Makwanyane Trainers — Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide

Adaobi Egboka

Africa Program Manager at Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice

Adaobi Egboka is the Africa Program Manager at Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice and the former Executive Programmes Director of Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP) Nigeria. At LEDAP, she oversaw advocacy strategy, delivered pro bono legal services to survivors of human rights abuses, and managed all legal and program staff. Prior to her work with LEDAP, Adaobi provided research and administrative support to Hon. Justice Adefope-Okojie of the Lagos State Judiciary under the National Youth Corps. She also advocated for several progressive bills for gender equality, criminal justice, and the protection of persons with disabilities.

Celia Rumann

Celia Rumann is a professor, criminal defense lawyer, and filmmaker focused on teaching and research in the areas of human rights and methods used to combat terrorism, such as torture. She is a co-author of “Federal Sentencing Law and Practice” (Thompson Reuters). She has authored and co-authored a number of articles including “Tortured History: Finding our Way Back to the Lost Origins of the Eighth Amendment” in the Pepperdine Law Review, and “Into the Fire: How to Avoid Being Burned by the Same Mistakes Made Fighting Terrorism in Northern Ireland” in the Cardozo Law Review(with Michael O’Connor). She has presented her scholarship in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in addition to the United States. Rumann and her partner/spouse, Michael O’Connor, also make documentary films centering on human rights issues.

Colleen Adnams

Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Disability at Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town

Colleen Adnams is the Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Disability at the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town. She is also the regional president of the International Association for Scientific Study of Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities. She is one of the leading authorities on intellectual disability in Africa.

David Bruck

Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse at Washington & Lee University

David Bruck is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of Washington & Lee University’s death penalty defense clinic, the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse. Prior to coming to W&L, Bruck practiced criminal law in South Carolina for 28 years and specialized in the defense of capital cases at the trial, appellate and post-conviction stages. Over the course of his career, he has served as Richland County (Columbia, S.C.) Public Defender, as Chief Attorney of the South Carolina Office of Appellate Defense, and since 1992 as Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel to the federal defender system nationwide. He has argued seven death penalty cases in the United States Supreme Court.

Denny LeBoeuf

Director of John Adams Projectat American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Denny LeBoeuf is the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project, assisting in the defense of the capitally charged Guantánamo detainees. Previously, she served as the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, which works toward the end of the death penalty by supporting repeal and reform with public education, advocacy, and targeted litigation. She has been a capital defender for over 20 years, representing persons facing death at trial and post-conviction in state and federal courts. She further teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally.

Dziko Malunda

Senior Assistant Chief State Advocate

Dziko Malunda is the Senior Assistant Chief State Advocate in Malawi.

Fulgence Massawe

Director of Advocacy and Reforms at Legal and Human Rights Center(LHRC)

Fulgence Massawe is an advocate and the Director of Advocacy and Reforms at the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), a leading human rights NGO in Tanzania. He has vast experience in public interest and strategic litigation and he has brought a number of such cases before the High Court of Tanzania and regional courts. He is also an experienced provider of legal aid in both criminal and civil cases. He has been pursuing strategic litigation on the abolition of the mandatory imposition death penalty in Tanzania since 2008.

Hanningtone Amol

Chief Executive Officer at East Africa Law Society (EALS)

Hannington Amol is the Chief Executive Officer of the East Africa Law Society, overseeing welfare and capacity building for over 17,000 members while promoting the East African Community regional integration. He has worked with Reprieve UK and the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide to support the capacity of counsel engaged in death penalty cases in East Africa. His passion for trial advocacy has motivated him to help build the capacity of young practitioners. Through the EALS Institute, which he founded in 2017, Amol has been training lawyers in East Africa on trial advocacy and storytelling in the courtroom.

Henderson Hill

Directorat REDRESS

Henderson Hill is the director of REDRESS, a collaborative initiative to decrease mass incarceration inNorth Carolina. Past service includes being the founding Executive Director of the 8thAmendment Project (the national campaign to abolish the death penalty). He was formerly the Director of Federal Defenders of Western North Carolina, and served for 15 years as a partner at the nationally-renowned civil rights law firm Ferguson Stein Chambers, in North Carolina. Henderson founded and served as director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, North Carolina, and received the Paul Green Award from the North Carolina Civil Liberties Union for his work to abolish the death penalty.

Isaac S. Lema

Clinical Psychologist; Assistant Lecturer at Department of Psychiatry, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences

Isaac S. Lemais a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Tanzania. He has a clinical training background in teaching and providing psychological and mental health services to individuals with mental health issues and mental disorders. He is a chairperson of the Mental Health Association of Tanzania (MEHATA), and in collaboration with the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide team, he has conducted mental health assessments for prisoners on death row in Tanzania.

Joe Margulies

Professor of Law and Government at Cornell Law School

Joe Margulies is a Professor of Law and Government at Cornell Law School. He is a civil rights attorney and critic of the national security state, and for many years he has defended people caught up in the excesses of the so-called war on terror. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush, involving detentions at Guantánamo, and in Geren v. Omar & Munaf v. Geren, involving detentions at Camp Cropper in Iraq. He presently represents Abu Zubaydah, who was held in CIA black sites and whose interrogation in 2002 and 2003 prompted the Bush Administration to draft the infamous “torture memos.”He has also written a slew of articles and two books: What Changed When Everything Changed: 9/11 and the Making of National Identity (Yale 2013), and Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster 2006).

John Blume

Professor at Cornell Law School; Director at Cornell Death Penalty Project

John Blume is the Director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project and Professor at Cornell Law School. He is one of the foremost death penalty practitioners in the United States, with particular expertise on the application of the death penalty to individuals with intellectual disabilities and mental illnesses. Internationally, he has been involved for the past four years in several projects related to improving the quality of capital defense in China. The first capital punishment clinic in China, launched by Professor Hongyao Wu of China University of Political Science and Law in 2010, is the result of an ongoing collaboration with Professor Blume.

Kathy Wayland

Psychologist

Dr. Kathy Wayland received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duke University in 1989. She was a member of the California Appellate Project (CAP) in San Francisco, CA, where she assisted staff attorneys and private counsel representing prisoners under sentence of death to identify mental health issues and mitigation themes in the lives of clients and their family members. She has also worked as faculty at Duke University Medical Center and staff of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center and has developed and presented numerous capital defense training programs. Sheis currently in private practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and consults nationally on capital cases.

Katie Campbell

Africa Caseworker, Reprieve

Katie Campbell has worked for Reprieve in Malawi as a fellow in the Kafantayeni Resentencing Project. Prior to her work in Malawi and Tanzania, Katie was a Legal Advisor and Special Assistant to the Registrar at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Freetown. She also worked for the King’s Sierra Leone Partnership in Freetown to address the Ebola crisis and consulted for Leigh Day on its human rights litigation in Sierra Leone.

Keir M. Weyble

Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Death Penalty Litigation at Cornell Law School

Keir M. Weyble is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Death Penalty Litigation at Cornell Law School. Before coming to Cornell, he spent twelve years as a practicing attorney based in South Carolina, where he concentrated on the litigation of capital cases in state and federal courts. He has served as counsel, co-counsel, or as a consultant at the trial, appellate, and collateral review stages in dozens of capital cases across the country, from state trial court proceedings to merits stage litigation in the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a nationally recognized expert on federal habeas corpus law and practice, a member of the Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel Project, and co-author (with John Blume) of the Federal Habeas Corpus Update.

Madalyn Wasilczuk

Director of the Juvenile Defense Clinic and Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Louisiana State University

Madalyn Wasilczuk is the Director of the Juvenile Defense Clinic and Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center, where she and her students represent children charged with crimes in East Baton Rouge Parish. Before joining the Law Center, she worked at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, where she represented capital defendants in the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa, and the Defender Association of Philadelphia, where she litigated all stages of misdemeanor and felony cases and juvenile delinquency proceedings.

Marc Tassé

Director at Nisonger Center; Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Marc Tassé is the Director of the Nisonger Center and Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Previously, he was Associate Director of the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities – UCEDD at the University of South Florida (USF), and an Associate Professor at the USF Department of Child & Family Studies. He was also an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Community Education Director at the University of North Carolina Center for Development and Learning – UCEDD.

Maurie Levin

Maurie Levin is an attorney and has represented death-sentenced inmates in state and federal courts since 1993. She co-directed the Capital Punishment Clinic at the School of Law of the University of Texas from 2004 to 2013. Currently, Maurie represents condemned inmates in Texas, works with Texas Regional Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel, and is a Program Attorney with the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program.

Michael O’Connor

Professor of Law at University of La Verne College of Law

Michael O’Connor is a Professor of Law at the University of La Verne College of Law. As a practicing lawyer, he represented death-sentenced prisoners across the U.S. for almost two decades. He was a co-finalist for Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, for his work in the case of State of Alabama v. Walter McMillian. His comparative scholarship (with co-author Celia Rumann) on efforts to combat terrorism has been cited in official U.S. and British government documents, in white papers produced by Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities, and in pleadings filed before the U.S. Supreme Court. Michael and his partner (and wife), Celia Rumann, also make documentary films centering on human rights issues.

Mickell (Kelly) Branham

Mitigation Specialist at Federal Defender Office Washington D.C.

Mickell (Kelly) Branham is an attorney who focuses on mitigation development and restorative processes. She currently serves as the mitigation specialist for the Federal Defender Office in Washington, D.C. From 2007 through 2015, she coordinated defense victim outreach in federal capital cases nationwide through the Capital Resource Counsel Project. She has written and taught nationally and internationally on restorative processes and victim outreach. She has worked extensively in both capital mitigation and victim outreach and her experience includes trial and post-conviction work in both state and federal jurisdictions.

Mwiza Nkhata

Principal Legal Officer, African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Mwiza Jo Nkhata is Principal Legal Officer, African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, an associate professor of law at the University of Malawi, and a partner at Barnet & James, Attorneys & Law Consultants. Over the course of his career, he has been involved in numerous public interest litigation cases spanning diverse areas. He is a former Dean of Law, University of Malawi and also a former Vice President of the Malawi Law Society.

Mythri Jayaraman

Attorney at Federal Community Defender Office, Philadelphia

Mythri Jayaraman is an attorney with the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia. Prior to becoming a federal defender, she spent 15 years as an attorney with the Defender Association of Philadelphia’s state office, where she was most recently in the Homicide Unit. In addition to her work in Philadelphia, she has also worked with the International Legal Foundation to train public defenders in the West Bank, Tunisia, and Afghanistan and has worked on economic development projects in Peru.

Richard G. Dudley

Psychiatrist

Richard G. Dudley, Jr., M.D. is a psychiatrist with a private practice in New York City focusing on both clinical and forensic psychiatry. He has been retained as an expert in psychiatry in both criminal and civil matters throughout the United States. Previously, he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the New York University School of Law and a Visiting Associate Professor at the City University of New York Medical School at City College.

Robin M. Maher

Adjunct Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School

Robin M. Maher is an Adjunct Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. Her experience includes direct representation of state and federally death-sentenced prisoners; training of judges and defense lawyers on the fundamentals of effective capital defense; legal reform efforts with legislators; systemic litigation in jurisdictions that fail to provide necessary defense services; strategic assistance and support to capital defense teams. For thirteen years she was the Director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project and served as the ABA’s expert on legal representation in death penalty cases. She led the effort that resulted in the American Bar Association Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases, which is now the national standard of care for the capital defense effort in the United States.

Russell Stetler

National Mitigation Coordinator at Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project (FDPRCP)

Russell Stetler has served as the National Mitigation Coordinator for the federal death penalty projects since 2005. He has investigated all aspects of capital cases, both trial, and post-conviction, since 1980. He served as chief investigator at the California Appellate Project from 1990 to 1995, focusing on federal habeas corpus cases. From 1995 to 2005, he was the director of investigation and mitigation at the New York Capital Defender Office. For more than two-and-a-half decades, he has lectured extensively on capital defense issues at over 350 continuing legal education programs in the United States, as well as dozens of additional programs in law schools and related professional conferences in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Samantha Kennedy

Attorney and Mitigation Specialist

Samantha Kennedy is an attorney and mitigation specialist specializing in Miller/Montgomery (juvenile cases) sentencing advocacy and capital defense penalty phase development. She has developed, in particular, an understanding of mental health and illness, symptomology, adolescent and brain development, intellectual disability, and the role that economics, gender, language, race, and culture can play both in life experiences and in systems that impact people. She has coached many budding professionals in the field of mitigation and has been faculty for dozens of capital defense and mental health training around the world.

Sarah Belal

Founder and Executive Director at Justice Project Pakistan

Sarah Belal is the Founder and Executive Director of Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a legal action non-profit organization established in Lahore in December 2009. For the past 10 years, JPP has represented individuals on death row, victims of police torture, and those who have been scooped up in the U.S. "War on Terror" and held beyond the rule of law. JPP conducts strategic litigation and public and policy advocacy to challenge unjust laws and to create progressive legal precedents. Ms. Belal completed her law degree at Oxford University in 2006 and obtained her license to practice in Pakistan in 2008. She is the recipient of the 2016 Franco-German Human Rights Prize, granted to only 16 human rights activists throughout the world. In December 2016, she was also awarded the National Human Rights Prize by the Federal Ministry of Human Rights and presented by the President of Pakistan. In 2013, she won the prestigious Echoing Green Global Fellowship—making JPP the first Pakistani organization to be recognized in the fellowship’s history.

Sheri Lynn Johnson

Professor of Law at Cornell Law School; Co-Founder and Assistant Director at Cornell Death Penalty Project

Sheri Lynn Johnson is the James and Mark Flanagan Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. She is an expert on the interface of race and issues in criminal procedure, and Co-Founder and Assistant Director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, an initiative to foster empirical scholarship on the death penalty, offer students an opportunity to work with practitioners on death penalty cases and provide information and assistance for death penalty lawyers. She currently teaches constitutional and criminal law and supervises the post-conviction litigation and capital trial clinics.

Tendai Biti

Senior Partner at Tendai Biti Law

Tendai Biti, Senior Partner at Tendai Biti Law, spent eighteen years at Zimbabwe’s oldest law firm Honey & Blanckenberg. During his time, he established a solid reputation as a hardworking and passionate lawyer specializing in the areas of constitutional and employment law. Between 2009 and 2013, he joined the Government of Zimbabwe as a Minister of Finance.

Zohra Ahmed

Clinical Teaching Fellow at Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide

Zohra Ahmed is a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, where she works with the International Human Rights Clinic and the Death Penalty Project. Prior to joining the Center, she was a public defender at the Legal Aid Society in New York City, where she represented individuals charged with crimes ranging from misdemeanors to homicides. While a public defender, she organized efforts to hold prosecutors accountable, most recently through Court Watch NYC, a community-led program to monitor criminal court proceedings. In law school, she trained at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU, where she participated in litigation challenging US drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen. She has also participated in and led human rights investigations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israel and Bolivia.

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