Baltimore Mitigation Training Series
June 2 - 4, 2022
Training Information
Welcome to Baltimore!
Logistics Information
Travel
We advise those who will be flying to select Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) as their airport for arrival. For more local travel to our venue, Penn Station is adjacent to The University of Baltimore and serves MARC and Amtrak passengers.
Parking
Discounted parking ($7) will be available to those who park in The Fitzgerald Parking Garage located on 80 West Oliver Street. Vouchers will be available at our registration table inside the venue.
Lodging
The following are local hotels near the venue. Training attendees are not obligated to book with any of the hotels listed or book using the links provided.
Candlewood Suites - 101 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21201 (1.2 miles from venue)
ARC, Inc. has a courtesy hold for rooms until May 30th.
Contact Director of Sales and Marketing, Arletta Owens, for any questions - 443-844-5108
Please cancel no less than 24 hours before your arrival date.
Days Inn Inner Harbor- 100 Hopkins Pl, Baltimore, MD 21201 (1.4 miles from venue)
Hotel Indigo - 24 West Franklin Street, Baltimore Maryland 21201 (.8 miles from venue)
Home2 Suites - 8 East Pleasant Street Baltimore, Maryland, 21202 (1.2 miles from venue)
We advise those who will be flying to select Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) as their airport for arrival. For more local travel to our venue, Penn Station is adjacent to The University of Baltimore and serves MARC and Amtrak passengers.
Parking
Discounted parking ($7) will be available to those who park in The Fitzgerald Parking Garage located on 80 West Oliver Street. Vouchers will be available at our registration table inside the venue.
Lodging
The following are local hotels near the venue. Training attendees are not obligated to book with any of the hotels listed or book using the links provided.
Candlewood Suites - 101 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21201 (1.2 miles from venue)
ARC, Inc. has a courtesy hold for rooms until May 30th.
Contact Director of Sales and Marketing, Arletta Owens, for any questions - 443-844-5108
Please cancel no less than 24 hours before your arrival date.
Days Inn Inner Harbor- 100 Hopkins Pl, Baltimore, MD 21201 (1.4 miles from venue)
Hotel Indigo - 24 West Franklin Street, Baltimore Maryland 21201 (.8 miles from venue)
Home2 Suites - 8 East Pleasant Street Baltimore, Maryland, 21202 (1.2 miles from venue)
Agenda and Faculty Bios
View the training agenda here or download the agenda below.
| ARC, Inc. Baltimore Mitigation Training Agenda 2022 |
Alisha Ali, Ph.D.
New York University
Department of Applied Psychology
Associate Professor
Alisha Ali is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University where she heads the Advocacy and Community-Based Trauma Studies (ACTS) Lab. Her research examines the mental health effects of various forms of oppression including violence and discrimination. She has delivered numerous invited addresses, including to the World Economic Forum and the United Nations Development Program. She is co-editor (with Dana C. Jack) of the book “Silencing the Self across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World” which received the American Psychological Association’s International Book Award. She is also co-editor of the upcoming book “The Mad Studies Reader”. Her current projects are investigating the effects of empowerment-based interventions for domestic violence survivors and low-income high school students, and the impact of an arts-based intervention to treat the effects of traumatic stress in military veterans. Alisha received her PhD in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral fellowship training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 239-6367
Email: aa89@nyu.edu
Website: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/alisha-ali
Anthony Ginez
Community Resource Initiative
Executive Director
Anthony Ginez is the Executive Director of Community Resource Initiative (CRI), a mitigation investigation office and resource center based in San Francisco. CRI’s mission is to build narratives that challenge the death penalty while improving the standard of care and building power toward abolition. Anthony has over 10 years of experience collaborating on client-centered social history and mental health investigations. Much of his work has focused on cultural competency and documenting how culture, sociopolitical history, and ecology impact outcomes of our clients and their communities. Anthony has spearheaded mitigation investigations in Guam and China and played an integral role in Wyoming’s death-eligible cases that served as the backdrop for a nearly successful legislative attempt at abolition. At CRI, he’s taken on the dual role of conducting mitigation investigations while overseeing CRI’s initiatives, operations, and advocacy. CRI’s three-prong approach to the death penalty through casework, family services, and community organizing aims to end death verdicts and executions nationwide.
Contact Information
Phone: (707)474-7483
Email: anthony@cr-i.org
Website: www.communityresourceinitiative.org
Christian Gettis
Christian Gettis served approximately 11 years on a federal 16-year sentence for heroin trafficking and distribution. While in prison Mr. Gettis participated in many self-help groups and also mentored other inmates. Since being released from prison in 2020, Mr. Gettis has been employed by Catholic Charities and also Refined Life Solutions LLC as an addictions advocate and counselor. He is married and a proud father and grandfather.
Contact Information
Phone: (667) 271-0238
Email: humanhumblebeing1@gmail.com
Craig Haney, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Craig Haney is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Haney has training in both law and psychology, having received a Ph.D. in psychology and J.D. degree from Stanford University. He has been studying the social and institutional histories of capital defendants for over 40 years, and has conducted research on and written extensively about the nature of mitigation, capital jury decision-making processes, as well as the psychology of imprisonment. Three of his books, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System (Oxford, 2005), Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment (APA, 2006), and Criminality in Context: Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform (APA, 2020) summarize much of his death penalty- and prison-related research. Haney has served as a consultant in over 150 capital cases, testified frequently as an expert mitigation witness in death penalty trials, capital habeas proceedings, and constitutional challenges to conditions of confinement in numerous states. His research, writing, and testimony have been cited on a number of occasions by United States Supreme Court. In 2015, he was named a University of California Presidential Chair, to pursue his work on criminal justice reform.
Contact Information
Phone: (831) 459-2153
Email: psylaw@ucsc.edu
Elizabeth Vartkessian, Ph.D.
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Founder and Executive Director
Elizabeth Vartkessian has been investigating the life histories of those facing the most severe penalties possible in the United States since 2004. She started working as a mitigation specialist in Houston, Texas at a time when it was the epicenter of capital punishment. There she learned and developed skills aimed at helping decision-makers have a full picture of her clients.
After starting a successful private practice and obtaining her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Oxford, Dr. Vartkessian and several colleagues created Advancing Real Change, Inc. (ARC, Inc.) a national non-profit located in Baltimore, MD dedicated to conducting high-quality life history investigations in criminal cases. As the founding Executive Director, Dr. Vartkessian is committed to having the history of an accused at the forefront of their criminal case. She has worked as a mitigation specialist with defense teams in trial and post-conviction cases in state and federal jurisdictions and is an international expert on the collection and effective presentation of mitigating evidence, as well as the standard of care required by the defense in death penalty and juvenile cases.
Dr. Vartkessian’s approach to investigating and presenting evidence is informed by research. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University at Albany in the School of Criminal Justice where she is a researcher with the Capital Jury Project (CJP). The CJP is an ongoing research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation that seeks to understand how capital jurors make their sentencing decisions and whether those decisions are made in keeping with the law. The results of her research were widely cited by the American Bar Association’s review of the Texas capital sentencing system. Her publications, which include articles in law reviews, peer review journals, and opinion pieces focus on receptivity to mitigating evidence.
In addition to having received her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Oxford, Dr. Vartkessian also holds a M.S. in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford and B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from the George Washington University where she was a Presidential Scholar. In 2015 she was awarded the J. M. K. Innovation Prize for her efforts to bring mitigation to all areas of the criminal justice process. In 2018, the City Council of Baltimore passed a resolution praising Dr. Vartkessian’s efforts to bring human dignity into the justice system.
Contact Information
Phone: (410) 685-2569
Email: esv@advancechange.org
Felicia Jones
Felicia Jones is a Certified Nursing Assistant in Philadelphia. She is in the process of obtaining her LPN and hopes to own a home health care service in the future. Ms. Jones has a close friend in prison now, as was her father growing up, and numerous other friends.
Contact Information
Phone: (267) 456-4260
Email: felicia2186@gmail.com
Jen Newton, Ph.D.
Ohio University
Associate Professor
Jen Newton is an associate professor at Ohio University. Dr. Newton's research interests include anti-racist, anti-ableist education, early childhood inclusion, and inclusive teacher preparation. She regularly presents locally, regionally, and nationally on a range of inclusive educational topics.
She served as an early interventionist and an inclusive prekindergarten teacher prior to pursuing doctoral studies. Dr. Newton earned her doctorate in special education from the University of Kansas and spent four years as an assistant professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., then three years at Saint Louis University before finding her home at Ohio University. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook @teachingisintellectual.
Contact Information
Phone: 17855501644
Email: newtonj@ohio.edu
Website: @teachingisintellectual
Judith Mazdra
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Life History Investigator
Judith joined ARC, Inc. to support individuals charged with or convicted of capital crimes in federal and state courts. She has a background in sociocultural anthropology, global health, community-based harm reduction, and human rights advocacy. Judith received her M.A. in Medical Anthropology and Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from Harvard University and her B.A. in Anthropology and Russian/East European Studies from Tufts University. Judith speaks fluent Russian and conversational French.
Contact Information
Email: jm@advancechange.org
Katherine Atkins
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Director of Mitigation Casework
Katherine Atkins provides direct supervision to staff in addition to working on behalf of ARC's capital and juvenile clients. Katherine has worked on capital cases in both federal and state courts, juvenile resentencing cases, and sentencing modifications for those convicted of crimes as children. Katherine joined ARC, Inc. with a background in community-based advocacy and direct service to individuals experiencing homelessness, and became involved with mitigation work during an internship with the University of Texas School of Law's Capital Punishment Clinic. She joined ARC, Inc. after receiving her Master of Science in Social Work degree (MSSW) from the University of Texas at Austin and her Master of Divinity degree (MDiv) from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Katherine is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW).
Contact information
Email: kma@advancechange.org
Kristina Leslie
Capital Resource Counsel Project
Attorney
Kristina Leslie is a Capital Resource Counsel (CRC) where she directly represents persons charged in federal capital cases around the country, and provides advice and training to trial teams. Prior to joining the CRC Project, she was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland and represented clients at all stages of proceedings in federal district court. Prior to joining the Federal Public Defender in 2018, Ms. Leslie served as an assistant capital defender in Northern Virginia, which exclusively represented individuals charged with capital murder at the trial level. She began her career as a state public defender in Baltimore City.
Contact Information
Email: Kristina_Leslie@fd.org
LaVarr W. McBride
Associate Teaching Professor
LaVarr McBride is a native of Southeastern Idaho and currently lives in Beaver, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology . He also has a master’s degree in Soci al Science with an emphasis in Sociology and Economics . He currently is an Associate Teaching Professor at Pennsylvania State University at the Fayette Campus .
Mr. McBride has worked in many different areas of state and federal law enforcement with t he state and US Courts system , including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) in Washington, DC . He began his career 3 8 years ago at the Utah State Prison as a pris on guard in Medium and Maximum - Security facilities . He then left the prison and was a state parole officer and worked on a task force in northern Utah dealing with drugs and other violent crime. Mr. McBride shifted from state to the federal system. H e worked as a Senior Federal Probation Officer and Training Specialist in Utah prior to receiving a promotion as a Training Specialist in Washington DC . Mr. McBride finished his career with the government working as a Management Analyst for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts in Washington DC.
He is an expert in working with trauma associated with violent crime specifically in homicide , sexual assault , domestic violence, and abuse cases . For the past 1 2 years, LaVarr has been helping in both death penalty and other violent crime cases nationally in supporting victims by finding answers to their questions and offering them a unique way of support by providing an opportunity for the survivors to share with their offender how their lives have been affected by the crime they committed. Mr. McBride has consulted and advised at several mass shootings including work with victims at the Aurora Theater Shooting, Reynolds High School Shooting, s hooting in Moscow, Idaho, and several other shootings where mental health issues we re the focus of offenders. He is a published author. Mr. Eric Wicklund is the co - author and was on federal probation to LaVarr McBride . The book titled, “Through a Convicts Eyes : An Overlooked View of the Criminal Justice System , ” looks at crime and accountability through the eyes of an offender and a probation officer.
He published his second book in March of 2 02 0 called , “Standing in the Dark: Struggle and Hope for Victims of Violent Crime,” Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2020. This book is about victims o f crime and their triumph over their trauma . He speaks nationally at conferences on Violent Crime, death penalty, victim ’ s rights , and the effect of social media on violent crime. He also speaks nationally at high schools and universities on various issues involving sexual assault, bullying, and suicide prevention.
LaVarr was the host for, “Cold Case Beaver County.” This series highlighted several high - profile homicide and serial killing cases in western Pennsylvania that have never been resolved. He recently appear ed on the Disco very Channel in a series called , “ On the Case with Paula Zahn , ” speaking about his work on a case where the suspect was never identified , who killed a fourteen - year - old girl. He also consulted with the Pentagon, with the Office of Military Commissions working on terrorism cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Contact Information
Phone: (801) 953-4025
Email: lwm13@psu.edu
Lela Hubbard
Donelson Enterprises, LLC
Mitigation Specialist
Lela Hubbard, LMSW, received her master’s degree from Jackson State University School of Social Work in 1998, and continued to worked in both Behavioral Health and Family Services. From 2006-2020, she worked as a mitigation specialist in the MS Office of Capital Defense. Andre DeGruy took a chance by hiring Lela who had no experience as a Mitigation Specialist but a desire to learn and zeal for saving a person’s life. As a result, Lela was mentored by Melanie Carr through the original mitigation mentoring program run by the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. As early as 2010, Lela crossed paths with Scharlette Holdman, who helped her with her first capital trial. Charlotte instilled in Lela not to look at the diagnosis, but what caused the diagnosis. This perspective has helped Lela and the teams she have worked with save numerous lives.
Lela is a nationally certified Defense Victim Outreach (DVO) specialist who has assisted victims’ family members through capital trials and appeals as well as juvenile re-sentencing proceedings. Shortly before the pandemic in 2020, she took a leap of faith and went into private practice (Donelson Enterprises), focusing on federal capital trials, re-entry support for exonerees and long-termers, as well as DVO work across the United States. Lela has served as faculty at both local and national training conferences. Lela’s goal is to expand reentry services in Mississippi and increase the number of social workers of color involved in mitigation. Lastly, but definitely not least, Lela was chosen as the recipient of the 2021 Muhammed-White Award for her excellence in mitigation over the course of her career.
Contact Information
Phone: (601) 573-0319
Email: leladonelson@gmail.com
Maureen Sweeny
Law School Professor / Faculty Director
University of Maryland
Maureen Sweeney is a Law School Professor and the Faculty Director of the University of Maryland Carey Law School’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice. She has directed the Immigration Clinic at the law school since 2004. Before that, she worked as a staff attorney at Catholic Charities Esperanza Center in Baltimore and as a legal aid lawyer for migrant farmworkers. As a teacher and a scholar, Maureen writes and has trained lawyers and law students in Maryland and around the country on immigration-related topics like asylum, the immigration consequences of convictions, and the relationship between the immigration court system and the U.S. federal courts. She serves as an advisor to various advocacy groups, including the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG), the ACLU of Maryland, the Annapolis Immigrant Justice Network, and Kids in Need of Defense in Baltimore. You can follow her on Twitter @LawProfMSweeney.
Contact Information
Social Media: Twitter @LawProfMSweeney
Monique Lee-Coleman
Monique Lee-Coleman is a native New Orleanian and U.S. Army Veteran who relocated to Denton, Texas following Hurricane Katrina. She is also the sister of Ryan Matthews, the 115th person in the United States to be exonerated from death row. After Ryan settled in Texas, Monique decided to remain in the state to facilitate her brother’s reintegration, recognizing he would face extreme hardship, harassment and discrimination.
Ryan’s wrongful conviction catapulted Monique into the world of advocacy and she has participated in panel discussions throughout the country. Monique has also served as an Executive Board Member with Witness to Innocence, a national organization that works to empower exonerated death row survivors. In May 2021, Monique was elected to the
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Board of Directors.
In 2014, Monique earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. Under the mentorship of Dr. Cecile Guin, the social worker who advocated on her brother’s behalf, Monique then earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work from University of Texas at Arlington in 2016. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Family Studies at Texas Woman’s University. Her doctoral research focuses on the resilience of the family unit during wrongful incarceration and the reintegration process.
Contact Information
Phone: (940) 218-8123
Email: mcoleman11@twu.edu
Nadir Y. Abdullah
Nadir Y. Abdullah’s experiences in the criminal injustice system began in state court at the age of 18 when he was convicted of possession of a molotov cocktail. He was sentenced to four years and was paroled after 2 1/2 years. Three years later, he was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life plus five years. Shortly thereafter, he began his journey of redemption, self-awareness, and religion. He obtained his GED, enrolled in college, and embraced the religion of Islam. His conviction was overturned six years later, and he subsequently accepted an Alford plea resulting in a twelve-year sentence. He was released in 1984. Four years later, he was indicted in federal court under the RICO statute along with 10 co-defendants for conspiracy to distribute CDS. He served 10 years of a 17-year sentence and was released in 1998.
For the past 21 years, Mr. Abdullah been employed at Johns Hopkins Hospital working in both the Admissions Department and the Department of Psychiatry. He is a reentry advocate for returning citizens for the TYRO Program with the Sisters of Bon Secours. He also provides mentorship to members of the Mr. Mack Lewis Boxing Gym and Foundation.
Contact Information
Phone: (410)365-9352
Email: nadirabdullah408@aol.com
Rebecca A Bowman-Rivas
Social Worker
Rebecca Bowman-Rivas is a clinical and forensic social worker who has run the Law & Social Work Services Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore’s Carey School of Law for nearly 20 years. The program provides social work services and support for the Law School’s Clinical Program, providing law and social work students the opportunity to collaborate and provide holistic services to their clients. Areas of practice include criminal justice, immigration, low-income taxpayers, gender violence, and healthcare and HIV/AIDS. The program provided support and case management for more than 100 individuals released under Unger v. Maryland (2012), after serving decades in prison. She received the University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents’ Staff Award for Extraordinary Public Service to the University or Greater Community in 2017.
Ms. Bowman-Rivas has been in private practice for 18 years through Bowman-Rivas Consulting, LLC, providing mitigation and sentencing advocacy in capital cases and other felonies, juvenile LWOP and transfer of jurisdiction cases.
She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Social Work.
Contact Information
Phone: (410) 706-7356
Email: rrivas@law.umaryland.edu
Robin Conley Riner, Ph.D.
Marshall University
Professor
Dr. Robin Riner is professor of anthropology at Marshall University. She is a legal and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic research on death penalty trials across Texas, investigating how the use of language shapes jurors’ experiences during trials and impacts their life and death decisions. Her book, Confronting the Death Penalty (Oxford 2016), explores how jurors use language to counter moments of empathy they share with defendants, thereby justifying their decisions for death. She has also co-authored and edited books that address language and law and language and social justice. Dr. Riner is currently engaged in multiple projects that seek to understand the experiences of military veterans and help with issues that they face in their post-service lives. She is currently co-directing a project entitled “The Wars Within, the Wars Without,” funded by the WV Humanities Council, which is designed to help connect veteran students at Marshall University with veterans from throughout the state of West Virginia through a series of public discussion groups in which participants read and discuss classic texts about war.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 414-9784
Email: conleyr@marshall.edu
Website: https://www.marshall.edu/dosa/faculty/conley/; https://www.marshall.edu/warswithin/
Sarah Y. Vinson
Lorio Forensics
Founder
Dr. Sarah Y. Vinson is a physician who specializes in adult, child & adolescent, and forensic psychiatry. She is the founder of the Lorio Psych Group, an Atlanta, GA based mental health practice providing expert care and consultation. Dr. Vinson is also the founder of Lorio Forensics, which provide consultation in a wide variety of cases in criminal, civil and family court cases. After graduating from medical school at the University of Florida with Research Honors and as an Inductee in the Chapman Humanism Honors Society, she completed her general psychiatry training at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. While there, she also received specialized training in trauma through the Victims of Violence Program. She then returned to the South to complete fellowships in both child & adolescent and forensic psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine. In addition to providing mental health care services such as psychotherapy, consultation and psychopharmacology through her private practice, Dr. Vinson is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine. Just two years after joining the faculty she was honored as Psychiatry and Faculty of the Year in 2015. She is also Adjunct Faculty at Emory University School of Medicine. She has been elected and/or appointed to national and statewide office by her professional peers. She is the Past President of the Georgia Council on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Treasurer of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association. Additionally, she is an Advisor for the Judges Psychiatry Leadership Initiative. She has been a speaker at national conferences including the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Annual Meeting and The National Urban League Annual Meeting.. Dr. Vinson has received numerous awards in recognition of her service and leadership including the University of Florida College of Medicine Outstanding Young Alumna Award and the APA Jeanne Spurlock Minority Fellowship Alumna Achievement Award.
Contact Information
Website: https://drsarahvinson.com/
Tanya Greene
Capital Resource Counsel Project
Capital Resource Counsel and Director of Training
Tanya Greene is a Capital Resource Counsel and Director of Training for the Federal Capital Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project and the Capital Resource Counsel Project. Ms. Greene has been a capital defense attorney and represented state and federal clients for more than 25 years, starting in the Deep South at the Southern Center for Human Rights, and then at the New York Capital Defender Office, at trial, appeal, and in state and federal post-conviction proceedings. Throughout her career, Ms. Greene has consulted on state and federal capital cases and developed innovative, highly-regarded defense practitioner training programs nationwide. Prior to her current position, Ms. Greene spent five years as the inaugural national ACLU Criminal Justice Advocacy and Policy Counsel focused on death penalty and indigent defense policy reform issues – her work contributed to death penalty repeal in a number of states during her time at the ACLU. Ms. Greene has worked throughout her career on racial justice concerns with clients, teams, offices, and organizations.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 635-0941
Email: Tanya_Greene@fd.org
Mailing Address:
Federal Defenders of New York
One Pierrepont Plaza, 16th floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Thea Posel
Clinical Instructor in the Capital Punishment Clinic
University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Thea Posel is a clinical assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and a clinical instructor in the Capital Punishment Clinic at the School of Law. She has worked with capital defense teams in both Colorado and Texas, from pre-trial litigation preparation and consulting to state and federal post-conviction cases. Thea’s areas of interest include jury selection, jury decision-making, and mitigation investigation and presentation, and she works primarily on Texas state court advocacy and consulting at the capital trial, appellate, and habeas stages.
Contact Information
Email: tposel@law.utexas.edu
Wayne Brewton
Activist
Wayne spent more than 38 years in Maryland prisons before his release in 2017. Creator of Project Emancipation, he promotes victim closure and ending violence in the communities of Baltimore. He helped create a Victim Awareness Program which became widely adopted in Maryland prisons. Wayne is also associated with the Baltimore-based nonprofit, Panacea Media.
New York University
Department of Applied Psychology
Associate Professor
Alisha Ali is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University where she heads the Advocacy and Community-Based Trauma Studies (ACTS) Lab. Her research examines the mental health effects of various forms of oppression including violence and discrimination. She has delivered numerous invited addresses, including to the World Economic Forum and the United Nations Development Program. She is co-editor (with Dana C. Jack) of the book “Silencing the Self across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World” which received the American Psychological Association’s International Book Award. She is also co-editor of the upcoming book “The Mad Studies Reader”. Her current projects are investigating the effects of empowerment-based interventions for domestic violence survivors and low-income high school students, and the impact of an arts-based intervention to treat the effects of traumatic stress in military veterans. Alisha received her PhD in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral fellowship training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 239-6367
Email: aa89@nyu.edu
Website: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/alisha-ali
Anthony Ginez
Community Resource Initiative
Executive Director
Anthony Ginez is the Executive Director of Community Resource Initiative (CRI), a mitigation investigation office and resource center based in San Francisco. CRI’s mission is to build narratives that challenge the death penalty while improving the standard of care and building power toward abolition. Anthony has over 10 years of experience collaborating on client-centered social history and mental health investigations. Much of his work has focused on cultural competency and documenting how culture, sociopolitical history, and ecology impact outcomes of our clients and their communities. Anthony has spearheaded mitigation investigations in Guam and China and played an integral role in Wyoming’s death-eligible cases that served as the backdrop for a nearly successful legislative attempt at abolition. At CRI, he’s taken on the dual role of conducting mitigation investigations while overseeing CRI’s initiatives, operations, and advocacy. CRI’s three-prong approach to the death penalty through casework, family services, and community organizing aims to end death verdicts and executions nationwide.
Contact Information
Phone: (707)474-7483
Email: anthony@cr-i.org
Website: www.communityresourceinitiative.org
Christian Gettis
Christian Gettis served approximately 11 years on a federal 16-year sentence for heroin trafficking and distribution. While in prison Mr. Gettis participated in many self-help groups and also mentored other inmates. Since being released from prison in 2020, Mr. Gettis has been employed by Catholic Charities and also Refined Life Solutions LLC as an addictions advocate and counselor. He is married and a proud father and grandfather.
Contact Information
Phone: (667) 271-0238
Email: humanhumblebeing1@gmail.com
Craig Haney, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Craig Haney is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Haney has training in both law and psychology, having received a Ph.D. in psychology and J.D. degree from Stanford University. He has been studying the social and institutional histories of capital defendants for over 40 years, and has conducted research on and written extensively about the nature of mitigation, capital jury decision-making processes, as well as the psychology of imprisonment. Three of his books, Death By Design: Capital Punishment as a Social Psychological System (Oxford, 2005), Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment (APA, 2006), and Criminality in Context: Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform (APA, 2020) summarize much of his death penalty- and prison-related research. Haney has served as a consultant in over 150 capital cases, testified frequently as an expert mitigation witness in death penalty trials, capital habeas proceedings, and constitutional challenges to conditions of confinement in numerous states. His research, writing, and testimony have been cited on a number of occasions by United States Supreme Court. In 2015, he was named a University of California Presidential Chair, to pursue his work on criminal justice reform.
Contact Information
Phone: (831) 459-2153
Email: psylaw@ucsc.edu
Elizabeth Vartkessian, Ph.D.
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Founder and Executive Director
Elizabeth Vartkessian has been investigating the life histories of those facing the most severe penalties possible in the United States since 2004. She started working as a mitigation specialist in Houston, Texas at a time when it was the epicenter of capital punishment. There she learned and developed skills aimed at helping decision-makers have a full picture of her clients.
After starting a successful private practice and obtaining her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Oxford, Dr. Vartkessian and several colleagues created Advancing Real Change, Inc. (ARC, Inc.) a national non-profit located in Baltimore, MD dedicated to conducting high-quality life history investigations in criminal cases. As the founding Executive Director, Dr. Vartkessian is committed to having the history of an accused at the forefront of their criminal case. She has worked as a mitigation specialist with defense teams in trial and post-conviction cases in state and federal jurisdictions and is an international expert on the collection and effective presentation of mitigating evidence, as well as the standard of care required by the defense in death penalty and juvenile cases.
Dr. Vartkessian’s approach to investigating and presenting evidence is informed by research. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University at Albany in the School of Criminal Justice where she is a researcher with the Capital Jury Project (CJP). The CJP is an ongoing research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation that seeks to understand how capital jurors make their sentencing decisions and whether those decisions are made in keeping with the law. The results of her research were widely cited by the American Bar Association’s review of the Texas capital sentencing system. Her publications, which include articles in law reviews, peer review journals, and opinion pieces focus on receptivity to mitigating evidence.
In addition to having received her Ph.D. in Law from the University of Oxford, Dr. Vartkessian also holds a M.S. in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford and B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from the George Washington University where she was a Presidential Scholar. In 2015 she was awarded the J. M. K. Innovation Prize for her efforts to bring mitigation to all areas of the criminal justice process. In 2018, the City Council of Baltimore passed a resolution praising Dr. Vartkessian’s efforts to bring human dignity into the justice system.
Contact Information
Phone: (410) 685-2569
Email: esv@advancechange.org
Felicia Jones
Felicia Jones is a Certified Nursing Assistant in Philadelphia. She is in the process of obtaining her LPN and hopes to own a home health care service in the future. Ms. Jones has a close friend in prison now, as was her father growing up, and numerous other friends.
Contact Information
Phone: (267) 456-4260
Email: felicia2186@gmail.com
Jen Newton, Ph.D.
Ohio University
Associate Professor
Jen Newton is an associate professor at Ohio University. Dr. Newton's research interests include anti-racist, anti-ableist education, early childhood inclusion, and inclusive teacher preparation. She regularly presents locally, regionally, and nationally on a range of inclusive educational topics.
She served as an early interventionist and an inclusive prekindergarten teacher prior to pursuing doctoral studies. Dr. Newton earned her doctorate in special education from the University of Kansas and spent four years as an assistant professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., then three years at Saint Louis University before finding her home at Ohio University. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook @teachingisintellectual.
Contact Information
Phone: 17855501644
Email: newtonj@ohio.edu
Website: @teachingisintellectual
Judith Mazdra
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Life History Investigator
Judith joined ARC, Inc. to support individuals charged with or convicted of capital crimes in federal and state courts. She has a background in sociocultural anthropology, global health, community-based harm reduction, and human rights advocacy. Judith received her M.A. in Medical Anthropology and Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies from Harvard University and her B.A. in Anthropology and Russian/East European Studies from Tufts University. Judith speaks fluent Russian and conversational French.
Contact Information
Email: jm@advancechange.org
Katherine Atkins
Advancing Real Change, Inc.
Director of Mitigation Casework
Katherine Atkins provides direct supervision to staff in addition to working on behalf of ARC's capital and juvenile clients. Katherine has worked on capital cases in both federal and state courts, juvenile resentencing cases, and sentencing modifications for those convicted of crimes as children. Katherine joined ARC, Inc. with a background in community-based advocacy and direct service to individuals experiencing homelessness, and became involved with mitigation work during an internship with the University of Texas School of Law's Capital Punishment Clinic. She joined ARC, Inc. after receiving her Master of Science in Social Work degree (MSSW) from the University of Texas at Austin and her Master of Divinity degree (MDiv) from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Katherine is a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW).
Contact information
Email: kma@advancechange.org
Kristina Leslie
Capital Resource Counsel Project
Attorney
Kristina Leslie is a Capital Resource Counsel (CRC) where she directly represents persons charged in federal capital cases around the country, and provides advice and training to trial teams. Prior to joining the CRC Project, she was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland and represented clients at all stages of proceedings in federal district court. Prior to joining the Federal Public Defender in 2018, Ms. Leslie served as an assistant capital defender in Northern Virginia, which exclusively represented individuals charged with capital murder at the trial level. She began her career as a state public defender in Baltimore City.
Contact Information
Email: Kristina_Leslie@fd.org
LaVarr W. McBride
Associate Teaching Professor
LaVarr McBride is a native of Southeastern Idaho and currently lives in Beaver, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology . He also has a master’s degree in Soci al Science with an emphasis in Sociology and Economics . He currently is an Associate Teaching Professor at Pennsylvania State University at the Fayette Campus .
Mr. McBride has worked in many different areas of state and federal law enforcement with t he state and US Courts system , including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC) in Washington, DC . He began his career 3 8 years ago at the Utah State Prison as a pris on guard in Medium and Maximum - Security facilities . He then left the prison and was a state parole officer and worked on a task force in northern Utah dealing with drugs and other violent crime. Mr. McBride shifted from state to the federal system. H e worked as a Senior Federal Probation Officer and Training Specialist in Utah prior to receiving a promotion as a Training Specialist in Washington DC . Mr. McBride finished his career with the government working as a Management Analyst for the Administrative Office of the United States Courts in Washington DC.
He is an expert in working with trauma associated with violent crime specifically in homicide , sexual assault , domestic violence, and abuse cases . For the past 1 2 years, LaVarr has been helping in both death penalty and other violent crime cases nationally in supporting victims by finding answers to their questions and offering them a unique way of support by providing an opportunity for the survivors to share with their offender how their lives have been affected by the crime they committed. Mr. McBride has consulted and advised at several mass shootings including work with victims at the Aurora Theater Shooting, Reynolds High School Shooting, s hooting in Moscow, Idaho, and several other shootings where mental health issues we re the focus of offenders. He is a published author. Mr. Eric Wicklund is the co - author and was on federal probation to LaVarr McBride . The book titled, “Through a Convicts Eyes : An Overlooked View of the Criminal Justice System , ” looks at crime and accountability through the eyes of an offender and a probation officer.
He published his second book in March of 2 02 0 called , “Standing in the Dark: Struggle and Hope for Victims of Violent Crime,” Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2020. This book is about victims o f crime and their triumph over their trauma . He speaks nationally at conferences on Violent Crime, death penalty, victim ’ s rights , and the effect of social media on violent crime. He also speaks nationally at high schools and universities on various issues involving sexual assault, bullying, and suicide prevention.
LaVarr was the host for, “Cold Case Beaver County.” This series highlighted several high - profile homicide and serial killing cases in western Pennsylvania that have never been resolved. He recently appear ed on the Disco very Channel in a series called , “ On the Case with Paula Zahn , ” speaking about his work on a case where the suspect was never identified , who killed a fourteen - year - old girl. He also consulted with the Pentagon, with the Office of Military Commissions working on terrorism cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Contact Information
Phone: (801) 953-4025
Email: lwm13@psu.edu
Lela Hubbard
Donelson Enterprises, LLC
Mitigation Specialist
Lela Hubbard, LMSW, received her master’s degree from Jackson State University School of Social Work in 1998, and continued to worked in both Behavioral Health and Family Services. From 2006-2020, she worked as a mitigation specialist in the MS Office of Capital Defense. Andre DeGruy took a chance by hiring Lela who had no experience as a Mitigation Specialist but a desire to learn and zeal for saving a person’s life. As a result, Lela was mentored by Melanie Carr through the original mitigation mentoring program run by the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. As early as 2010, Lela crossed paths with Scharlette Holdman, who helped her with her first capital trial. Charlotte instilled in Lela not to look at the diagnosis, but what caused the diagnosis. This perspective has helped Lela and the teams she have worked with save numerous lives.
Lela is a nationally certified Defense Victim Outreach (DVO) specialist who has assisted victims’ family members through capital trials and appeals as well as juvenile re-sentencing proceedings. Shortly before the pandemic in 2020, she took a leap of faith and went into private practice (Donelson Enterprises), focusing on federal capital trials, re-entry support for exonerees and long-termers, as well as DVO work across the United States. Lela has served as faculty at both local and national training conferences. Lela’s goal is to expand reentry services in Mississippi and increase the number of social workers of color involved in mitigation. Lastly, but definitely not least, Lela was chosen as the recipient of the 2021 Muhammed-White Award for her excellence in mitigation over the course of her career.
Contact Information
Phone: (601) 573-0319
Email: leladonelson@gmail.com
Maureen Sweeny
Law School Professor / Faculty Director
University of Maryland
Maureen Sweeney is a Law School Professor and the Faculty Director of the University of Maryland Carey Law School’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice. She has directed the Immigration Clinic at the law school since 2004. Before that, she worked as a staff attorney at Catholic Charities Esperanza Center in Baltimore and as a legal aid lawyer for migrant farmworkers. As a teacher and a scholar, Maureen writes and has trained lawyers and law students in Maryland and around the country on immigration-related topics like asylum, the immigration consequences of convictions, and the relationship between the immigration court system and the U.S. federal courts. She serves as an advisor to various advocacy groups, including the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG), the ACLU of Maryland, the Annapolis Immigrant Justice Network, and Kids in Need of Defense in Baltimore. You can follow her on Twitter @LawProfMSweeney.
Contact Information
Social Media: Twitter @LawProfMSweeney
Monique Lee-Coleman
Monique Lee-Coleman is a native New Orleanian and U.S. Army Veteran who relocated to Denton, Texas following Hurricane Katrina. She is also the sister of Ryan Matthews, the 115th person in the United States to be exonerated from death row. After Ryan settled in Texas, Monique decided to remain in the state to facilitate her brother’s reintegration, recognizing he would face extreme hardship, harassment and discrimination.
Ryan’s wrongful conviction catapulted Monique into the world of advocacy and she has participated in panel discussions throughout the country. Monique has also served as an Executive Board Member with Witness to Innocence, a national organization that works to empower exonerated death row survivors. In May 2021, Monique was elected to the
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Board of Directors.
In 2014, Monique earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. Under the mentorship of Dr. Cecile Guin, the social worker who advocated on her brother’s behalf, Monique then earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work from University of Texas at Arlington in 2016. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in Family Studies at Texas Woman’s University. Her doctoral research focuses on the resilience of the family unit during wrongful incarceration and the reintegration process.
Contact Information
Phone: (940) 218-8123
Email: mcoleman11@twu.edu
Nadir Y. Abdullah
Nadir Y. Abdullah’s experiences in the criminal injustice system began in state court at the age of 18 when he was convicted of possession of a molotov cocktail. He was sentenced to four years and was paroled after 2 1/2 years. Three years later, he was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life plus five years. Shortly thereafter, he began his journey of redemption, self-awareness, and religion. He obtained his GED, enrolled in college, and embraced the religion of Islam. His conviction was overturned six years later, and he subsequently accepted an Alford plea resulting in a twelve-year sentence. He was released in 1984. Four years later, he was indicted in federal court under the RICO statute along with 10 co-defendants for conspiracy to distribute CDS. He served 10 years of a 17-year sentence and was released in 1998.
For the past 21 years, Mr. Abdullah been employed at Johns Hopkins Hospital working in both the Admissions Department and the Department of Psychiatry. He is a reentry advocate for returning citizens for the TYRO Program with the Sisters of Bon Secours. He also provides mentorship to members of the Mr. Mack Lewis Boxing Gym and Foundation.
Contact Information
Phone: (410)365-9352
Email: nadirabdullah408@aol.com
Rebecca A Bowman-Rivas
Social Worker
Rebecca Bowman-Rivas is a clinical and forensic social worker who has run the Law & Social Work Services Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore’s Carey School of Law for nearly 20 years. The program provides social work services and support for the Law School’s Clinical Program, providing law and social work students the opportunity to collaborate and provide holistic services to their clients. Areas of practice include criminal justice, immigration, low-income taxpayers, gender violence, and healthcare and HIV/AIDS. The program provided support and case management for more than 100 individuals released under Unger v. Maryland (2012), after serving decades in prison. She received the University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents’ Staff Award for Extraordinary Public Service to the University or Greater Community in 2017.
Ms. Bowman-Rivas has been in private practice for 18 years through Bowman-Rivas Consulting, LLC, providing mitigation and sentencing advocacy in capital cases and other felonies, juvenile LWOP and transfer of jurisdiction cases.
She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland School of Social Work.
Contact Information
Phone: (410) 706-7356
Email: rrivas@law.umaryland.edu
Robin Conley Riner, Ph.D.
Marshall University
Professor
Dr. Robin Riner is professor of anthropology at Marshall University. She is a legal and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic research on death penalty trials across Texas, investigating how the use of language shapes jurors’ experiences during trials and impacts their life and death decisions. Her book, Confronting the Death Penalty (Oxford 2016), explores how jurors use language to counter moments of empathy they share with defendants, thereby justifying their decisions for death. She has also co-authored and edited books that address language and law and language and social justice. Dr. Riner is currently engaged in multiple projects that seek to understand the experiences of military veterans and help with issues that they face in their post-service lives. She is currently co-directing a project entitled “The Wars Within, the Wars Without,” funded by the WV Humanities Council, which is designed to help connect veteran students at Marshall University with veterans from throughout the state of West Virginia through a series of public discussion groups in which participants read and discuss classic texts about war.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 414-9784
Email: conleyr@marshall.edu
Website: https://www.marshall.edu/dosa/faculty/conley/; https://www.marshall.edu/warswithin/
Sarah Y. Vinson
Lorio Forensics
Founder
Dr. Sarah Y. Vinson is a physician who specializes in adult, child & adolescent, and forensic psychiatry. She is the founder of the Lorio Psych Group, an Atlanta, GA based mental health practice providing expert care and consultation. Dr. Vinson is also the founder of Lorio Forensics, which provide consultation in a wide variety of cases in criminal, civil and family court cases. After graduating from medical school at the University of Florida with Research Honors and as an Inductee in the Chapman Humanism Honors Society, she completed her general psychiatry training at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. While there, she also received specialized training in trauma through the Victims of Violence Program. She then returned to the South to complete fellowships in both child & adolescent and forensic psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine. In addition to providing mental health care services such as psychotherapy, consultation and psychopharmacology through her private practice, Dr. Vinson is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine. Just two years after joining the faculty she was honored as Psychiatry and Faculty of the Year in 2015. She is also Adjunct Faculty at Emory University School of Medicine. She has been elected and/or appointed to national and statewide office by her professional peers. She is the Past President of the Georgia Council on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Treasurer of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association. Additionally, she is an Advisor for the Judges Psychiatry Leadership Initiative. She has been a speaker at national conferences including the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Annual Meeting and The National Urban League Annual Meeting.. Dr. Vinson has received numerous awards in recognition of her service and leadership including the University of Florida College of Medicine Outstanding Young Alumna Award and the APA Jeanne Spurlock Minority Fellowship Alumna Achievement Award.
Contact Information
Website: https://drsarahvinson.com/
Tanya Greene
Capital Resource Counsel Project
Capital Resource Counsel and Director of Training
Tanya Greene is a Capital Resource Counsel and Director of Training for the Federal Capital Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project and the Capital Resource Counsel Project. Ms. Greene has been a capital defense attorney and represented state and federal clients for more than 25 years, starting in the Deep South at the Southern Center for Human Rights, and then at the New York Capital Defender Office, at trial, appeal, and in state and federal post-conviction proceedings. Throughout her career, Ms. Greene has consulted on state and federal capital cases and developed innovative, highly-regarded defense practitioner training programs nationwide. Prior to her current position, Ms. Greene spent five years as the inaugural national ACLU Criminal Justice Advocacy and Policy Counsel focused on death penalty and indigent defense policy reform issues – her work contributed to death penalty repeal in a number of states during her time at the ACLU. Ms. Greene has worked throughout her career on racial justice concerns with clients, teams, offices, and organizations.
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 635-0941
Email: Tanya_Greene@fd.org
Mailing Address:
Federal Defenders of New York
One Pierrepont Plaza, 16th floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Thea Posel
Clinical Instructor in the Capital Punishment Clinic
University of Texas at Austin School of Law
Thea Posel is a clinical assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and a clinical instructor in the Capital Punishment Clinic at the School of Law. She has worked with capital defense teams in both Colorado and Texas, from pre-trial litigation preparation and consulting to state and federal post-conviction cases. Thea’s areas of interest include jury selection, jury decision-making, and mitigation investigation and presentation, and she works primarily on Texas state court advocacy and consulting at the capital trial, appellate, and habeas stages.
Contact Information
Email: tposel@law.utexas.edu
Wayne Brewton
Activist
Wayne spent more than 38 years in Maryland prisons before his release in 2017. Creator of Project Emancipation, he promotes victim closure and ending violence in the communities of Baltimore. He helped create a Victim Awareness Program which became widely adopted in Maryland prisons. Wayne is also associated with the Baltimore-based nonprofit, Panacea Media.
Training Venue
The training will be held at the University of Baltimore School of Law located at 1401 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201. See a virtual tour of the venue here.