2021 Journal of the Legal Profession Virtual Symposium

Richard Kammen, Kammen & Moudy

Richard Kammen is a criminal defense lawyer with his office in Indianapolis, Indiana. He concentrates his practice in serious felonies, white-collar defense, complex crimes and death penalty defense. He graduated from Ripon College cum laude in 1968 and New York University School of Law in 1971. Admitted to the Bar in 1971, he began his practice after service in the United States Army.

During his professional career, Mr. Kammen has served as a public defender in the Marion County Courts on two occasions, 1972-1974 and 1978-1979. Mr. Kammen has represented clients charged with offenses ranging in seriousness from felony drunk driving to Racketeering and Capital Murder. Mr. Kammen has defended over three hundred homicide cases including approximately forty death penalty cases in both State and Federal courts. No client that Mr. Kammen has represented at trial has been sentenced to death.

A frequent speaker and lecturer on criminal defense issues, Mr. Kammen has spoken in almost every state and federal circuit. He has been a member of the faculty of the National Criminal Defense College since 1982 and the Trial Lawyers College since 2001.

Pardiss Kebriaei, Center for Constitutional Rights

Pardiss Kebriaei is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where her work encompasses “national security” and criminal justice issues. Current clients include Sharqawi Al Hajj, a citizen of Yemen detained indefinitely without charge in Guantánamo (Al Hajj v. Trump), and men and women sentenced to Death By Incarceration, a.k.a. Life Without Parole, in Pennsylvania state prisons (Scott v. PABPP).

She joined the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2007 as part of its then-dedicated Guantánamo Justice Initiative, and has represented detainees continuously since then. She also represented the families of two men who died in the prison in 2006 in federal court (Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Al-Zahrani v. United States). She was lead counsel for the Center for Constitutional Rights in the first cases challenging the U.S. “targeted killing” program (Al-Aulaqi v. Obama and Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta). She has also represented or served as amici to people unjustly charged with terrorism, in the process of their appeals or in challenging their uniquely harsh conditions of confinement, including Special Administrative Measures. These individuals include Ahmed Abu Ali, who is currently serving a Life Without Parole sentence in the Communications Management Unit in Terre Haute, IN, after a conviction based on a tortured confession during a two-year period of incommunicado detention in Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the Center for Constitutional Rights she worked in the international program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She has also taught at Hunter and Brooklyn Colleges of the City University of New York. She graduated from Northwestern University with degrees in history and cello performance, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Laura Rovner, Sturm College of Law

Laura Rovner is Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Through the clinic, she supervises law students representing incarcerated clients in constitutional litigation about prison conditions, such as indefinite solitary confinement, denial of outdoor exercise, lack of adequate medical and mental health care, and the free exercise of religion. She is a recipient of the ACLU of Colorado’s Edward Sherman Award for Outstanding Legal Work on Behalf of Further Civil Liberties in Colorado, the University of Denver’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and has been listed as one of 5280 Magazine’s Top Lawyers in Civil Rights. Professor Rovner was a member of the litigation teams that led to the creation of outdoor exercise yards at the state of Colorado’s supermax prison, for which the team was selected as a finalist for the 2017 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from the Public Justice Foundation. She has provided expert testimony before the European Court of Human Rights about conditions of confinement in the federal supermax prison and served on the Colorado legislature’s Work Group on Serious Mental Illness in Long-term Isolated Confinement. She lectures and writes frequently about the rights of people incarcerated in prisons and jails, particularly about solitary confinement. Laura graduated from Cornell Law School and received her LLM from Georgetown University Law Center. Her talk at TEDxMileHigh – What happens to people in solitary confinement – has been viewed over 2.3 million times.

Joshua Dratel, Joshua L. Dratel, P.C.

Joshua L. Dratel is an attorney in New York City, and practices criminal defense law in the state and federal courts nationwide. In his 38 years as a lawyer, his practice has included a wide range of matters, including “white collar,” “organized crime,” cybercrime, terrorism and national security, extradition, drugs, sex offenses, and capital cases. He is a past President of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (2005), as well as former Chair of its Amicus Curiae Committee. He is also a Co-Chair of the Amicus Curiae Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (“NACDL”), Chair of its National Security Committee, and serves as NACDL’s delegate to the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section Council, and is co-chair of ABA’s Defense Function Committee. He is also currently a Senior Fellow for Legal Research at the Fordham School of Law’s Center on National Security. He serves as a consultant to the John Adams Project, a joint ACLU/NACDL project designed to assist in the representation of “high value” detainees at Guantanamo Bay. He has written and lectured widely on terrorism and national security issues, including torture, extradition, the USA PATRIOT Act, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He is a 1978 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Columbia College, and a 1981 graduate of Harvard Law School.

“The Cost of Advocacy: Roadblocks to Representation at the Border”

Dina Haynes, New England Law

Dina Francesca Haynes is Professor of Law at New England Law | Boston, where she teaches immigration, refugee and asylum law, human trafficking and constitutional law. She has also taught at Georgetown University Law Center and American University’s Washington College of Law. Prior to teaching law, she spent a decade practicing international law within international organizations (as Director General of the Human Rights Department for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Human Rights Advisor to the OSCE in Serbia and Montenegro, and a Protection Officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Professor Haynes was also an attorney for the United States Department of Justice and clerked on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She researches, writes, and engages in policy work, legal advocacy and direct client representation in the areas of refugee and asylum law, immigration, human trafficking, human rights, and gender during and after conflict.

Erika Pinheiro, Al Otro Lado

As Litigation and Policy Director of the direct legal services non-profit Al Otro Lado, Erika Pinheiro leads her organization’s efforts in filing class action lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s attacks on the US asylum system, as well as slave labor practices and severe medical neglect in immigration detention facilities. Her team has reunified dozens of separated families, including parents who were deported without their children, and has freed dozens of asylum seekers detained at the border. Before joining Al Otro Lado, Pinheiro administered one of the largest DACA programs in California, as well as representation programs for Unaccompanied Children. She also oversaw high-volume Legal Orientation Programs for adults and children detained in immigration prisons.

Pinheiro’s work on behalf of unaccompanied children, refugee families and vulnerable detained migrants is frequently featured in national and international media outlets. She also provides on-the-ground context regarding US border policies to policy makers, including state Attorneys General, members of the US Congress and California elected officials. She has also provided technical assistance and numerous trainings regarding immigration law and policy to attorneys, the California State Bar, Federal Public Defender offices and Los Angeles County agencies.

Pinheiro holds both a JD and MPP from Georgetown University and is trained in econometric analysis of immigration policy. Her thesis analyzed the intersection between immigration enforcement by local police and crime.

Nicole Ramos, Al Otro Lado

Nicole Elizabeth Ramos is the Director of Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project. The project works with asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico, who wish to present themselves to immigration authorities in order to seek asylum in the United States. In addition to providing legal orientation and accompaniment, the project engages in human rights monitoring and impact litigation as well as broader media campaigns, and advocacy efforts to challenge systemic human rights violations committed by state actors, including advocacy before international human rights monitoring bodies.

Nicole is an Adjunct Professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law and lectures extensively at universities, law schools, and professional conferences throughout the United States and Mexico regarding the impact of border enforcement practices and policies on asylum seekers. Prior to joining Al Otro Lado, Nicole worked for six years as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Montgomery, Alabama, where she represented clients charged with federal felony offenses, and death row inmates challenging their convictions and death sentences in federal habeas proceedings. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law.

Hector Ruiz, Santa Fe Dreamers Project

Héctor is the Director of Removal Defense in the Santa Fe Dreamers Project’s El Paso office, where they primarily focus on removal defense and liberation from detention for detained immigrants and asylum-seekers in the El Paso-area detention facilities, with particular attention to members of the LGBTQ+ community. The removal defense team also provides legal support to trans and queer asylum-seekers in neighboring Ciudad Juárez, México (“Juárez”). Héctor is a native El Pasoan, the child of immigrants from Juárez, and a graduate of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Prior to joining Santa Fe Dreamers Project, Héctor was a Justice Fellow with the Immigrant Justice Corps at Immigration Equality in New York City. Héctor is driven by their passion for serving their community and making competent legal representation accessible for immigrants and asylum-seekers. Héctor is licensed to practice law in New York State and is admitted to practice before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. In their spare time, Héctor enjoys hiking, road trips, cooking regional Mexican food, and spending time in Juárez.

“The Constitutional and Ethical Implications of Government Surveillance”

Denny LeBoeuf, American Civil Liberties Union

Denny LeBoeuf has been the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project since 2008, defending against the capital charges in the military commissions on Guantanamo. She is the Past Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, and has been a capital defender for over 30 years, representing persons facing the death penalty at trial and in state and federal post-conviction proceedings. She teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally, and is particularly interested in the litigation of mental health and the ways in which race and poverty increase the traumatic burden carried by many clients. She has a strong interest in international human rights law as well, and has taught law students and foreign nationals in Amsterdam, Pakistan, Malawi, Turkey, Qatar and the U.K., and participates in the Cornell University Makwanyane Institute, collaborating with leading experts in a number of African countries.

Tyler Maulsby, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, PC

Tyler Maulsby is a partner in the Litigation, Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility and White Collar Defense & Investigations practice groups at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. He represents individuals and entities in a wide range of industries including law, media, entertainment, technology, fashion, education, non-profit, and government. In 2020 he was listed as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers magazine.

Maulsby currently serves as chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics and is an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law where he teaches Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility. He is a director of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers and is a member of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, the ABA Standing Committee on Public Protection in the Provision of Legal Services, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is the managing editor of the Frankfurt Kurnit Professional Responsibility blog and is a co-host of Frankfurt Kurnit’s webcast and podcast series Remotely Ethical. Maulsby is a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (BA) and Tulane Law School (JD).

Alex Sinha, Quinnipiac University School of Law

G. Alex Sinha is an assistant professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law. His research focuses on freedom of expression, race and inequality, legal and ethical theory, national security law, and law and technology. He has worked with Human Rights Watch and the ACLU to document the civil and human rights implications of U.S. government surveillance, especially for journalists and lawyers. His research has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has appeared on programs such as Democracy Now! and BBC World News Live. He earned a J.D. from NYU School of Law and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto.