NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY
- The results are being filtered by the region: CA
A
Norma Aguilar
Federal Defenders of San Diego
Jenny Andrews
Sr. Deputy Public Defender; Santa Barbara Office
Biography
A child of counterculture, raised off the grid by back-to-the-land hippies in Northern California, Jenny Andrews is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School. She has been a public defender in California since 1996 and is currently the Director of Training and Career Development at the Santa Barbara County Public Defender, where she is creating a new training curriculum and litigating capital cases. She teaches on the faculty of Gideon’s Promise, the Trial Advocacy Workshop at Harvard Law School, and the Trial Skills Institute of the California Public Defenders Association.
She believes in finding supportive practices to sustain a career in public defense—hers include yoga and meditation, writing, hiking along the beach with her husband and daughter, and tending a rural apple farm in Northern California.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
B
Marilyn Bednarski
Attorney
Notes
TPI Graduate
Juanita Brooks
Attorney
Notes
TPI Graduate
C
Yasmin Cader
Attorney, Cader / Adams Trial Lawyers
Biography
As a former federal defender, Yasmin Cader has tried more than thirty criminal cases to resolution before juries and judges in state and federal courts in Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C. At the Offices of the Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of New York and Los Angeles, Yasmin represented witnesses and individuals facing a variety of federal criminal charges, including complex white-collar criminal and regulatory matters. Yasmin also served as the Chief of Training in Los Angeles, a position in which she developed and executed substantive legal and trial skills training programs for attorneys in Los Angeles and across the country. While representing individuals in Washington D.C. with the Public Defender Service, she defended juveniles and adults facing the most serious felony charges in Superior Court.
Yasmin is also an experienced civil litigator. She began her career as an Honors Program Trial Lawyer with the Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she litigated individual and class-action claims of sexual and racial harassment and discrimination. Prior to that, she served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In private practice, Yasmin continues to teach trial skills to practicing lawyers and law students alike. She is a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop and the National Criminal Defense College. She has served as a guest lecturer at local and national bar associations across the country, as well as at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, UCLA School of Law and Loyola Law School. She currently serves on the Yale Law School Executive Committee and is also on the board of a national non-profit dedicated to effective messaging for social justice issues.
Judy Clarke
Attorney
Notes
TPI Graduate
E
John Ellis
Law Offices of John C. Ellis, Jr.
Biography
John C. Ellis, Jr. is a National Coordinating Discovery Attorney for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Defender Services Office. In this capacity, he provides litigation support and e-discovery assistance on complex criminal cases to defense teams around the country. Before entering private practice, Mr. Ellis spent 13 years as a trial attorney and supervisory attorney with Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. He also serves as a digital forensic consultant and expert.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
F
H
Steve Harmon
Riverside County Public Defender
Notes
TPI Graduate
M
Shaffy Moeel
Moeel Law Office
Shaffy is a partner at Moeel Lah Fakhoury LLP, where she represents individuals charged with complex felony cases in state and federal court. Before entering private practice, Shaffy was a federal public defender in San Diego. Shaffy is also a Board Member of the National Criminal Defense College, is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, and serves on the Board of Directors of Suzerain Capital Defense.…
Read MoreBiography
Shaffy is a partner at Moeel Lah Fakhoury LLP, where she represents individuals charged with complex felony cases in state and federal court. Before entering private practice, Shaffy was a federal public defender in San Diego. Shaffy is also a Board Member of the National Criminal Defense College, is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, and serves on the Board of Directors of Suzerain Capital Defense.
Shaffy received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and her law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
P
Grover Porter
Attorney
R
Song Richardson
Dean
Notes
TPI Graduate
Heather Rogers
Deputy Public Defender
Biography
Heather Rogers is an attorney and educator with over 15 years of experience defending indigent clients accused of crimes in federal and state court. Ms. Rogers currently works at the Santa Cruz County Public Defender, where she handles felony trials, serves as the office’s Immigration Resource Attorney, and is developing a collateral consequences unit to help clients mitigate the collateral consequences of criminal charges and convictions.
After graduating with distinction from Stanford Law School, Ms. Rogers served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. From there, she became a deputy federal public defender at Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc., where she developed a passion for trial work and had the privilege of being part of a small team of attorneys responsible for representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Before joining the Santa Cruz County Public Defender, Ms. Rogers served as deputy public defender in Monterey County and a deputy federal public defender at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of California.
Over the years, Ms. Rogers has had the opportunity to teach in various settings, ranging from teaching federal advocacy to advanced law students at California Western Law School to lecturing at a week-long trial skills program for government lawyers in Lima, Peru. Ms. Rogers is a Lecturer in the Division of Social Sciences at The University of California at Santa Cruz, where she currently teaches Immigration, Citizenship & Law.
Ms. Rogers has two young daughters, ages 5 and 11. In her spare time, Ms. Rogers likes to travel, surf, and snowboard.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
S
Martin Sabelli
Attorney
Biography
Martín has represented individuals and tried many cases in state and federal courts since 1993 in
a wide range of civil and criminal matters including complex federal white-collar criminal
prosecutions, multi-defendant federal conspiracy cases, federal and state gang-related
prosecutions, federal and state death-penalty homicides, civil trials and arbitrations, and capital
habeas corpus matters. He focuses his practice on federal gang/RICO capital defense.
Martín served as a federal public defender in the Northern District of California (San Francisco),
as the Director of Training for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and as a law clerk to
the late Honorable Robert F. Peckham, United States District Judge. He taught Latin American
History at Yale College as a Lecturer (1990-1991).
Martín is President-Elect of NACDL and was awarded NACDL’s Highly Prestigious
Champion of Justice Award for 2019. He serves as Chair of its Ninth Circuit Lawyer’s
Assistance Strike Force and Trial Penalty Task Force and as a member of its Ethics Advisory
Committee.
Martín is a Member of the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College and has
taught at the College without interruption since 2001. Martín has also taught for the Trial
Advocacy Workshop for Harvard Law School, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and
NACDL as well as numerous other criminal defense and public defense programs around the
country and abroad.
Martín has participated in legal reform efforts in Argentina since 2008 in numerous provinces
and the federal system. He lectures often on comparative criminal justice issues and has trained
public defenders, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and numerous other countries. Martín established a school
for public defenders in Buenos Aires which, to date, has trained approximately 500 defenders
from twelve Central and South American countries. He has also trained judges, prosecutors, and
lawyers in numerous other countries including Nicaragua, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Martín served as Director of the Mexico Program for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy from 2005 to 2007.
He is a graduate of Harvard College, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and
Yale Law School.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
Bart Sheela
Deputy Public Defender
Biography
Bart Sheela is an Alternate Public Defender in San Diego. In his over thirty-five years of practice, he has tried just about every variety of criminal case, including several capital cases.
He has served on the California Public Defender Association’s Board of Directors for nearly 20 years and has served as its President. He has assisted in the planning of the Capital Case Defense Seminar, the largest capital case defense program in the nation, for the last 10 years. In addition, he has been a co-chair of the Training Committee for 10+ years and planned nearly 100 trainings for California lawyers. In 2019, he was chosen as the Public Defender of the Year.
He was formerly the Chair of the California State Bar’s Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct and has written and lectured on legal ethics and trial practice.
He proudly serves on the faculty at the National Criminal Defense College and the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College.
He has successfully resolved his last seven death penalty cases.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
Callie Steele
Federal Public Defender
Biography
Callie Glanton Steele has devoted her career to the defense of indigent federal criminal clients at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles for the past 28 years. She has been the Senior Litigator from September of 2015 to the present, primarily handling complex cases. Also, she was a Supervising Deputy Federal Public Defender (2002 to September of 2015) and a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the trial unit (1992 to 2002). In 2000 and 2001, she was on a temporary duty assignment in Washington, D.C., where she was Special Counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission (November of 2000 to May of 2001), and a Visiting Defender at Defender Services Division with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (May to November of 2001), working in the Legal and Policy Division.
She graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1991, and served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Terry J. Hatter, Jr., United States District Judge in the fall of 1990.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
T
Ronald Tyler
Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic
Biography
Ron Tyler is a Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Stanford Law School. The Clinic represents clients in the Superior Courts of California. Prof. Tyler’s scholarly agenda focuses on self-care skills for lawyers and criminal practice and procedure. His article: The First Thing We Do, Let’s Heal All the Law Students: Incorporating Self-Care Into A Criminal Defense Clinic, 21 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1 (2016) is available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjcl/vol21/iss2/1
Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, Professor Tyler was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for 22 years in the Northern District of California. A dedicated defense attorney and nationally recognized expert, he has litigated at trial and appellate courts covering the full gamut of federal criminal cases. He teaches regularly at seminars for criminal defense attorneys, investigators and paralegals. He is also active in several nonprofits, serving on the Executive Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College and the Guiding Rage Into Power Institute (providing mindfulness based programs to prisoners).
Professor Tyler received his BS in computer science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and had a brief career in high tech before changing his focus to public interest advocacy. He began law school as a Tony Patiño Fellow at Hastings College of the Law and earned his JD from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1989, where he served as notes and comments editor on the Ecology Law Quarterly. After law school, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel.
W
Heather Williams
Federal Defender – California Eastern
Biography
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.”