Darrow Defense College - Faculty

The Darrow College is led by a cadre of experienced capital defense attorneys, investigators and mitigation specialists who bring more than their many years of experience to the classroom — they bring passion for their work and a sincere desire to help their colleagues do the best possible capital defense preparation.

Past faculty of the Darrow College include:

Robert Gevirtz Gevirtz and Born Northville, Illinois

Mark Cunningham Texas

Natman Schaye Tucson, Arizona

Steve Richards Illinois

David Lewis New York, New York

Jon Lyon Chicago, Illinois

Andrea Lyon Professor Lyon is currently an associate clinical professor of law and director of the DePaul Center for Justice in Capital Cases and Death Penalty Legal Clinic. In 1976, she joined the Cook County Illinois Public Defender's Office, concluding her service there as chief of the Homicide Task Force, a 22-lawyer unit representing persons accused of homicides. She has tried over 130 homicide cases, both while with the Public Defender's office and since. She has defended over 30 potential capital cases at the trial level and has taken 19 through penalty phase; she has won all 19. In 1990, she founded the Illinois Capital Resource Center and served as its director until joining the University of Michigan Law School faculty as an assistant clinical professor in 1995. A winner of the prestigious National Legal Aid and Defender Association's Reginald Heber Smith Award for best advocate for the poor in the country, she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of death penalty defense and a frequent continuing legal education teacher throughout the country. In 1998, she was awarded the Justice for All Award at the National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty and in 2003 the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer's lifetime acheivment award.

Kelly Gleason is Deputy Counsel in the Capital Division of the Tennessee District Public Defenders Conference, a trial and appellate consultation unit. Previously, Ms. Gleason was a public defender in the Capital Trial Unit and Stanton field office in Kentucky. In that capacity, she represented numerous death penalty defendants at trial and argued several capital cases before the Kentucky Supreme Court.

John Lanahan is the least famous of any of the faculty. He is a solo practitioner (that often means "public defender with staff of one") in San Diego. He reached this precarious point after having worked in Illinois at the State Appellate Defender and then the Cook County Public Defender. There, he met Andrea Lyon, who got him to try capital cases. After that, he worked at Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. doing both trials and appeals. Since 1994, he has been doing federal and state trial, appellate, and post-conviction work. The staff of the Darrow Death Penalty Defense College is considering nominating Mr. Lanahan for the annual Most Humble Faculty Member Award.

Tony Moss is a solo practitioner in Miami, Florida. He began his criminal defense career with the Dade County Public Defender's Office in March 1988, and has been in private practice since January 1, 1991. He has handled over 30 death eligible cases since 1991, including four that have been tried to a penalty-phase verdict, without losing a single client to Florida's Death Row. He is a graduate of Howard University School of Law (1984), and is a member of the state bars of Florida and Texas.

Samuel R. Gross is the Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He graduated from Columbia College in 1968 and earned a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973. He was a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco for several years, and worked as an attorney with the United Farm Workers Union in California and the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Committee in Nebraska and South Dakota. As a cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., in New York and the National Jury Project in Oakland, California, he litigated a series of test cases on jury selection in capital trials and worked on the issue of racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty. He was a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and came to the University of Michigan from the Stanford Law School faculty. Professor Gross teaches evidence, criminal procedure, and courses on the use of the social sciences in law. His published work focuses on evidence law, the death penalty, the use of expert witnesses, and the relationship between pre-trial bargaining and trial verdicts.

Kevin Randolph practices primarily criminal law in Connecticut. He has tried six capital felony cases to verdict. Attorney Randolph sits on the Connecticut Special Public Defender Committee and serves as this year's chairman of the Merit Selection Panel for the reappointment of a sitting federal magistrate judge in the District of Connecticut. Attorney Randolph also serves as a neutral arbitrator for the Connecticut State Department of Education. Attorney Randolph graduated from Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Syracuse University with a Master of Science degree in Telecommunications. He received his Juris Doctor Degree Tom Western New England College School of Law where he was a member of the National Moot Court Team. In 1989, Attorney Randolph won Best Oral Argument in the W.N.E.C. School of Law Intramural Competition and in 1988; he won Best Oral Argument in the Frederick Douglas Regional Moot Court Competition. He is a member of the American Bar Association, Connecticut Bar Association the Hartford County Bart Association and the George Crawford Law Association.

Emily Hughes is Associate Director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases at DePaul University's College of Law. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1990, with high honors in English. She received an M.A. in international relations from Yale in 1992, then graduated from the University of Michigan Law School cum laude in 1997 and was a Sacks fellow at the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School. Before joining CJCC, Ms. Hughes clerked for a federal district court judge, worked as a public defender in Iowa, and taught trial advocacy at the University of Iowa College of Law. Additionally, Ms. Hughes currently serves as Chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (IACDL).

Mort Smith is the co-founder and Associate Director of the Criminal Defense Investigator Certification Program at DePaul University. Mr. Smith is a practicing Licensed Private Investigator who specializes in criminal defense and civil rights cases. He is a consultant to attorneys and criminal defense investigators on matters concerning criminal cases. He is the primary instructor for the Criminal Defense Investigator Certification Program at DePaul University. He has lectured to different audiences on various subjects on criminal defense investigations. Mr. Smith is the former Chief Investigator of the Cook County Public Defenders Murder Task Force and the Former Chief Investigator for the Illinois Capital Resource Center (now the Capital Litigation Division) of the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender. Additionally, Mr. Smith is the Chair of the Investigator Division of the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (IACDL) and writes a quarterly column in the IACDL newsletter discussing issues surrounding the criminal defense investigations.