Participant Bios

Richard Blake, Chief Judge, Hoopa Valley Tribe/Redding Rancheria 

Judge Richard Blake is a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and has served as Chief Judge of the Hoopa Valley Tribe since 2002.  Currently, he is a contractual Judge for Redding Rancheria and Tolowa Dee-Ni Nation. Judge Blake is a former state court prosecutor, and has previously served as the President of the National American Indian Court Judges Association.

 

 

Robert A. Brown, Professor and Chair, University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Dr. Brown a Professor and the Department Chair of the Criminal Justice Program at University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Dr. Brown's research focuses on street-level interactions between police officers and citizens (e.g., citation, arrest, and use of force), the influence of race and gender (of officials and offenders) on criminal justice processing, and the impact of intermediate sanctions and problem-solving courts on rehabilitation and criminal justice processing. Dr. Brown previously worked as a sentencing mitigation specialist for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), coordinating offender-specific rehabilitation and supervision plans for offenders at the state and federal levels.

 

 

Stacie Nelson Colling, Youth Defense Coordinator, Colorado Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel

As the Youth Defense Coordinator for the Colorado Office of the Alternate Defense Counsel, Stacie Nelson Colling coordinates youth defense teams representing children charged in delinquency and adult court in all 22 judicial districts across Colorado. She also represents the OADC as a member of several statewide juvenile justice policy groups, serves on the Gault Center Southwest Region's Advisory Board, and as a Western Region Representative on the Board of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice.

 

 

Joe Dallaire, District Attorney, Fairbanks, Alaska

Joe Dallaire is the Fairbanks District Attorney and is a former law clerk to Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Randy Olsen. He joined the Fairbanks District Attorney’s Office as an Assistant District Attorney in 2007. He has prosecuted all types of matters in the Fairbanks District Attorney’s Office, including complex felony matters. In 2017, he began serving as Fairbanks Deputy District Attorney, supervising the office and coordinating with law enforcement agencies and courts in Fairbanks and Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow). He was appointed Fairbanks District Attorney in 2019.

 

Mr. Dallaire also serves on the Board of Directors for the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA). He is Chair of the Recruitment & Retention Committee, which aims to promote adequate staffing levels in state and for local prosecutor’s offices nationwide by effectively addressing recruitment and retention in the prosecutorial profession. In 2023, Mr. Dallaire and his team created the first-ever Junior DA Program offered by the Department of Law, where high school students learned first-hand from experts in the criminal justice community.

 

Mr. Dallaire is also an Alaska Police Standards Council-certified police instructor and has provided legal instruction to law enforcement throughout the state.

 

 

Venita Embry, Criminal Justice Researcher, RTI International

Dr. Embry is a violence and court systems researcher in RTI’s Center for Criminal Legal Systems Research. Dr. Embry’s research expertise spans public health and criminal justice areas to include violence prevention and intervention strategies, child maltreatment, behavioral health services, pretrial decision-making, collateral consequences of justice involvement, and court system and programs.

 

During her 11 years at RTI, she has led research and evaluation projects with innovative court and public health programs and has managed federal, local, and foundation-funded projects. She currently directs multiple projects including those that provide technical assistance to public defense counsel and evaluates prosecutor-led diversion programming. Dr. Embry is a current adjunct faculty at the University of North Carolina in the Department of Health Behavior.

 

 

Reese Frederickson, County Attorney, Pine County, Minnesota

In 2014, Reese Frederickson was elected County Attorney in Pine County, Minnesota. Mr. Frederickson is a graduate of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, has an M.B.A. from the University of New Mexico, a J.D. from the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and is a former Air Force officer.

 

In 2016, Mr. Frederickson was named “Attorney of the Year” by Minnesota Lawyer magazine. He was also named “Outstanding Prosecutor of the Year” by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In 2017, he was selected as a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs. He has appeared on ABC’s 20/20 for his work in bringing an international fugitive to justice. Mr. Frederickson is a frequent lecturer and trainer in juvenile restorative justice topics and animal welfare law. He is involved in many organizations and is a member of the Animal Cruelty Advisory Council for the APA.

 

 

Hannah Haksgaard, Professor, University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law

Hannah Haksgaard is a Professor of Law at the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law where she teaches in the areas of property law and family law. She writes on these topics as well as the rural lawyer shortage. Her scholarship on the rural lawyer shortage has specifically addressed Project Rural Practice in South Dakota, how rural practice serves the public good, the impact of hourly rates for court appointment work, and how incentive programs for rural lawyers can be informed by incentive programs for rural medical professionals.

 

 

Bonnie Hoffman, Director of Public Defense, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

Bonnie Hoffman serves as the Director of Public Defense for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) where she focuses on addressing the needs of public defense systems, the attorneys who provide public defense representation, and the clients and communities they serve. Overseeing NACDL’s commitment to public defense, Ms. Hoffman assists public defenders and court appointed counsel by developing and delivering training programs and materials, as well as working with local, state and national leaders to address reforms in our nation’s public defense delivery systems.

 

Prior to joining NACDL, Ms. Hoffman spent more than 21 years as a public defender in Virginia, where she represented adults and juveniles charged with a variety of misdemeanor and felony offenses. Her practice included both trial and appellate work.

 

 

Anna Ladd, VISTA Project Director, National Legal Aid & Defender Association

Anna Ladd brings her passion for people and program evaluation to building capacity in public defense offices at National Legal Aid & Defender Association. After serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at NLADA and working with people experiencing homelessness, she came back to continue to grow the VISTA program. Ms. Ladd holds a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan and a B.S. in Anthropology and Social Work from Kansas State University.

 

 

Joanna E. Landau, CJA Resource Attorney, District of Utah, Utah Federal Public Defenders

Joanna Landau works with the Utah Federal Public Defenders to assign Utah's CJA panels of private attorneys to cases--in Salt Lake City & St. George--where FPD has an office conflict representing certain individuals in federal court. She works with federal judges, US Attorneys, and many others to bring resources to the federal defenders and CJA panel. Previously, she was the first Executive Director of the Utah Indigent Defense Commission, Utah’s first state agency launched to improve public defense services across the state. In that role, she worked with Utah's urban and rural county officials and defenders, to bring resources and standards to public defenders who had previously had no state-funding or resources. Multiple rural counties organized into a centralized public defender office with the funding she helped raise from the state legislature. She has also worked as an appellate public defender, appearing in Utah's highest courts on behalf of convicted individuals.

 

 

Shawn Leisinger, Associate Dean for Centers and External Programs, Washburn University School of Law

Shawn Leisinger is the Associate Dean for Centers and External Programs, and coordinates Washburn Law’s Rural Externship Program. The goal of the program is to provide students with opportunities to experience life and law practice in a rural community, as well as to interest them in pursuing careers in rural Kansas. Dean Leisinger also oversees Washburn Law’s Third Year Anywhere program, an initiative that gives third-year law students the opportunity to increase their practice-readiness by completing an externship in the geographic area where they plan to practice after graduation.

 

 

Rodina Cave Parnall, Director, Pre-Law Summer Institute, American Indian Law Center

Rodina Cave Parnall is the Director of the Pre-Law Summer Institute at the American Indian Law Center. In 2013-2015, Ms. Parnall served, by presidential appointment, as the Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs. She has served as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law and an Associate Judge on the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals (SWITCA).

 

Ms. Parnall is a past chair of the Indian Law Section of the New Mexico State Bar, and received the 2014 New Mexico State Bar Indian Law Section Outstanding Achievement Award. She clerked for the Hon. William C. Canby, Jr. with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is of Quechua (Peruvian Indian) descent.

 

 

Lisa R. Pruitt, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law, University of California, Davis

Lisa Pruitt is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis. Before joining the UC Davis law faculty in 1999, she worked abroad for almost a decade in settings ranging from international organizations to private practice. Professor Pruitt worked with lawyers in more than 30 countries, negotiating cultural conflicts in several arenas, from intellectual property rights to rape as a war crime.

 

Professor Pruitt’s recent scholarship is still about cultural difference, but the context is closer to home. She now writes about the intersection of law with rural livelihoods, thus bringing her focus to that which is popularly perceived as quintessentially local. Her work considers a range of ways in which rural places are distinct from what has become the implicit urban norm in legal scholarship. Professor Pruitt reveals, for example, how the economic, spatial, and social features of rural locales profoundly shape the lives of residents, including the junctures at which they encounter the law.

 

Her most recent work considers how rural spatiality inflects dimensions of gender, race, and ethnicity. In it, she challenges the association of the rural with the local by revealing the ways in which rural lives and rural places are enmeshed with national and global forces including legal ones.

 

 

Maybell Romero, McGlinchey Stafford Associate Professor of Law, Tulane Law School

Professor Maybell Romero researches and teaches at the intersection of criminal law, criminal adjudication, and professional ethics. Much of her writing focuses on rural criminal legal systems and prosecutorial ethics, informed by her nearly 10 years of law practice as a prosecutor, defense attorney, and general practitioner in a small community in northern Utah. Her work has featured in a variety of publications including the Journal of Criminal Law Criminology, the Maine Law Review, the University of Richmond Law Review, the University of Miami Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review online and is forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review and The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, among others.

 

Prior to joining Tulane Law in the fall of 2021, she was a member of the faculty of Northern Illinois University College of Law. Before that she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.

 

 

Cydni J. Sanchez, Deputy Chief, New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender

Cydni Sanchez is a Deputy Chief Public Defender at the New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender, where she leads Administrative Services teams in budgeting, training and recruitment, human resources, special projects, IT, and legal matters. Since graduating from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2005, she has proudly dedicated her entire legal career to public defense, pursuing holistic representation for clients for the last 18 years.

 

Ms. Sanchez has also taken the lead on special statewide projects including caseload tracking, annual budget requests and reports, and leading LOPD’s participation in a workload study, 5-year plan and strategic planning.  She also serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the National Association for Public Defense. Ms. Sanchez is a 13th generation New Mexican raised in Albuquerque, where she resides with her husband and their two sons.

 

 

Lauren Sudeall, Professor of Law and Director, Vanderbilt Access to Justice Initiative

Lauren Sudeall is a Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School where she also serves as Director of the Vanderbilt Access to Justice (ATJ) Initiative. Her research focuses on access to the courts, both civil and criminal, and how lower-income individuals engage with the legal system, either with a lawyer or on their own.

 

Before joining the academy, Professor Sudeall clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court of the United States. She then worked at the Southern Center for Human Rights where she represented indigent capital clients in Alabama and Georgia, and litigated civil claims regarding the right to counsel.

 

Professor Sudeall is a member of the American Law Institute. She has also served on the Southern Center’s board of directors; the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid & Indigent Defendants; the Indigent Defense Committee of the State Bar of Georgia; and as Chair of the AALS Section on Constitutional Law.

 

 

Lisa Bailey Vavonese, Director, Research-Practice Strategies, Center for Justice Innovation

Lisa Bailey Vavonese co-leads Research-Practice Strategies at the Center for Court Innovation. She works in partnership with Center researchers to conduct original research and provides expert assistance to jurisdictions across the country. She translates research for criminal legal system actors and elevates the importance of data and research as a tool for actionable change. Ms. Vavonese also leads the Center’s work to enhance indigent defense practice, and consults on local jurisdictions’ efforts to protect Sixth Amendment rights.

 

Her previous work at the Center includes the administration of federal, state, and local grants for problem-solving initiatives in upstate New York. Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Vavonese was the Director of the Reentry Clinic at the Center for Community Alternatives in Syracuse, and an assistant public defender in Monroe County, New York. She also assisted refugees in Tanzania and domestic violence survivors in Malaysia, and assisted in trial chambers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands.

 

 

Jeff Wright, State Public Defender, Iowa

Jeff Wright has been a State Public Defender for the state of Iowa since 2019. He has instituted major structural changes, including his rural county project which provides legal representation in underserved areas of rural Iowa.

 

Mr. Wright previously served as Chair of the Iowa Board of Parole. He is a graduate of Morningside College and Drake University Law School. He was admitted to the Iowa Bar in 2006 and founded the Carr & Wright Law Office. He practiced primarily in the areas of Criminal, Juvenile Law until his appointment as Chair of the Board of Parole and subsequent appointment as State Public Defender.  A significant portion of his practice was dedicated to assisting individuals through the legal process who had suffered trauma. He focused on understanding their needs, and treated them with compassion while protecting their constitutional rights.

 

 

Chris Wu, Director of Government Relations, National Center for State Courts

Chris Wu is Director of Government Relations at the National Center for State Courts, an independent, nonprofit organization working to promote the rule of law and improve the administration of justice in state courts and courts around the world. Prior to joining NCSC, Mr. Wu was Senior Director, Judicial Engagement, at Casey Family Programs and Supervising Attorney with the California Judicial Council Center for Families, Children & the Courts.

 

Mr. Wu is a member of the Boards of Directors of the National Center for Youth Law and Legal Services for Children, He is also former President of the National Association of Counsel for Children. He is a contributing author to California Juvenile Dependency Practice (Continuing Education of the Bar). He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.

Kenitra Brown, Staff Attorney, Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center 

Kenitra Brown joined the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center in April 2019 as a Practitioner-in-Residence and Engagement Coordinator. She now serves as a Staff Attorney at the Center. A lifelong Dallas resident, Kenitra received her J.D. from the SMU Dedman School of Law. Before attending law school, Kenitra received her B.A. from Rice University where she worked to improve diversity in education.

 

Ms. Brown joined the Deason Center after several years of private criminal defense practice in North Dallas. She also has extensive experience in post-conviction litigation, including federal clemency advocacy, and Texas parolee release and reentry management. She serves as a volunteer with Girls Embracing Mothers, a North Texas nonprofit for young women impacted by a parent’s involvement in the criminal justice system. Ms. Brown spearheads the Deason Center’s community engagement initiatives for the law school, the university, and the North Texas area. Ms. Brown also leads Deason Center’s advocacy and engagement efforts with criminal justice research and reform advocates across the nation.

 

 

Calvin Duncan, Director, Light of Justice Program

Calvin Duncan is a New Orleans native. When Mr. Duncan was 19 years old, he was arrested and later convicted for a capital murder that he did not commit. He was sentenced to the remainder of his life in prison. While in prison, Mr. Duncan worked as a jailhouse lawyer providing legal assistance to other incarcerated individuals.

 

On January 7, 2011, the Innocence Project of New Orleans secured Mr. Duncan’s release from prison after he had served 28½ years. Upon his release from prison, he founded The Light of Justice Program, the goal of which is to assist incarcerated individuals gain access to the courts. He also earned his Paralegal Certificate and BA degree from Tulane University’s School of Professional Advancement. In May 2023, Mr. Duncan received his J.D. degree from Lewis & Clark Law School.

 

 

Bonnie Hoffman, Director of Public Defense, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

Bonnie Hoffman serves as the Director of Public Defense for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) where she focuses on addressing the needs of public defense systems, the attorneys who provide public defense representation, and the clients and communities they serve. Overseeing NACDL’s commitment to public defense, Ms. Hoffman assists public defenders and court appointed counsel by developing and delivering training programs and materials, as well as working with local, state and national leaders to address reforms in our nation’s public defense delivery systems.

 

Prior to joining NACDL, Ms. Hoffman spent more than 21 years as a public defender in Virginia, where she represented adults and juveniles charged with a variety of misdemeanor and felony offenses. Her practice included both trial and appellate work.

 

 

Jiacheng Yu, Policy Attorney, Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Jiacheng Yu joined the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center in January 2022 as a policy attorney. Her work focuses on research and policies surrounding early-stage criminal procedure and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Prior to joining the Deason Center, Ms. Yu worked as a public defender in both Texas and Massachusetts and represented hundreds of people charged with misdemeanor and felony cases. She also previously served as a staff attorney with the SMU Child Advocacy Clinic, where she represented children and youth who were involved in the foster care system. 

 

Prior to law school, she taught high school mathematics in Houston, TX, as a Teach For America corps member. Ms. Yu is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Texas at Austin.

 

Jim Bethke, Director, Managed Assigned Counsel Office, Bexar County, Texas

In November 2021, Jim Bethke was appointed as the Director of the newly created Managed Assigned Counsel Office, Bexar County, Texas. The office provides needed support to appointed attorneys and applies evidence-based strategies that are client-centered to enhance outcomes. He serves on the Board for the National Association of Public Defense Fund for Justice, the San Antonio Criminal Defense Lawyer Association, and Chairs the Board for the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs.

Mr. Bethke is the former Director of the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, Harris County Justice Administration, Harris County Pretrial Services, and the Lubbock Private Defender Office. He also served as an Adjunct Professor at Texas Tech University School of Law. 

Formerly a member of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and was part of a team of legal experts from France, Spain, and the United States charged with conducting an independent review and assessment of the International Criminal Court’s legal aid system at 

He is a past chair of the Juvenile Law Exam Commission for the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and is a Texas Bar Foundation Life Fellow. He is a U.S. Army veteran from the 101st Airborne Division, is a graduate of the University of Texas at Tyler and the Texas Tech University School of Law.

 

Linda Gonzalez, Senior Policy Analyst, Texas Indigent Defense Commission

Linda Gonzalez serves as Senior Policy Analyst for Operation Lone Star for Texas Indigent Defense Commission. Prior to joining TIDC, she was Chief Public Defender for the Starr County Regional Public Defender Office for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. There, she played an essential role in organizing, establishing and leading the first-ever public defender program to serve Starr, Jim Hogg and Duval counties, all of which lie on or near the Texas/Mexico border. Before joining Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Ms. Gonzalez practiced primarily criminal defense as a solo practitioner.

 

Ms. Gonzalez began her legal career as a felony prosecutor with the 229th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Rio Grande City, TX and has years of experience as a criminal trial attorney. With a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from The Florida State University and a juris doctor from St. Mary’s School of Law, she believes in a holistic, client-centered approach to indigent defense.

 

 

Jason Hawkins, Federal Public Defender, Northern District of Texas

Jason Hawkins was appointed in 2013 as the Federal Defender for the Northern District of Texas by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He joined the office in 2001 as an Assistant Federal Defender in the trial section then he created the appellate section for the office. He argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in Setser v. United States.

 

Mr. Hawkins graduated from St. Mary’s School of Law in 1995 where he was a member of the inaugural Criminal Justice Clinic and as a 3L participated in representing a man on Texas’s death row. After graduating he clerked for the Hon. Royal Furgeson, then U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Texas and later joined the Capital Habeas Unit (CHU) of the Federal Public Defenders Office in Phoenix, AZ. As the Defender he created one of the first two CHUs in Texas in 2017.

 

 

Adeola Ogunkeyede, Chief Public Defender, Travis County, Texas

As the Chief Public Defender, Adeola Ogunkeyede directs all activities of the Public Defender’s Office. She inaugurated the role, building out the office’s holistic practice from the ground up. Ms. Ogunkeyede previously served as the inaugural director for the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Program (CRRJ) at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia.

Under Ms. Ogunkeyede’s leadership, CRRJ worked to reform the criminal legal system’s over-reliance on incarceration and perpetuation of racial inequity through a strategic mix of community organizing, local and statewide policy advocacy, and impact litigation. Prior to her work in Virginia, Ms. Ogunkeyede was the director of staff development and litigation supervisor of the criminal practice at The Bronx Defenders, where she began her career as a staff attorney.

 

Matthew Wright, Presiding Judge, Rosebud Court of Record and the City of Lott Municipal Court

Judge Matthew Wright is a presiding judge over multiple rural courts in Texas. He is an equity partner of Diaz & Wright, PLLC, and works in federal/state criminal law, municipal law, and charitable development. Judge Wright is on faculty at Baylor University Hankamer School of Business. He has been admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States on nomination by the Dean of A&M Law. He is licensed as an attorney in Texas and Missouri. 

Judge Wright has been admitted to the Eastern Federal District of Missouri, the Western Federal District of Texas, and the Northern Federal District of Texas. Judge Wright was recognized as the 2011 American Bar Association’s Outstanding Young Non-Profit Lawyer of the Year, the 2017 Texas A&M Public Interest, and in 2021 the Texas A&M Law Alumni Award for Public Service for his work in mental health, rural court reform, and public defense.

 

Linda Gonzalez, Senior Policy Analyst, Texas Indigent Defense Commission

Linda Gonzalez serves as Senior Policy Analyst for Operation Lone Star for Texas Indigent Defense Commission. Prior to joining TIDC, she was Chief Public Defender for the Starr County Regional Public Defender Office for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. There, she played an essential role in organizing, establishing and leading the first-ever public defender program to serve Starr, Jim Hogg and Duval counties, all of which lie on or near the Texas/Mexico border. Before joining Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Ms. Gonzalez practiced primarily criminal defense as a solo practitioner.

 

Ms. Gonzalez began her legal career as a felony prosecutor with the 229th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Rio Grande City, TX and has years of experience as a criminal trial attorney. With a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from The Florida State University and a juris doctor from St. Mary’s School of Law, she believes in a holistic, client-centered approach to indigent defense.

 

 

André de Gruy, Mississippi Office of State Public Defender

André de Gruy has served as State Defender since July 1, 2016. He established the Mississippi Office of Capital Defense (now a division of OSPD) in July 2001. Capital Defense provides lead counsel and team defense in death penalty eligible trial and appeal cases across Mississippi. Prior to directing Capital Defense, Mr. du Gruy was a Felony Defender in the Hinds County Office of the Public Defender. He previously served as Director of the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center. He graduated from Mississippi College School of Law in 1990.

 

 

Shawn Leisinger, Associate Dean for Centers and External Programs, Washburn University School of Law

Shawn Leisinger is the Associate Dean for Centers and External Programs, and coordinates Washburn Law’s Rural Externship Program. The goal of the program is to provide students with opportunities to experience life and law practice in a rural community, as well as to interest them in pursuing careers in rural Kansas. Dean Leisinger also oversees Washburn Law’s Third Year Anywhere program, an initiative that gives third-year law students the opportunity to increase their practice-readiness by completing an externship in the geographic area where they plan to practice after graduation.

 

 

Cydni J. Sanchez, Deputy Chief, New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender

Cydni Sanchez is a Deputy Chief Public Defender at the New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender, where she leads Administrative Services teams in budgeting, training and recruitment, human resources, special projects, IT, and legal matters. Since graduating from the University of New Mexico School of Law in 2005, she has proudly dedicated her entire legal career to public defense, pursuing holistic representation for clients for the last 18 years.

 

Ms. Sanchez has also taken the lead on special statewide projects including caseload tracking, annual budget requests and reports, and leading LOPD’s participation in a workload study, 5-year plan and strategic planning. She also serves as the President of the Board of Directors for the National Association for Public Defense. Ms. Sanchez is a 13th generation New Mexican raised in Albuquerque, where she resides with her husband and their two sons.

 

 

Blane Skiles, Communications Director, Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Blane Skiles joined the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center in 2021. He was previously a journalist who covered major news events like the 2014 Ebola scare in Dallas, the 2020 election, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Before joining the Deason Center, Mr. Skiles worked for NBC as a producer, helping to launch a new national TV network. He brings expertise in content creation, production, design, and strategy to the Deason Center staff.

 

Mr. Skiles began his career as a local news producer at KSLA-TV in Shreveport, Louisiana. He held multiple roles at the station, including positions in digital marketing, audience development, and project management. He eventually rose to a newsroom leadership role, developing the station's multimedia content strategy and overseeing its execution.

 

Calvin Duncan, Director, Light of Justice Program

Calvin Duncan is a New Orleans native. When Mr. Duncan was 19 years old, he was arrested and later convicted for a capital murder that he did not commit. He was sentenced to the remainder of his life in prison. While in prison, Mr. Duncan worked as a jailhouse lawyer providing legal assistance to other incarcerated individuals.

 

On January 7, 2011, the Innocence Project of New Orleans secured Mr. Duncan’s release from prison after he had served 28½ years. Upon his release from prison, he founded The Light of Justice Program, the goal of which is to assist incarcerated individuals gain access to the courts. He also earned his Paralegal Certificate and BA degree from Tulane University’s School of Professional Advancement. In May 2023, Mr. Duncan received his J.D. degree from Lewis & Clark Law School.

 

 

Maggie Luna, Policy Analyst and Community Outreach Coordinator, Texas Center for Justice and Equity

Maggie Luna serves as a Policy Analyst and Community Outreach Coordinator for Texas Center for Justice and Equity. Ms. Luna’s work involves researching, coordinating activities, and communicating issues related to reducing the prison population and transforming policies within the criminal justice system. Ms. Luna collaborates with policymakers and key stakeholders to advocate for policies that eliminate harsh sentencing and racial inequities. She is the lead organizer of the Statewide Leadership Council, and works in partnership with system-impacted leaders to advocate for transformation in Texas' justice system. Additionally, she serves as the Texas chapter Coordinator for TimeDone, an organization that works to overcome barriers for individuals with a past arrest or conviction.

 

 

Myles Martin, Author and Activist

Myles Martin is an author, poet, artist, activist, and outstanding young man from McComb, Mississippi. Despite the struggles of wrongful incarceration, Mr. Martin maintained a strong mind and fought to overcome. A dedicated, altruistic, kind-hearted leader amongst his peers, Mr. Martin personifies perseverance and hard work. He is a beacon for positive interactions and growth wherever he stands.

 

 

Pamela Metzger, Professor of Law and Executive Director, Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center

Pamela Metzger is the Executive Director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at SMU Dedman School of Law. She is a nationally recognized expert on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, public defense, and criminal legal ethics, and her research focuses on combining theory and practice to improve our criminal legal system.

Professor Metzger came to SMU in 2017 from Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, where she taught for 16 years. From 2001 to 2008 she directed Tulane’s Criminal Litigation Clinic, becoming a leading voice in reforming the criminal justice system in Louisiana. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, she fought tirelessly to help 8,000 indigent defendants left incarcerated without legal representation.

Professor Metzger oversees the Deason Center’s independent research on the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, criminal legal systems in small, tribal, and rural (STAR) communities, prosecutorial discretion, and early-stage criminal procedure. She has helped secure millions of dollars in funding for the Deason Center to conduct innovative research and amplify compelling stories that promote criminal legal reform.

Professor Metzger’s work has appeared in publications such as the Yale Law Journal, George Washington Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Southern California Law Review, and has been cited by leading authorities and by the United States Supreme Court.

After receiving her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and her J.D. from New York University School of Law, Professor Metzger served as an Assistant Federal Defender in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and worked in private criminal practice in New York City. She was also a visiting law professor at Washington and Lee University, where she directed the Alderson Legal Clinic for Women in Prison.