Strengthening The Sixth is proud to partner with the Santa Cruz County Office of the Public Defender to host a 2 day, in-person CLE training. This training, Strengthening the Sixth: Building Cases and Community Through Holistic Defense, features a renouned faculty brought together to facilitate interactive and informative sessions. Below you will find the session descriptions and faculty bios for this program.
Donavan Bailey is a Capital Mitigation Specialist with the Maricopa County Office of the Legal Advocate. Previously he worked in trail mitigation with the Maricopa County Public Defender and also as a Dispositional Advisor with the Minnesota Public Defender Office for 14 years. As a Licensed Social Worker he has had the privilege of working in the State of Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona. His work has extended in the community in various ways important to Public Defender work, including being trained as a Cultural Competency Facilitator under Dr. Dietra Hawkins in Atlanta, GA and being governor appointed to the Minnesota Council of African Heritage. Donavan is currently completing a Doctorate in Education at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota
Cathleen (Cathy) Bennett is the Assistant Training Director with the National Association for Public Defense. Cathleen L. Bennett recently moved to Anchorage, Alaska from Boston, Massachusetts where she was a public defender with the Committee for Public Counsel Services (the Massachusetts Statewide Public Defender) for 30 years. She was the Criminal Defense Training Director at CPCS for 17 years. As a trial lawyer trial lawyer in the CPCS Public Defender Division, she defended clients charged with murder and other serious felonies. She now works as a training consultant for the National Association for Public Defense, and she intends to accept appointments to represent criminally accused people in the Alaska Courts soon.
Cathy is on the faculty and the Board of Trustees of the National Criminal Defense College. She is a Core Faculty member of Gideon’s Promise (formerly the Southern Public Defender Training Center), which was the subject of the award-winning HBO documentary “Gideon’s Army,” and she has taught for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and criminal defense training programs across the country. She received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Committee for Public Counsel Services in 2007, the Scholar-Mentor Award from Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (MCLE) in 2008, the Outstanding Faculty Award in 2011 and the Stephen B. Bright Award in 2018 from Gideon’s Promise, and the Gideon Award from the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in 2017.
Jeff Chapdelaine, JD, LICSW is an Attorney, Forensic Social Worker, and Forensic Drama Therapist based in Boston, Massachusetts. He represents clients in both Criminal and Civil cases. He consults nationally on plaintiff’s civil cases and on cases where people are accused of committing crime, working with lawyers on both trial strategy, juror focus, and trauma informed client focused case preparation. His consulting company trains both lawyers and mental health professionals on areas where legal systems and mental health systems intersect, and assists organizations with organization development. He serves on the Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Criminal Curriculum Advisory Committee and as faculty locally for MCLE and Committee for Public Counsel Services training programs, and nationally for the National Criminal Defense College, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, the Trial Lawyers College, and at other programs.
Terri Collins-Green, LCSW-C is the Director of Social Work for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Mrs. Collins-Green has been with MOPD over ten years, beginning her career with MOPD as a line social worker, she was promoted to Regional Social Work Manager, and finally Director of Social Work in 2018. In 2016, she was the recipient of the MOPD’s Jane Addams, Believer of Justice Award. She also serves as a faculty member for the MOPD’s Gideon’s Promise, new attorney training program conducting sessions on Secondary Trauma and Sentencing Advocacy.
Mrs. Collins-Green is an Adjunct Professor with Morgan University, School of Social Work, teaching master level classes in Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Public Child Welfare. She is a field instructor for social work interns from Morgan University and University of Maryland. She is trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy from Behavioral Tech. She is a member of the Citizen's Advisory Board for the Patuxent Institution.
Mrs. Collins-Green has been a Maryland state employee for over 20 years, and has worked in a variety of social work settings which include child welfare, outpatient mental health therapy, residential psychiatric adolescent care, and forensic social work. Mrs. Collins-Green holds an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Towson University and a MSW from University of Maryland. Mrs. Collins-Green is a motorcycle rider enthusiast during her free time.
Keeda Haynes is a Senior Legal Advisor with Free Hearts based in Nashville, TN. She supports state and local advocates advancing sentencing reforms and challenging collateral consequences, with a focus on state campaigns to restore voting rights to all justice-involved people. Haynes is an experienced criminal defense attorney and formerly incarcerated advocate.
Prior to joining The Sentencing Project, she was a Senior Legal Advisor at Free Hearts, a criminal justice reform organization based in Nashville. In 2020, Haynes ran for Congress for the 5th district in Tennessee and received 40% of the vote against an entrenched incumbent. She received her law degree from Nashville School of Law.
Lori James-Townes is the Executive Director of the National Association for Public Defense. Lori earned her master’s Degree in clinical social work (University of Maryland SSW) and her B.A. in Social Work from Morgan State University. Lori has over 25 years of clinical, training, and organizational development experience, which includes program development, program management, collegiate instruction, as well as, leadership and management training. Lori has served as faculty for several universities, and as a member of national and regional leadership, development, communication, and team-building trainings.
Lori is also President of Expand-Now, LLC, through this entity she can fulfill her lifelong passion of adding value to others through teaching and learning. She is a part-time Clinical Professor in the Family Studies and Community Development Department at Towson University. Prior to joining the Towson University family, she served as Director of Leadership and Program Development at Maryland Office of Public Defender which has more than 800 employees across the state of Maryland. While in this position, she demonstrated her ability to help others grow in the areas of teamwork, leadership and management. She also led the agency’s social work staff, consultants, and interns. In 2015, The Daily Record Newspaper named her as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women. In addition to working as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she is also an author, and John Maxwell Certified Coach, Facilitator, Teacher, Trainer, and Speaker.
La Mer Kyle-Griffiths is the recently appointed Assistant Public Defender of the Santa Barbara Public Defender’s Office. Before that she was the Director of Training and Complex Litigation with Still She Rises in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has been a lifelong public defender amplifying the voice of the poor in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Washington and now California.
In Seattle, she was responsible for designing, organizing, and facilitating trainings for the over 400 team members of the Department of Public Defense. There she gained an appreciation for the need for defense teams to actively engage with their own implicit bias. She became certified with King County to teach and facilitate on issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Before that she practiced for over 17 years as a public defender in both Kentucky and Boston. In Kentucky, she was part of the Capital Defense Unit and litigated several death penalty cases.
She has sat on many case reviews on death penalty cases and continues to teach nationally and at various state programs on capital litigation, voir dire, and mitigation. She has taught investigators, attorneys, mitigation specialists, and law students across the country in the areas of capital litigation, litigation with a racial and gender lens, investigation, sentencing, trial skills, and forensics. She has litigated juvenile, capital, felony, and misdemeanor cases as well as arguing two cases to the Kentucky Supreme Court. She has been an adjunct professor at the Seattle University College of Law, the Iowa University of Law, Boston College and currently teaches at the Darrow Baldus Death Penalty College, the National Criminal Defense College, Gideon’s Promise, and Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop. She has taught in various organizations in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as well as leadership and supervision with an inclusive lens.
A graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law she has been a lifelong advocate and is looking forward to her continuing adventure with Tom, her Chucks-wearing, crusading, capital defender husband and three young women who all learned to crow “Acquittal” early!
Jonathan Lyon is currently the Investigator Resource Coordinator, past Member Support Coordinator and the national survey investigator for National Association for Public Defense. Since the pandemic he has led roughly 75 meetups for investigators both nationally and internationally. Jon is the president of Lyon Legal Logistics to help attorneys in and out of court with Discovery and technology and has assisted attorneys in multiple federal court jurisdictions(www.lyonlegallogistics.com). He is also a legal investigator for McClain Investigations.
Jon began his investigative background working in a PI firm and then for 12 years for the Office of the State Appellate Defender of Illinois. His primary focus has been on post-conviction death penalty cases. In addition, Jon worked for LexisNexis as an award-winning national trainer of the CaseMap suite of software. He also worked for Lockheed Martin as a contractor supporting government attorneys and investigators with software and electronic discovery support needs. He is a Certified Defense Investigator through DePaul's Center for Justice in Capital Cases and a Certified Trainer through the Bureau of Justice Assistance. He has taught at the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, Cardoza, DePaul, Kent, Iowa, and University of Michigan law schools. He has also taught at the National Defense Investigator Associations Annual Conferences, National Association of Legal Investigators annual conference, National Association for Public Defense, The Innocence Project, NACDL, Federal Defender's winning strategies conferences, Life in the Balance, American Society of Criminology, US Army, and numerous state and county public defender conferences. It is not unheard of for Jon to be invited back to conferences. Jon is the Creator/Webmaster for the internationally utilized website www.internetsleuth.net.
Aisha McWeay is the Executive Director of Still She Rises based in Tulsa, OK. Aisha McWeay is a career public defender and indigent defense advocate. Prior to assuming the Executive Director role at Still She Rises in February 2019, Aisha served as the Deputy Public Defender for Nashville-Davidson County, where she began her career as a law clerk. Both nationally and locally, Aisha serves in a number of training and mentoring capacities within indigent defense and community organizations. In recognition of her contributions to the public defense community, in July 2017 she was awarded the Stephen B. Bright award from Gideon's Promise. Aisha remains committed to causes that align with strengthening and sustaining high-quality indigent defense while empowering and supporting client communities.
Aisha graduated summa cum laude from Clark Atlanta University, where she majored in Mass Communications with a concentration in Public Relations. Aisha serves as adjunct faculty for the University of Virginia Law School and Vanderbilt University Law School, where she obtained her law degree and served as the 2021-22 George Barrett Distinguished Practitioner in Residence.
Jeff Sherr is the Training Director for the National Association for Public Defense producing hundreds of webinars for public defense professionals across the nation. Prior to that he was the Manager of the Education and Strategic Planning Branch of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy. Jeff started with the DPA in1994, starting first as a law clerk, then working with the Juvenile Post Dispositional Unit, then in the trial division with the Stanford Field Office, and now in Frankfort with the education staff. Jeff graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 1995. Jeff has been a faculty member for Gideon's Promise, the National Criminal Defense College, Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College, Harvard Trial Advocacy Workshop, Bronx Defender Academy, and other state litigation institutes. In addition to regularly training public defender litigators and trainers, Jeff trains public defender leaders nationally and for many individual defender states and offices. Jeff also has an extensive background in theatre having studied with the National Shakespeare Conservatory and the University of Kansas. Jeff performs regularly with Central Kentucky Improv in Lexington, Kentucky and at Improv Festivals across the country.
Deja Vishny is a consultant and trainer and Public Defender Resource Counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers based in Milwaukee Wisconsin
She was formerly the Deputy Training Director and head of the statewide homicide practice group at the Wisconsin State Public Defender and is currently of counsel at Nelson Defense Group in Hudson Wisconsin. She joined the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College in Macon Georgia in 1998 and lectures at criminal defense and public defender seminars throughout the United States. She taught trial advocacy at Marquette University Law School for, has taught trial skills in India, and was a guest lecturer at a Harvard Law School class, “The American Prosecutor”.
Ms. Vishny attended the Reid School on Interrogation and published articles in The Champion and The Wisconsin Defender on cross examining police interrogators. She co- chaired the false confession program at the inaugural session of the National Forensic College at Cardozo Law School in June 2014 and has taught at that program several other years.
Ms. Vishny served several terms on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the board of the State Bar of Wisconsin Criminal Law Section and is currently on the Board of Regents of the National Criminal Defense College. She is a five time recipient of the Wisconsin Criminal Defense Association’s award, given to those who obtain acquittals in homicide cases, as well as recipient other awards, given to those who’ve made lifetime contributions to indigent defense in Wisconsin. Her book, Suppressing Criminal Evidence, is in its fourth edition and is available from James Publishing Company at http://jamespublishing.com/shop/ suppressing-criminal-evidence/.
Lisa Monet Wayne was appointed Executive Director of NACDL and the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice by the Board of Directors and assumed the role full-time in February of 2022. Prior, Wayne had been an attorney in private practice in both state and federal courts around the country since 1985. She has represented hundreds of individuals and corporations in both the investigation phase and criminally accused capacity. Previously, Wayne was a Colorado State Public Defender for 13 years where she served as office head, training director, and senior trial attorney. She lectures nationally with NACDL, National Criminal Defense College, National Institute of Trial Advocates, American Bar Association, numerous State Bar Associations, Public Defender Organizations, and many other legal organizations. Wayne has served as an adjunct law professor at the University of Colorado where she taught trial advocacy for 22 years, she serves on faculty at the Trial Practice Institute at Harvard Law School, The National Criminal Defense College, and Cardoza Law School.