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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Andrea George
Executive Director, Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington & Idaho
Biography
Andrea K. George is the Executive Director of the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho. She has held this position since 2012.
Ms. George began her legal career in 1989 as an Appellate Attorney with the Federal Defenders of Minnesota. In 1992 she became a trial attorney with that office and was eventually promoted to Senior Litigator. This year marks her thirtieth with the Federal Defender system. She is currently the President of the National Association of Federal Defenders and is a member of the Board of Regents for the National Criminal Defense College. Ms. George is on the faculty of NCDC and speaks regularly for the Federal Judicial Center and other Defender programs.
Notes
Recent Teaching History
2022 NCDC Trial Practice Institute (June Session)
2019 Trial Practice Institute in Bristol (June Session)
2017 Trial Practice Institute (June Session)
2016 Trial Practice Institute (June Session)
2015 Trial Practice Institute (June Session)
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Bob Pepin
Lawyer
Biography
Bob Pepin started his 39-year criminal defense career as a work study intern with the Public Defender’s office in Boulder, Colorado during his first year of law school. He tried a case to a jury that summer and was hooked.
By then, his tour as an army infantryman in West Berlin, its infamous Wall still imprisoning an entire population, had sharpened Bob’s sense of how jealously our freedoms, our Constitutions, must be protected. He considers criminal defense in general, and public defense in particular, to be deeply patriotic commitments.
Bob was a Deputy Colorado State Public Defender for eleven years. The head of an office for 5 of those years, he was extensively involved in training new defenders and was added to the NCDC faculty in 1991. His state defender trial experience included the wildly polarizing first significant Colorado Make My Day Case and capital work.
Bob was in private practice for six years; focusing on criminal defense and serving as co-editor of the Criminal Law Column of the Colorado Lawyer, on the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar (CCDB) board of directors, and as president of the CCDB. In 1998 Bob joined the team that successfully stopped El Paso County from sentencing Lucas Salmon to death.
In 2000 Bob joined the Colorado Federal Public Defender as a trial attorney. Over the years he has trained attorneys in workshops and clinical programs across the country, lectured extensively on jury selection, cross and direct examination, evidence, opening statements, closing arguments, and various aspects of federal and state criminal practice. He is the 2020 recipient of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar’s Jonathon Olom Award presented “…for remarkable personal sacrifice made without regard to personal gain in the defense of the accused…”
Bob retired June, 2019 and moved to Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula where he spends his time hiking, fishing, and writing for his own entertainment. Bob is still training at trial advocacy programs and doing some legal work. He and his wife, Sharlene, also a defender, have a daughter and son, neither of whom intend to permanently weather the gray skies of the Pacific Northwest, no matter how green the forests or mighty the rivers.
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Recent Teaching History
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Amy Rubin
Federal Defender, Eastern Washington and Idaho
Biography
AMY RUBIN first joined the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington & Idaho in 2000 as a fellowship attorney and then returned in 2003 after a two-year federal clerkship in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2013, she became the managing attorney in the office. Amy graduated from the University of Colorado in 1995, received her law degree from the University of Montana in 2000 and has taught practical trial skills at trial advocacy programs including Emory University and the University of Idaho, at the Alternative Defense Counsel program in Colorado, and is on the faculty of NCDC.
She has lectured at the Andrea Taylor Sentencing Workshop as well as before the Washington State Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. She is also a faculty member at the Orientation Program for new Federal Defenders in Santa Fe.
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Recent Teaching History
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Lorinda Youngcourt
Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington & Idaho
Biography
Lorinda Youngcourt represented Indiana and Illinois capital and non-capital clients in trial, direct appeal, state post-conviction, and federal habeas corpus as a public defender and in private practice. She was the first Lawrence County Indiana Public Defender from 2010-2014, creating an agency to replace a contract public defender system overseen by the judiciary. She served on the Board of Directors for the Indiana Public Defender Council from 2001-2014. Lorinda was the first King County (Seattle, WA) Public Defender from 2015-2018 overseeing the unification of four non-profit agencies into a single county department. In late 2018, Lorinda returned to her roots as a trial lawyer and now works for the Federal Defenders Office of Eastern Washington and Idaho in Spokane, Washington. She is Chair of the Education Committee for the National Association for Public Defense and she serves as faculty at various programs around the country.
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Recent Teaching History