Wednesday Series VII: Using Evidence to Promote Public Safety - Practical Considerations for Defense

Cait Clarke directs the largest legal fellowships program in the country for lawyers doing legal aid and public defense work nationwide. She manages the Equal justice Works Fellowship Program (100 lawyers); the AmeriCorps Legal Fellows program (60 lawyers); and, the Summer Corps program (over 500 law students).

Cait has 18 years of experience as a lawyer, law professor and policy consultant. Prior to joining Equal Justice Works, Cait was the Principal of Clarke Consulting which provided leadership development and management training to nonprofits, public defenders, legal aid programs and the Department of Justice. Cait was the founding director of the National Defender Leadership Institute at NLADA, which develops leadership capacity in public defense practitioners.

Cait began her legal career as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow, practicing criminal defense and supervising in Georgetown's Criminal Justice Clinic. She then joined the faculty of Loyola Law School as an Associate Law Professor where she taught Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure and founded a Street Law Program. Subsequently, she completed a doctorate degree at Harvard Law School where she also taught at the Kennedy School of Government's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and managed the Executive Session on Public Defense funded by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Cait is a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern Public Defender Training Center (SPDTC). She serves as vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. In 2006, she and her husband created the Gardenia House Foundation, which provides permanent shelter to single Latina women and their children in the East Coast chicken-processing center of Georgetown, Delaware.

Cait holds her S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center's Criminal Justice Clinic, J.D. from Catholic University's Columbus School of Law, and B.S. from Villanova University's School of Business in Pennsylvania.

Richard Goemann is the executive director of the DC Law Students in Court Program. Most recently, Rich served as the director of Defender Legal Services for the National Legal Aid & Defender Association and was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of Virginia. Rich began his career in public defense in 1989 as a staff attorney in the Criminal Division of the DC Law Students in Court Program. He then moved to Virginia as an assistant and senior assistant public defender in Alexandria before being appointed Public Defender for the City and County of Fairfax. Later Rich served as Deputy and then Executive director of Virginia's Public Defender Commission and Executive Director for the PDC's successor agency, the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. He is the author of First You Cripple Public Defense: Musing on How Policymakers Dismantle the Adversarial System in Criminal Cases, 9 LOY. J. PUB. INT. L. 239 (2008).

Rich received his J.D. degree from New York University School of Law and his LL.M. in Advocacy from Georgetown University Law Center where he was as an E. Barrett Prettyman Graduate Fellow.

Christopher Flood is currently the Deputy Chief Defender of the Orleans Public Defenders (OPD). As the Interim Chief Defender, his work was instrumental in building organizational structures that allowed OPD to expand and further develop its ability to serve indigent people in New Orleans. Chris began his career in public defense at the Public Defender Service in Washington, DC where he developed an expertise in scientific and forensic evidence. He then moved on to become an Assistant Federal Defender in the Southern District of New York. Throughout his legal career, Chris has served on expert panels discussing issues of justice, technology, criminal law and defense practice, and has used his experiences to inform the larger discussion around the rights of indigent people and the progress of defense work.

Tim Young has been the Ohio Public Defender since January 1, 2008 after serving as a county public defender for 14 years. He has led reform efforts for indigent defense in Ohio, and he started the Ohio Wrongful Conviction Project, a non-DNA exoneration project. Tim has served on numerous boards and committees including the American Council of Chief Defenders, the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, the Committee on the Appointment of Counsel for Indigent Defendants in Capital Cases, and the Ohio Sentencing Commission.

He has focused on reform of indigent defense issues and has played a role in creating 'open discovery', new standards for witness identification procedures, and new standards in the preservation of DNA evidence and access to post-conviction DNA testing.

In conjunction with the National Defender Training Project he has instituted a skills based training curriculum for indigent defense lawyers in Ohio that includes programs in management, trial, appellate, juvenile, and new lawyer training.

He has tried numerous cases throughout his career ranging from misdemeanors to homicide cases. Tim received his B.A. and his J.D. from the University of Dayton. He has devoted his career to serving the indigent population of our society.