients such as police accountability, juvenile resentencings, and pretrial justice/bail reform. In addition, she represents clients charged with serious felonies at trials.

Prior to her appointment to director, she was the managing attorney for the Middlesex Trial Region and an assistant deputy public defender in the Essex County Adult Region. She worked as a staff attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Massachusetts before joining the OPD. Jennifer began her legal career at Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, where she worked on the organization’s Prison Brutality Project investigating claims of prison violence and representing inmates housed in solitary confinement at super maximum security prisons in civil rights lawsuits against correctional facilities and individual officers.

Jennifer is a faculty member at trial advocacy programs across the country including the National Criminal Defense College and the National Forensic College. She speaks nationally at professional conferences about issues surrounding legal representation for the accused. She a trustee of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey and serves on the Advisory Boards of the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Forensic Science Major and the State of New Jersey’s newly formed Conviction Review Unit. A graduate of Suffolk University Law School, Jennifer obtained a B.S. degree in public relations from Boston University. When she is not training lawyers or advocating for clients, Jennifer and her partner operate D/V Tenacious, a dive vessel that discovers, explores, and salvages shipwrecks in the North Atlantic. Jennifer is both a diver and a United States Coast Guard licensed ship captain.

Jeff Sherr is the Training Director for the National Association for Public Defense producing hundreds of webinars for public defense professionals across the nation. Prior to that he was the Manager of the Education and Strategic Planning Branch of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy. Jeff started with the DPA since 1994, starting first as a law clerk, then working with the Juvenile Post Dispositional Unit, then in the trial division with the Stanford Field Office, and now in Frankfort with the education staff. Jeff graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 1995. Jeff has been a faculty member for Gideon’s Promise, the National Criminal Defense College, Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College, Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop, Bronx Defender Academy, and other state litigation institutes.

In addition to regularly training public defender litigators and trainers, Jeff trains public defender leaders nationally and for many individual defender states and offices. Jeff also has an extensive background in theatre having studied with the National Shakespeare Conservatory and the University of Kansas. Jeff performs regularly with Central Kentucky Improv in Lexington, Kentucky and at Improv Festivals across the country.