Meet the Faculty
Ann Aber (Colorado)
Ann Aber is a Colorado native and graduated from the University of Colorado School of Law in 1989. She joined the Colorado State Public Defender as a trial lawyer in 1990 and defended clients all over the state. In 1998, Aber joined the Public Defender’s Appellate Division and practiced before the Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court for eight years. In 2005, she became the State Training Director for the Colorado State Public Defender, and is currently responsible for designing, teaching and supervising training programs for a staff of nearly 500 lawyers, investigators, paralegals and administrative assistants. Aber has been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching appellate advocacy and trial advocacy, and has been a guest lecturer in CU’s Sociology Department on criminal law and social justice issues. She has taught lawyers for the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and at the Center for American and International Law in Plano, TX. Aber is a member of the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, GA.
Tony Axam (Georgia)
Tony Axam is a member of the bar and in good standing in the state of Georgia. He has practiced criminal law in both state and federal courts for over 30 years, and has tried cases or consulted in trials in 35 states. He has lectured and taught trial practice in South Africa and France. Axam is annually invited as an instructor in advocacy at the law schools of Harvard, Emory, Duke, Cardoza, and University of Texas and is a faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, National Criminal Defense College, and Institute for Criminal Law Advocacy. He has previously served as vice president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He specializes in homicide and wrongful death cases, and in addition, has multi-million dollar civil verdicts. Axam has represented such notable clients as Tupac Shakur, Jamil Al-amin (H. Rap Brown), Ray Lewis, and Julian Bond.
Cathleen Bennett (Massachusetts)
Cathleen L. Bennett is the Criminal Defense Training Director at the Committee for Public Counsel Services. As a trial lawyer in the Public Defender Division, she defends indigent clients charged with crimes in the state courts of Massachusetts. She is on the faculty at the National Criminal Defense College, and has taught at trial advocacy programs across the country. Bennett is an adjunct professor in trial advocacy at Boston College Law School. She is the author of the chapter “Pretrial Conference: Specific Requests,” in Trying Sex Offense Cases in Massachusetts (MCLE, Inc. 1997 & Supp. 2000) and in Trying Murder and Homicide Cases in Massachusetts (MCLE, Inc. 2004). She also wrote the chapters on Trial Advocacy in the Massachusetts District Court Criminal Defense Manual MCLE, Inc. 2000 rev. ed.) and Trial Advocacy in Criminal Defense in Massachusetts Courtroom Advocacy (MCLE, Inc. 2005). She is the 2007 recipient of the Thurgood Marshall Award presented by the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
Kassius Benson (Minnesota)
Kassius O. Benson is in private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His practice focuses on the criminal defense of individuals charged with crimes in state and federal court. Mr. Benson also litigates civil matters involving asset and property forfeitures linked to white collar and narcotics investigations. Over the last four years, Benson has frequently lectured on matters relating to criminal law and trial practice. He is an annual faculty member at the Minnesota Public Defender Trial Advocacy Institute where he teaches trial skills to public defenders in Minnesota. In 2006, Benson was a Visiting Associate Professor for Clinics at the University of Minnesota Law School where he taught law students enrolled in the Misdemeanor Criminal Defense Clinic. He began his legal career as a public defender at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. and at the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Benson is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Anna Blitz (Georgia)
Anna Blitz is a staff attorney with the Federal Defender Program, Inc. in Atlanta. Prior to this, she was an assistant public defender with the Fulton County Public Defenders Office where she handled felony cases from arraignment through trial and if necessary, through the appeals process. Blitz began a private practice in 1999 with a sole emphasis on criminal defense. She dedicated a portion of the practice to indigent defense work. Blitz earned her bachelor’s degree and J.D. from Georgia State University.
Stephen B. Bright (Georgia)
Stephen B. Bright is the President of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a non-profit, public interest law firm dedicated to enforcing the civil and human rights of people in the criminal justice system in the South. The Center’s legal work includes representing prisoners in challenges to unconstitutional conditions and practices in prisons and jails; challenging systemic failures in the legal representation of poor people in the criminal courts; and representing people facing the death penalty who otherwise would have no representation. Bright was the Director of the Center from 1982 to 2005. While leading the fight against injustices in the South, Bright has taught law courses at Yale, Harvard, Emory, Georgetown, Northeastern, and Florida State universities, and a course on international human rights law and capital punishment at the Institute on World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria, conducted by St. Mary’s University School of Law. He received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall Award, presented at the ABA Annual Meeting in 1998; the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty presented in 1991 by the American Civil Liberties Union; the Kutak-Dodds Prize, presented in 1992 by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association; and other awards.
Hope Demps (Georgia)
Hope Demps is a senior staff attorney in the Rome Circuit Public Defenders Office in Rome, Georgia where she supervises and participates in trainings for junior counsel. She has litigated over 20 felony cases for the Rome office. Demps has also litigated cases in criminal and civil court at Demps Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a member of the State Bar of Florida and Georgia. She was selected for the 2005 inaugural class of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council Honors Program. Demps is also a member of the D.M.W.C. Justice Task Force. Demps earned her B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science, magnum cum laude, at Spelman College and her J.D. from the University of Florida.
David Dunn (Georgia)
David Dunn is the Lookout Mountain Circuit Public Defender and the Circuit Public Defender representative to the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council. Prior to joining the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, he worked as an attorney in private practice, most recently as a solo practitioner in Ringgold, GA, where he resides with the Rossville, GA firm of Gleason, Davis and Dunn. He began his career as a Chief Assistant District Attorney for the LMJC. Dunn earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia in 1980 and a law degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1983.
Chris Flood (Louisiana)
Chris Flood is a career public defender and recently joined the Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, La. as a supervising attorney. After graduating from NYU Law School in 2000, he spent more than five years in the Trial Division of the D.C. Public Defender Service, and for the past two years has represented clients in Manhattan federal court with the Federal Defenders of New York. In both offices Flood worked extensively with forensic evidence, including DNA technology.
Steve Greenberg (Pennsylvania)
Steve Greenberg is a criminal defense attorney based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Greenberg graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991 and has practiced criminal law his entire legal career. He has represented clients charged with an array of the most serious criminal offenses in both state and federal court. Greenberg has served on the faculty of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council Honors Program and conducted criminal defense training for International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Brandi Harden (Washington, D.C.)
Brandi Harden is a Felony One attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Harden represents indigent clients in the D.C. Superior Court on criminal matters ranging from misdemeanors to homicides. She has been with the District of Columbia PDs office for seven years. She also defends clients at U.S. Parole Commission hearings when appropriate. Harden graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech Communication cum laude from Howard University in 1997 and received her Juris Doctorate degree from Howard University School of Law in 2001.
Gary Kohlman (Washington, D.C.)
Gary Kohlman is a partner at the law firm of Bredhoff & Kaiser in Washington D.C. where he maintains a nationwide practice that has led to trials in almost twenty states. He has defended clients in a variety of high-profile cases including John Jenrette in the ABSCAM investigation, accused Chinese spy Larry Wu-tai Chin, Conley Wolfswinkle as part of the Charles Keating investigation, FBI Agent H. Edward Tickel in a variety of criminal cases including allegations stemming from the robbery of the FBI credit union, and a family member in the Rayful Edmonds criminal conspiracy case. Kohlman joined Bredhoff & Kaiser in 1995. His varied litigation practice at the firm has included representation of a plaintiff in the Bush/Gore post-election litigation, the successful defense of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr’s Press Secretary Charles Bakaly in a criminal contempt trial, representation of witnesses in the Monica Lewinsky investigation, representation of Oklahoma Bomber Terry Nichols in Washington, D.C. proceedings, representation of Eric Severeid’s widow in a medical malpractice case and the successful prosecution of two civil rights complaints on the behalf of estates of children who were murdered while in District of Columbia approved juvenile facilities. Kohlman was a senior attorney at the Public Defender Service from 1973-1982. He was the Training Director for two classes of newly hired attorneys and then was the Felony Trial Chief for four years. Kohlman graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was mentored by Professor Yale Kamisar. Kohlman is a member of the bars in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Washington (inactive).
Christian Lamar (Georgia)
Christian Lamar is the Deputy Director for Litigation at the Georgia Capital Defender in Atlanta, Georgia. Lamar was a Federal Defender in Maryland and before that an attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for nine years, where his responsibilities ranged from appellate work to supervising attorneys in felony and misdemeanor cases. Lamar is currently a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the District of Columbia Bar. He has participated in criminal defense trainings such as the Santa Clara Bryan Schechmeister death Penalty College in Santa Clara, CA and the National Criminal Defense College in Macon, GA. Lamar has served as a faculty member at the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a litigation instructor for the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science at LeMoyne-Owen College in 1990 and his law degree from Northeastern University School of Law in 1993.
Sean Maher (New York)
Sean Maher is a partner in the law firm of Wahid, Vizcaino & Maher LLP. Based in the firm’s Manhattan office, Maher specializes in federal and state criminal defense. He currently represents Adnan Mirza, who is charged in Houston with weapons possession and conspiring to provide support to the Taliban, and Syed Fahad Hashmi, who recently was extradited from England to New York on charges on conspiring to provide material support to Al Qaeda. Before entering private practice, he supervised the criminal defense teams of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and was a senior felony trial attorney for the Fulton County Public Defender’s Office in Atlanta. Maher is a co-chair of the National Security Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Maher is a graduate of Boston University School of Law.
Mary Moriarty (Minnesota)
Mary Moriarty has been a full-time public defender in Minneapolis since graduating from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989. During that time, she has defended adults accused of felonies and misdemeanors. She has tried numerous cases, including ten murders. She is an adjunct professor of law at the University of St. Thomas Law School, where she teaches Advanced Trial Advocacy. She is also a faculty member at the Public Defender Trial Advocacy Program in Dayton, Ohio, and the Minnesota Trial Advocacy Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota. Morirty has taught at various trial advocacy programs throughout the country, including those in Georgia, New Orleans, Las Vegas, and West Virginia. Mary speaks frequently on various CLE topics, including prosecutorial misconduct and latent prints.
Corinne Mull (Georgia)
Corinne Mull is a Public Defender with the Dekalb County Public Defender’s Office where she has represented indigent defendants since 1998. Prior to joining the Dekalb County Public Defender’s Office, she worked in a private civil law practice. She has served as a speaker at a number of Georgia Association of Criminal Lawyers and Georgia Indigent Defense Council seminars. In addition, Mull has held several board positions and has been awarded a variety of honors by both organizations. Mull earned a bachelor’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1991 and a law degree from Emory University of Law in 1984.
Timothy O’Toole (Washington, D.C.)
Timothy P. O’Toole is the Chief of the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, a Division devoted to the litigation of systemic criminal justice issues. Before joining PDS, O’Toole served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he represented people in death penalty proceedings in both state and federal court. Over the past 15 years, O’Toole has briefed and argued many criminal and civil cases in a variety of state and federal courts throughout the country. He has also published, presented and lectured nationwide on the topics of appellate practice, the use of expert witnesses, the litigation of eyewitness identification issues, the development of mitigation evidence in capital cases, and the suppression of exculpatory evidence and other misconduct by prosecutors. O’Toole’s published writings include the chapter on Appellate and Post-Conviction Practice in the treatise Cultural Issues In Criminal Defense, a number of articles in NACDL’s Champion magazine, and “Manson v. Brathwaite Revisited: Towards a New Rule of Decision for Due Process Challenges to Eyewitness Identification Procedures,” in the November 2006 in the Valparaiso University Law Review. He received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Gary Parker (Georgia)
Former Georgia State Senator, Gary Parker, served in the Senate from 1989 to 1990 and has over 20 years of litigation experience in criminal cases. Parker is also the former Deputy Director of Training and Performance Standards at the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council. He was the governor of the Judicial Nominating Committee from 1991 to 1996 and has also served on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and the Georgia Indigent Defense Council. Parker is a recipient of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Champion of Indigent Defense Award and the Southern Center of Human Rights’ Equal Justice Award. Parker received a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Columbus State University. He is a graduate of Howard University Law School.
Renee Raymond (Washington, D.C.)
Renee Raymond is a trial lawyer and Training Director for the District of Columbia Public Defender Service. Raymond has represented countless indigent clients for over fifteen years at the Public Defender Service of DC. She has also mentored, supervised, and trained many attorneys and law students during her tenure at the Public Defender Service. Raymond has served as a faculty member for the Georgia Public Defender Service Council training program in the summer of 2005. Raymond has also served as a faculty member for National Legal Aid and Defender Association sponsored conferences on several occasions, and she has been a faculty member in Harvard Law School’s 2004, 2005, and 2007 Fall trial advocacy workshops. Just this year, Raymond in conjunction with International Bridges to Justice, had the honor of training eight Chinese attorneys from different provinces in China who are starting public defender services in those provinces. She went to Yale College where she graduated with honors in 1982. She received her law degree from New York University Law School in 1987 where she received the Greene Award for preeminent achievement in the art of advocacy.
Carol Richard (Mississippi)
Carol Richard is the Washington County Public Defender in Greenville, MS. She handles a full caseload of felonies ranging from less serious matters to capital murder. She has been with the Washington County Public Defender since 2000. Richard is originally from Holly Springs, MS. She went to college at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA and law school at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, TN. She graduated from Vanderbilt in 1996. Richard is a member of the Mississippi State Bar as well as the Tennessee State Bar. She is also a member of the Mississippi Public Defender Association, the Mississippi Bar Association, and the Magnolia Bar Association.
Zack Rosenberg (Louisiana)
Zack Rosenburg has been a criminal defense attorney for the past five years. After interning for two years at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, Rosenberg was chosen as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow in the Criminal Justice Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center. In this position, Rosenberg supervised and instructed third year clinic students who represented indigent defendants in matters at the District of Columbia Superior Court. Since 2004, he has operated his own law practice in Washington, DC and represented indigent defendants in felony, serious felony and post conviction matters. Rosenberg moved to New Orleans in June 2006 to start the St. Bernard Project, a non-profit rebuilding organization that rebuilds homes for families devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He currently provides trial skills and case preparation training at the Office of the Public Defender in Orleans Parish, Louisiana. Rosenberrg is licensed to practice law in Washington, DC, Maryland and California.
Claudia Saari (Georgia)
Claudia Saari is Chief Assistant Public Defender with the Office of the Public Defender for the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit. Since joining the office in 1987, Saari has tried a wide variety of cases, ranging from DUI to death penalty cases. Her current focus is on representing clients in high profile cases, murder cases, and cases involving DNA evidence. She has had 75 homicide jury trials. Saari serves as Director of the internship program, is a member of the Executive Committee, and manages the training and supervision of all attorneys in the office. Saari received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1984 and a law degree from Emory University School of Law in 1987. She is a Fellow with the American College of Trial Lawyers, and is also a Master with the Lumpkin Inns of Court.
Tim Saviello (Georgia)
Tim Saviello has been a public defender his entire career. He began in 1994 at the Fulton County, GA Public Defender’s Office defending felony cases in Superior Court. From 1997 through 2000 he worked at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, under the tutelage of Clive Stafford Smith and Neal Walker, defending men and women against capital charges in Orleans Parish and across Louisiana. In 2000, Saviello moved on to the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Defender Program in Atlanta, GA, where he handled the State and Federal habeas corpus cases of men and women on Georgia’s death row. Beginning in 2002, Saviello left habeas work and returned to defending felony cases in the Northern District of Georgia. He has taught various subjects relating to the practice of indigent criminal defendants at various training seminars, including the legendary Honors Program of the Georgia Public Defender’s Standards Counsel.
Jeff Sherr (Kentucky)
Jeff Sherr, Manager of the Education and Strategic Planning Branch of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy has been with the DPA since 1994. Jeff is a faculty member for the National Criminal Defense College, the Missouri Trial Institutes, and the Georgia Public Defender Standard Council Honors Program. He has presented at the NLADA Annual Seminar and NLADA Train the Trainer. He is currently co-chair of the NLADA Defender Trainers’ Section. In addition to regularly training public defender litigators and trainers, Sherr has trained public defender leaders for NLADA, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. In 2006, he served on the BJA Capital Defense Training Curriculum Committee and designed and led the Train the Trainer program for the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College. He is the editor of the DPA’s bi-monthly journal, The Advocate, and The Small Group Coaching Handbook: Tips and Techniques for Criminal Defense Education Program. Sherr also has an extensive background in theatre having studied with the National Shakespeare Conservatory and the University of Kansas. Jeff graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 1995.
Steve Singer (Louisiana)
Stephen Singer is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana where he supervises a criminal defense clinic handling defendants charged with felonies in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. Currently, he and his Clinic have been loaned to the court system to lead the effort to rebuild, restructure, and reform the public defenders’ office in New Orleans, where Professor Singer is currently detailed from Loyola as Chief of Trials for the Orleans Public Defenders’ Office. Professor Singer is a 1988 graduate of Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the faculty at Loyola Law School, Professor Singer was an investigator, and from 1989 to 1997, an attorney at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C. Professor Singer also spent about five years at the non-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, representing capital defendants at the trial level throughout the State of Louisiana. He was also on the faculty at the University of Wyoming College of Law where he was director of the criminal defense clinic and taught constitutional criminal procedure.
David Singleton (Ohio)
David Singleton is the Executive Director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit, public interest law office based in Cincinnati, OH that works statewide for progressive reform on Ohio’s justice system. Singleton is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Salmon and Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University. After earning his law degree, Singleton received the Skadden Fellowship to work at the Legal Action Center for the Homeless in New York City where he practiced for three years. Singleton was an attorney at the Public Defenders Service of Harlem for three years and then practiced with the District of Columbia Public Defenders for four years. He earned his A.B. in Economics and Public Policy, cum laude, from Duke University in 1991 and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1987.
Michael Starr (Washington, DC)
Michael Starr is counsel with Schertler & Onorato, L.L.P. in Washington, D.C. His primary area of practice is litigation with a focus on criminal defense. Before joining Schertler & Onorato, Mr. Starr spent four years at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) as a trial and appellate attorney. At PDS, he represented criminal defendants in hundreds of cases that ranged in seriousness from misdemeanor charges of theft, assault, and drug possession, to felony charges of narcotics distribution, firearms possession, robbery, sexual abuse, and homicide. Before his arrival to PDSDC, Starr spent two years as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow in the Georgetown University Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic. As a Prettyman Fellow, he taught biweekly classes on evidence, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy to Georgetown University Law students and supervised those students as they represented criminal defendants in misdemeanor cases in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. Starr is a graduate of Towson State University and The George Washington University Law School. He also holds an LL.M. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. (Massachusetts)
Ronald Sullivan is a professor of law at Harvard University. Before his tenure at Harvard, Sullivan was a professor at the Yale Law School, where his areas of interest and scholarship included criminal law, criminal procedure a, and legal ethics. Professor Sullivan established the Samuel and Anna Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic, the first criminal defense clinical offered at Yale Law School. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 1994, he served in the capacities of Staff Attorney, General Counsel, and finally Director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Professor Sullivan also practiced with the D.C. law firms of Baach, Robinson & Lewis, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He has provided legal commentary for CNN, Fox News, and PBS on topics ranging from the impeachment of President Clinton to the Kobe Bryant criminal proceedings.
Gerald P.Word (Georgia)
Gerald P. Word is the Coweta County Circuit County Public Defender. He has been practicing since 1998. He is a member of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, Carroll County Bar Association and the Coweta Circuit Bar Association. Mr. Word has served two terms on the Federal Defenders Board, the first from 1983-1989 and the second from 1999-2003. He is an active member of the Carroll County community, where he has been involved wit the Bill Glass Prison Ministry since 1983. Mr. Word is also a past recipient of the Carroll County “ Foster Parent of the Year” Award. He and his wife have raised over twenty foster children. Mr. Word earned an A.B. from West Georgia College and a law degree from the Emory University School of Law.
