Mitigation Training Program - Past Faculty

Cessie Alfonso
Cessie Alfonso is a bilingual Puerto-Rican Cuban mitigation social worker, mitigation specialist, who has conducted over 700 mitigation investigations in her 27 years working as a consultant. As a pioneer in the field, she has expanded the knowledge and approach to conducting mitigation investigations with individuals who are different from members of the defense team in terms of class, race, and culture.

Mark Cunningham
Mark D. Cunningham, Ph.D. is a board certified forensic psychologist and is nationally regarded expert regarding capital sentencing determinations. He has had extensive involvement in federal and state capital cases throughout the United States. Dr. Cunningham is actively involved in research and scholarly publishing regarding violence risk assessment, capital sentencing issues and standards, death row populations, and other topics.

Jeff Eno
Jeff Eno is an experienced mitigation specialist based in Wisconsin. He has assisted with numerous cases in both state and Federal court. Recently, he helped with the mitigation in the first death penalty in Michigan in 60 years resulting in a life sentence.

Joanne Glass
Joanne Glass is a licensed clinical social worker whose 20 years of experience in the Cook County Illinois juvenile court system involved the writing and critiquing of thousands of social histories. Ms. Glass has worked as a mitigation specialist in capital cases for over 18 years and continues to use her assessment skills as a school social worker. In addition, Ms. Glass has a masters degree in divinity.

Dr. Diana S. Goldstein
Diana S. Goldstein, Ph.D., is the President of the Isaac Ray Forensic Group in Chicago, Illinois, as well as its Director of Neuropsychology. She obtained her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Chicago Medical School and completed fellowship training in neuropsychology at the University of Chicago. Diana holds a faculty appointment at the Chicago Medical School. Her specialty areas of research and practice include dementia, traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, malingering, disability determination, and cultural influences on neuropsychological performance.

Dr. Robert Heilbronner
Robert L. Heilbronner, Ph.D., ABPP-CN is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist practicing in Chicago. He is the Director of the Chicago Neuropsychology Group and Co-Director of the Forensic Neuropsychology Institute. His primary expertise is in the evaluation of the neuropsychological sequelae associated with various central nervous system disorders, especially traumatic brain injuries and post-concussion syndrome Dr. Heilbronner has faculty appointments at Northwestern University Medical School and at The University of Chicago Hospital Pritzker School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the Division of Clinical Neuropsychology of The American Psychological Association and of the National Academy of Neuropsychology. Dr. Heilbronner is the editor of Forensic Neuropsychology Casebook (Guilford Press) and he has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented on clinical and forensic neuropsychology issues at national and international meetings. He has testified in a number of civil, criminal, and capital cases locally and nationally.

Emily Hughes
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. Ms. Hughes also serves as Chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (IACDL).

Andrea Lyon
Andrea Lyon is currently an associate clinical professor of law and the director of the DePaul Center for Justice in Capital Cases. In 1976, she joined the Cook County Illinois Public Defender's Office. Her last position was a chief Homicide Task Force, a 22-lawyer unit representing persons accused of homicides. She has tried over 130 homicide cases. Both while at 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. She is also the director of the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College at the University of Michigan Law School. 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 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.

Jonathan Lyon
Jon Lyon has worked for 12 years as an investigator in the Post-Conviction Unit of the Office of the State Appellate Defender of Illinois. In January 2003, Lyon's investigation of Madison Hobley---an inmate on Illinois' death row for over 16 years---helped secure his pardon from outgoing Governor George Ryan in Illinois. Lyon has investigated over 30 death penalty cases and has helped multiple clients secure sentences other than death. Since Lyon started his internetsleuth.net website two years ago, he has provided internet investigation training to audiences across the country, including the National Defense Investigator Association's annual conference in Chicago.

Robin Maher
Robin M. Maher, Esq. is Director of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project in Washington, DC. The Project works to improve the systems that deliver legal services to indigent defendants charged with or convicted of capital crimes and to educate the bar and public about the crisis of counsel. The Project recruits, supports and trains volunteer lawyers from the private bar to represent those on death row in post-conviction proceedings. In 2003 the Project published revised Guidelines for defense counsel in death penalty cases and is working to ensure that all death penalty jurisdictions adopt and enforce counsel standards (American Bar Association Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, rev. ed. 2003).

Jill Miller
Jill Miller is a Forensic Social Worker in private practice in Madison, Wisconsin. She has worked in legal settings for over thirty years. Since 1986, she has worked on approximately 100 capital cases at the trial and post-conviction levels, in state, federal, and military proceedings. Ms. Miller has trained extensively on capital case preparation and penalty phase preparation at national, state, and local programs. She was a consultant on the recently revised ABA Standards for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases. She was the recipient of the NLADA "Life in the Balance" Achievement Award in 2000, and the NASA "Outstanding Contributions to the Profession" Award in 1999.

Nan Nolan
Nan Nolan is a former assistant Federal Defender. She was in private practice doing primarily criminal defense work and is best known for her defense of Rolando Cruz, which resulted in his acquittal at the re-trial. She has been a Federal Magistrate for the past 5 years.

Steve Richards
Steve Richards, Deputy Defender for the Office of the Illinois State Appellate Defender's Death Penalty Trial Assistance Division, was awarded NLADA's 2003 Kutak-Dodds Price for outstanding service in public defense work. Prior to becoming a deputy defender, Mr. Richards worked as an assistant public defender in Cook County, where he was instrumental in the establishment of First Defense Legal Aid, a nonprofit organization that sends pro bono attorneys to the aid of indigent suspects in police custody. Mr. Richards also chaired the Ad Hoc Committee for Mass Clemency and personally argued two of the clemency petitions before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. Mr. Richards then led a team that represented the accused in the first Illinois capital trial held after clemency, winning a finding of ineligibility and saving the client's life.

Cynthia L. Short
Cyndy Short is a trial lawyer and mitigation specialist in Kansas City, Missouri, where she lives with her husband, Brian McCallister, and their three children. She graduated from law school in 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri, and began her career with a labor law firm. In 1988, Cyndy was appointed to represent a poor woman accused by the federal government of attempting to assassinate then-presidential-candidate Jesse Jackson. This experience changed the direction of Cyndy's practice and led her to the representation of the poor as a public defender in Kansas City. Shortly after joining this office, Cyndy represented a young man who was acquitted of attempting to kill a police officer, and the jury then demanded an apology from the police for their outrageous conduct charging an innocent boy of such a serious crime. Over the last decade Cyndy has represented men and women across Missouri who have faced the death penalty. This has been a period of tremendous growth, unique education, and sacrifice. As head of the Capital Trial Division in the western district of Missouri's public defender system, Ms. Short achieved wonderful success for her clients, including dismissals, acquittals, and an exoneration. In the last decade she has built a model of representation based in large part on her training at the Trial Lawyer's College, where she is a member of the faculty. In addition, Cyndy has been recognized for her work by the Missouri Bar with the Lon O. Hocker Trial Award, by the Missouri State Public Defender System with the Defender of Distinction Award, and for her work in the Dick Dexter case with the Courageous Litigator of the Year Award.

Russell Stetler
Russell Stetler has been the Director of Investigation and Mitigation at the New York Capital Defender Office since its inception in 1995. He has investigated all aspects of capital cases -- both trial and post-conviction -- since 1980 and served as chief investigator at the California Appellate Project from 1990 to 1995. His publications on capital cases include articles on investigating wrongful convictions, mitigation evidence, mental health issues, and working with victims' survivors. He is coauthor of chapters on psychiatric issues in death penalty cases in two recent books on forensic mental health. Over the past decade and a half, he has lectured extensively on capital case investigation at various national training conferences and for the capital defense bar of over half the death-penalty jurisdictions around the country. He was the recipient of the "Life in the Balance Achievement Award" from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in 2004 for his commitment to capital defense work.

Caryn Tatelli
Caryn Platt Tatelli, AM, LCSW, is a forensic social worker who has been in private practice since September of 1995. She deals exclusively with capital cases in her practice, and has worked on approximately 90 cases in all stages of the criminal justice system, in both state and federal jurisdictions across the country. Prior to establishing her private practice, she interned with Dr. George Savarese, and then worked for the Illinois Capital Resource Center [now the Capital Litigation Division of the Illinois Office of the State Appellate Defender]. She received a B.A. from Grinnell College, where she majored in Sociology and earned a Secondary Education Certification. She earned an A.M. from the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. She has provided field placement supervision to master's level social work students and internships for undergraduate students interested in forensic social work since 1996. She has also been trained in Victim-Liaison Outreach Coordination, and now makes contact with victims' families a consideration in every case. She has been appointed as a Victim Liaison Outreach Coordinator on five cases. She teaches at seminars several times each year.

Rev. Larry E. Turpin
The Rev. Larry E. Turpin has been the pastor of the United Church of Hyde Park since 2001. He received his M. Div. from McCormick Theological Seminary in 1978 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He has served at four churches in the Chicago area. He received his D. Min. from the University of Chicago in 2002. In 2000 he received a certificate of appreciation from the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions for his participation in the Rogers Park Inter-religious Partners. In 2003 he received the Presbyterian Church's Restorative Justice Award for his work visiting on death row. Working for justice in a broken world has been a constant in his career.

Dani Waller
Dani Waller is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who is in private practice as a Mitigation Specialist. She has worked on numerous death penalty cases over the past five years. She received a Master's Degree in Societal Politics from the University of Illinois-Springfield and a Master's Degree in Social Work from the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana.

Kathy Wayland
Dr. Kathy Wayland received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duke University in 1989. She completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship at Duke University Medical Center in 1990, and from 1990 to 1995 was on the faculty at Duke University Medical Center as an Associate in the Division of Medical Psychology, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Wayland's primary area of research and clinical expertise is in traumatic stress syndromes and the psychological consequences of chronic exposure to interpersonal violence. From 1993 to 2002, Dr. Wayland was on the staff of the California Appellate Project (CAP) in San Francisco, California. During her tenure at CAP, Kathy assisted staff attorneys and private counsel representing indigent prisoners under sentence of death in the State of California by helping legal teams identify mental health issues and mitigation themes in the lives of clients and their family members. She also provided attorneys, investigators, and paralegals with extensive training on a wide range of mental health issues. In March 2002, Dr. Wayland joined the staff of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, an agency that provides legal representation to indigent petitioners in death penalty habeas corpus proceedings before the Supreme Court of California and the federal courts. HCRC also provides resources and training to private attorneys who represent inmates on California's Row. At HCRC, Kathy is involved in efforts to develop resources and training to assist the defense bar in their representation of Death Row inmates.

Juliet Yackel
Juliet Yackel is a Chicago-based attorney and mitigation specialist serving clients nationwide. She has worked on over 40 capital cases in state and federal courts. Amnesty International recently recognized Ms. Yackel as "Abolitionist of the Year" for her work on behalf of Darnell Williams, the first Indiana death row inmate in modern history to save his death sentence commuted. Ms. Yackel's work on the Williams case was the subject of an A&E documentary that aired March 16, 2005, on "American Justice." Ms.Yackel is also the 2004 recipient of the Pro Bono Publico award for providing extraordinary legal services on a volunteer basis.