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Richard Bourke is the director of the LCAC. He graduated
from the Melbourne University School of Law in Australia where
he also gained a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Psychology and
Criminology. Richard came to New Orleans to volunteer and then
worked at the LCAC after pursuing a successful career as a
criminal barrister in Australia. Richard is certified as
capital trial lead counsel in Louisiana and also represents
defendants in state and federal capital post-conviction
proceedings in Texas and Mississippi. In 2007 Richard was
awarded the Sam Dalton Capital Defense Award by the Louisiana
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Before his legal
career, Richard worked as a youth counselor and social worker
with adolescent victims of physical and sexual abuse. Richard is
licensed in Louisiana, Texas, federal court and the United
States Supreme Court.
Kim
Watts is the LCAC's Office Manager, Personnel Director and
Financial Manager. Kim manages an array of duties ranging from
managing the daily affairs of the office to financial planning.
Kim also deals with staff needs such as health plans, leave,
work environment and equipment. Kim earned a degree in
Political Science from Xavier University while working her way
through school. She has worked to organize a student forum on
racism and campaigned for several political candidates. While at
Xavier, Kim undertook an internship with the Loyola Death
Penalty Resource Center and was later employed by it as a
research assistant. Prior to her arrival at the LCAC, Kim was a
legal secretary/paralegal for Loyola's Post-Conviction Defender
Organization.
Eleni
Antonopoulos is the Head of the Mitigation Department at the
LCAC. Eleni graduated from the Monash University Law School
after having previously completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in
Politics. A former volunteer at the LCAC, Eleni returned from
her native Australia to take her current position. In addition
to her work for clients in Louisiana, Eleni has worked on a
number of complex and difficult death penalty cases in Texas and
Singapore. In 2005, Eleni was awarded the inaugural Reprieve
Capital Defense Fellowship. Before moving to America, Eleni
worked as a personal care assistant for terminally-ill patients,
and donated her energies to numerous charities, including
ReprieveAustralia and Amnesty International.
Ethan
Brown is a mitigation specialist with the LCAC. He is a
graduate of Bennington College (with a degree in Literature) and
New York University (with a master’s degree in Journalism).
Before coming to LCAC, Ethan was a journalist who wrote about
drug policy, street crime, and criminal justice policy for New
York, The New York Observer, Wired, Mother Jones, The Guardian,
Details and The Village Voice. He is the author of three
investigative reporting driven non-fiction books about crime
that have received critical praise: Queens Reigns Supreme:
Fat Cat, 50 Cent and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler (Random
House, 2005); Snitch: Informers, Cooperators and the
Corruption of Justice(Public Affairs in 2007); and Shake
the Devil Off: A True Story of the Murder that Rocked New
Orleans (Henry Holt, 2009).
Anna
van Cleave is a staff attorney at the LCAC. She graduated
from NYU School of Law in 2004 and went on to work for the
Public Defender Service of DC as a staff attorney until she came
to LCAC in 2009. While she was employed at PDS, Anna took a
yearlong sabbatical to work as a staff attorney for the Orleans
Public Defenders in 2007 and 2008. She is licensed to practice
in Louisiana, the District of Columbia and in federal court.
Will
Collins is a Soros Justice Fellow at the LCAC. He is a
graduate of Yale Law School, where he served as an intern in the
school's Capital Punishment and Immigration Legal Services
Clinics, was the Submissions Editor for the Yale Law and Policy
Journal, and worked as a teaching fellow in the university's
Political Science Department. While in law school, Will also
held a summer associate position at the civil rights firm Relman
& Dane and conducted research with Georgia Legal Services
Program Farmworker Division. He is a summa cum laude graduate
of the University of Maryland, where he received a Masters of
Public Policy with a concentration in Social Policy.
Linda
Cortez is
the Director of Litigation Support at the LCAC. Linda is
responsible for litigation support services in the office,
including supervision of LCAC’s interns and volunteers. Prior
to coming to LCAC, Linda worked as a social worker in child
abuse and neglect cases. After obtaining a law degree from West
Virginia University, she worked as an attorney in Maryland in
the areas of administrative law and employment law. Linda has
also held numerous academic positions including a faculty
position at Johns Hopkins University for many years where she
developed and taught law-related courses.
Aliza
Cover is a staff attorney at the LCAC. Aliza graduated from
Yale Law School in 2008, after which she clerked for Judge
Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to law
school, Aliza worked for two years as a paralegal at Children's
Rights, a nonprofit in New York that fights for reform in
America's child welfare systems through impact litigation on
behalf of foster children. During law school, Aliza was a
student director of the Immigration Legal Services Clinic and
spent her summers interning at the Refugee Law Project in Uganda
and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco
Bay Area. Aliza is admitted to practice law in Louisiana and in
federal court.
Jim Craig
is senior capital attorney at the LCAC. Jim graduated first in
his class at the Mississippi College School of Law, where he was
Editor-in-Chief of the Mississippi College Law Review. He began
representing clients in capital cases in 1986. From 1989-1995
Jim was Executive Director of the Mississippi Capital Defense
Resource Center, a non-profit law office which represented
defendants in capital trials, appeals, post-conviction
proceedings, and federal habeas corpus cases, and which provided
assistance to capital lawyers in their cases. He was a member
of the Mississippi Public Defender Commission and is a Life
Member of the Mississippi Public Defender Association. Jim
practiced law as a partner in the Jackson Mississippi office of
Phelps Dunbar LLP from 1995-2010; during this time he
represented several defendants in death penalty cases and was
also lead counsel in civil challenges to Mississippi’s procedure
for lethal injection and its capital post-conviction system. As
an adjunct professor at the Mississippi College School of Law,
he taught a regularly offered seminar in Capital Punishment Law
and was named to the American Law Institute’s study group
revising the sentencing portions of the Model Penal Code. Jim
came to the LCAC in 2011. He is licensed in Louisiana,
Mississippi, Federal Court, and the United States Supreme Court
Al
Grandoit is a mitigation specialist with the LCAC. He is a
graduate of University of South Florida, with a degree in
Political Science and minor in Public Administration. After
receiving his undergraduate degree, he worked with Florida’s
Department of Children and Families and Office of the Attorney
General and conducted child abuse investigations and assisted in
coordinating protective services. Al later moved to
Massachusetts to pursue his Masters in Government at Harvard
University. While in Massachusetts, Al continued working with at
risk youth and families for various family support and community
outreach programs, and volunteered as a community court
mediator.
Christine Lehmann
is a staff attorney at the LCAC. Christine graduated from Yale
Law School after previously completing a Masters in Theology at
Harvard. Christine is certified as capital trial associate
counsel in Louisiana and is on the federal CJA capital panel in
the Eastern District of Louisiana. She clerked in the Federal
Second Circuit Court of Appeals before beginning work as a staff
attorney at the LCAC in 2002. In October 2006, Christine left
the office temporarily to help reform the Orleans indigent
defender program. She became director of the Orleans Public
Defenders in April 2007, and remained at that position through
August 2008, during which time she oversaw tremendous structural
reform. She returned to the LCAC in September 2008. Christine
has a particular expertise in working with clients with mental
illness and intellectual disabilities. Christine is licensed to
practice in Louisiana and in federal court.
Ada
Phleger is a staff attorney at LCAC. She earned her law
degree from New York University, where she participated in the
capital defender clinic, in Montgomery, Alabama with the Equal
Justice Initiative. While at EJI she worked with clients on
Alabama’s death row, and assisted in the organization’s
litigation of the landmark Supreme Court case Graham v.
Florida, which ended the practice of sentencing juveniles to
life without parole for non-homicide crimes. During law school
she also interned with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project, and the
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Before her legal
career, Ada worked for the Speaker of the California State
Assembly. She is licensed to practice law in Louisiana.
Danalynn Recer is of counsel with the LCAC. She graduated
from the University of Texas School of Law. Danalynn has
represented capital defendants at all stages of the process,
primarily in Louisiana and Texas. Previous employment includes a
position as an investigator with the celebrated Texas Resource
Center in 1992, and after in 1993, she became a Law Fellow with
the agency. Danalynn is currently directing the
Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE), in Houston, Texas,
which aims to tackle the grave problems facing indigent defense
and capital defendants across the border.
Emily Washington
is an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellow at the LCAC. Her
fellowship project focuses on a critical review of the use of
forensic evidence in criminal trials in Louisiana. Emily is a
graduate of Yale Law School, where she participated in the
Complex Federal Litigation and Capital Punishment clinics.
Prior to law school, Emily worked as a contractor to the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. She is a graduate of Brown
University, where she concentrated in Biology and International
Relations. Emily is admitted to practice law in Louisiana.
Dawn Whitt is a
mitigation specialist with the LCAC. She is a graduate of
Virginia Tech (with degrees in Psychology and Sociology) and
John Jay College of Criminal Justice (with a Master’s degree in
Forensic Psychology). Before coming to LCAC, Dawn worked in
Phoenix, AZ providing family preservation services to those
connected with Child Protective Services and the Juvenile Court
System and as a Classification Counselor with the Maricopa
County Sheriff’s Office. She then went on to provide mental
health services to the incarcerated at the Maricopa County
Jails. Dawn also worked as a Capital Mitigation Specialist at
the Legal Defender’s Office in Maricopa County for four years.
Carol
Zikmund is the receptionist for the LCAC. She graduated
from the University of New Orleans with a Bachelor of Arts and
before joining the LCAC served as a legal secretary, legal
assistant and office manager in a number of law offices for over
a decade.
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