The SPDTC Board of Directors is comprised of professionals committed to bringing justice to poor people accused of crimes, have a wealth of experience working with public defender offices, non-profit organizations, and foundations; and are committed to advancing social justice causes. All of our Board members have made a significant investment in the public interest arena. Collectively, the Board is indispensable to our ability to carry out the SPDTC mission.
Gary Kohlman, Partner, Bredhoff & Kaiser, PLLC (Co-Chair)
Gary Kohlman’s nationwide practice has led to trials in almost twenty states and includes representation of John Jenrette in the ABSCAM investigation, the defense of Chinese spy Larry Wu-tai Chin, defending Conley Wolfswinkle as part of the Charles Keating investigation, defending FBI Agent H. Edward Tickel in a variety of criminal cases including robbing the FBI credit union and defending a family member in the Rayful Edmonds criminal conspiracy case.
Kohlman joined Bredhoff & Kaiser in 1995. His varied litigation practice at the firm has included representation of a plaintiff in the Bush/Gore post-election litigation, the successful defense of Special Prosecutor Ken Starr’s Press Secretary Charles Bakaly in a criminal contempt trial, representation of witnesses in the Monica Lewinsky investigation, representation of Oklahoma Bomber Terry Nichols in Washington, D.C. proceedings, representation of Eric Severeid’s widow in a medical malpractice case and the successful prosecution of two civil rights complaints on the behalf of estates of children who were murdered while in District of Columbia approved juvenile facilities. Kohlman was a senior attorney at the Public Defender Service from 1973-1982. He was the Training Director for two classes of newly hired attorneys and then was the Felony Trial Chief for four years. Kohlman graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was mentored by Professor Yale Kamisar. Kohlman is a member of the bars in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Washington (inactive).
Mark Rochon, Member, Miller & Chevalier, Chartered (Co-Chair)
Rochon’s practice focuses on white-collar defense in criminal and civil matters. He has conducted extensive internal investigations on behalf of multi-national corporations and has represented them in significant matters under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In addition, Rochon has represented individuals in connection with government contracting fraud investigations, export controls investigations, insider-trading investigations, shareholder suits, accounting and bank fraud cases, and other fraud related allegations.
Rochon’s practice frequently involves advising clients about the pitfalls inherent in parallel governmental inquiries and private litigation. Among his recent cases, he has represented a private union-affiliated company that faced multiple governmental inquiries from prosecutors, legislators, and regulators, while it simultaneously engaged in related civil litigation with private parties. He has represented several multi-national companies in connection with potential or ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission and/or Department of Justice investigations, and served as lead counsel to a former outside Director of Enron in connection with the coordinated shareholder actions related to Enron’s bankruptcy. In the last three years his internal investigations work has included matters arising across the world, including one coordinated inquiry into more than a hundred issues arising in a client’s overseas operations in multiple countries.
Rochon has been lead counsel in more than 140 jury trials and has argued before appellate courts across the country. In 2007, Washingtonian Magazine named Rochon one of the “75 Best Trial Lawyers in Washington.” He frequently lectures on trial practice and internal investigations both to students and to practitioners. He is the immediate past Chair of the District of Columbia Bar’s Judicial Evaluation Committee, he is the Vice-Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Department, and the former Chair of the Firm’s Diversity Committee.
Rochon is the Co-Secretary of the Business Crimes Section of the International Bar Association. He is a long-time Board Member of Law Students in Court, and now serves as the Chair of its Advisory Board. He also is a Founding Board Member of the Southern Public Defender Training Center.
Rochon previously served as the Trial Chief of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, supervising 35 to 40 attorneys handling a wide variety of cases. He served on a nuclear submarine in the U.S. Navy from 1975 to 1977.
Rochon earned his B.S. in 1980 from Western Michigan University and his J.D. from Stanford University in 1983.
Blair Brown, Partner, Zuckerman Spaeder, LLP
From defending the former president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee to obtaining damage awards for clients in commercial litigation, Blair G. Brown has tried numerous cases to final verdict. He has represented individuals, partnerships and corporations in a wide array of civil and criminal litigation matters, including white collar criminal investigations and prosecutions; tort actions alleging legal malpractice, wrongful death, civil rights violations, fraud, and misappropriation of trade secrets; the defense of physicians and attorneys in professional disciplinary proceedings; and complex commercial arbitration and litigation.
Before joining Zuckerman Spaeder in 1988, Brown tried serious felony cases as an attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He also served as pro se law clerk to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and as law clerk to Senior Circuit Judge Leonard P. Moore.
Brown has served as a faculty member of the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Program and of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. He is also a lecturer on criminal and civil practice topics for continuing legal education programs and has testified before the Council of the District of Columbia on constitutional and criminal law issues.
Steve Bumbaugh, Executive Director, Specialty Family Foundation
Steve Bumbaugh is the Executive Director of the Specialty Family Foundation based in Los Angeles, California. The foundation funds education projects in low-income communities. Earlier in his career, Bumbaugh founded an educational program for middle and high school students in the Anacostia neighborhood in Southeast, Washington, D.C., which at the time was one of the highest crime zip codes in the United States. Students in the program graduated from high school at three times the rate of their peers outside of the program, and enrolled in college at six times the rate. Bumbaugh’s experience also includes work in consulting. He worked in the San Francisco and Washington, D.C. offices of Mercer Management Consulting and then founded Paradigm Consulting, a firm that focused on large, urban school districts, other public agencies, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Bumbaugh also worked as a Program Officer for the David and Lucille Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program and the California Endowment.
Bumbaugh is a former board member of the National Black Child Development Institute, a national advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. He is also a founding board member of the SEED School in Washington, D.C.—the nation’s first and only public boarding school. Bumbaugh earned a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University and a Masters in Business Administration from Stanford.
Cait Clarke, Director, Public Interest Law Opportunities, Equal Justice Works
Cait Clarke was appointed Director of Public Interest Law Opportunities at Equal Justice Works in May 2007. Clarke is a respected legal educator with 18 years of experience in teaching, training, and consulting on the law and legal affairs. Most recently as the director of Clarke Consulting she provided leadership and management consulting to nonprofit organizations, public defense and legal aid programs, including Equal Justice Works. She served as a principal and the legal education specialist with Watershed Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based firm specializing in negotiation training. Clarke was the founding director of the National Defender Leadership Institute at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, which develops leadership capacity in public defense practitioners nationwide. She began her legal career practicing criminal defense representing the indigent in Maryland Courts. She then moved to New Orleans to join the law faculty of Loyola Law School as an Associate Professor of Law. Upon completion of her doctorate degree at Harvard, she taught at the Kennedy School of Government’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management and ran the Executive Session on Public Defense. In her community work, Clarke serves on the Board of Directors of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and is a founding director of Gardenia House Inc., which provides shelter to migrant women and children. She was the co-chair of the National Consortium on Community Problem Solving and recently served as a member of the Advisory Board overseeing the development of the National Center for State Court’s new Problem Solving Justice Toolkit. She is extensively published, with law reviews, articles, book chapters and book reviews to her credit. Clarke 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 Commerce and Finance.
George H. Kendall, Of Counsel, Squire Sanders
George H. Kendall’s practice focuses primarily on pro bono matters. Mr. Kendall handles capital, criminal and civil rights cases around the United States at trial, on appeal and in post-conviction proceedings including in the United States Supreme Court, where he has represented clients for more than 25 years. He also regularly consults with capital defense lawyers nationwide.
Mr. Kendall was a Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Eleventh Circuit Capital Litigation Project in Atlanta, Georgia, and later joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., in New York. In the Legal Defense Fund he handled capital cases at trial, on appeal, and in state and federal post-conviction proceedings, and regularly consulted with attorneys throughout the country who represent capital defendants. Kendall monitored all capital, habeas, and race litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States. Additionally, he monitored Congress’s efforts to amend the federal habeas corpus statute, and coordinated a nationwide effort to assist attorneys representing prisoners in habeas corpus proceedings, and its review of numerous other criminal justice matters.
Kendall was the editor of a newsletter, Race Notes, which identified new and imaginative arguments and strategies that citizens can use to lessen the influence of racial bias in the criminal justice system. He has also taught courses on criminal justice issues at Yale Law School, Florida State University College of Law and St. John’s School of Law. Kendall often appeared as a panelist or keynote speaker at capital litigation seminars held throughout the country.
Ernie Lewis, former Director, Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy
Ernie Lewis retired from his position, after 31 years of service, as the Kentucky Public Advocate in September, 2008. He had been with the Department of Public Advocacy since he was admitted to the bar in 1977 in several different capacities, including appellate lawyer, local assistance branch manager, directing attorney of the Richmond Trial Office, and Regional Manager for the Central Kentucky Region. Since 1985, he has been on the faculty of the National College of Criminal Defense located at Mercer Law School in Macon, Georgia. He is on the faculty of the National Defender Leadership Institute as well as the NLADA’s Nuts and Bolts of Defender Leadership. He also served as Chair of the American Council of Chief Defenders from 2006-2007.
Lewis was named Kentucky Public Advocate by Governor Patton in October of 1996, and again in 2000. He was appointed to a third term by Governor Fletcher in 2004. He served as a member of the Governor’s Task Force on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, the Department of Juvenile Justice Advisory Board, the Board of the Kentucky Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Board of the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, the Governor’s Criminal Justice Response Team, the Kentucky Criminal Justice Council, the Kentucky Corrections Commission, the Chair of the Corrections/Committee Based Sanctions Committee of the Criminal Justice Council, and the Governor’s Drug Summit. He also served on the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Healing and the Law in Kalamazoo, Michigan from 2003-2006. Lewis has testified on indigent defense issues before Task Forces in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Louisiana. In 2008, the Chief Justice of Kentucky presented Lewis with the Chief Justice’s Award at the Kentucky Bar Association Annual Conference. In 2007, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer presented him with the Champion of Indigent Defense Award. In 2000, he was named Outstanding Lawyer by the Kentucky Bar Association. Lewis received his undergraduate degree from Baylor University in 1969, a Masters of Divinity from Vanderbilt University in 1973, and a Juris Doctoris (J.D.) from Washington University in 1977.
Ray Marshall, Professor Emeritus, University Texas-Austin and former U.S. Secretary of Labor
Ray Marshall is the current Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, and is president of Ray Marshall, Inc., a research and consulting firm.
Marshall was the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. He is also a former national president of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Economy, Industrial Relations Research Association, and has worked at the American Economic Association and Council on Foreign Relations.
Marshall is a member of the boards o the National Center on Education and the Economy, for which he is the chair, and the Economic Policy Institute. He has served on a number of task forces and commissions concerned with labor and economic policy. Some of the most recent include the Austin Equity Commission and Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Action Council on Minority Education, which he co-chaired; the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, which he co-chaired; the Clinton administration’s Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, for which he chaired of the International Working Group; the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on International Financial Architecture; and the State Department Advisory Council on Labor Diplomacy. He also served as an arbitrator on the panels of the American Arbitration Association and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service between 1956 and 1976.
Marshall has also served on the boards and audit committees of a number of corporations and foundations, including USX, Aurora National Life Insurance Company, Hyatt Legal Services, Advanced Photovoltaic Systems, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, Spelman College and the German Marshall Fund.
Marshall earned his PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and honorary degrees from Rutgers University, the University of Maryland, Millsaps College, St. Edwards University, Bates College, Tulane University, Cleveland State University, and Utah State University.
Michele Roberts, Partner, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, LLP
Michele A. Roberts’ practice focuses on complex civil and white collar criminal litigation before state courts, federal courts and in administrative proceedings. Her white collar practice has included representation of defendants charged with racketeering, tax fraud, wire fraud, insurance fraud, bank fraud and violation of securities regulations. Her civil practice has involved representation of both plaintiffs and defendants in the areas of commercial development, products liability, Title VII and premises liability.
Before entering private practice, Roberts served for eight years in the office of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she was trial counsel in more than 40 jury trials and ultimately was named chief of the office’s trial division.
Roberts received her B.A. in 1977 from Wesleyan University and her J.D. in 1980 from the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. She is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the American Bar Association and the National Bar Association; a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers; and a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Roberts is a frequent lecturer and presenter to both the bench and bar on a variety of topics related to litigation and trial practice. She is a member of the adjunct faculty at Harvard Law School and previously served on the adjunct faculty at the George Washington University School of Law, as a lecturer in the Public Defender Service Training Program and as an instructor with the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She serves on the District of Columbia Advisory Commission on Sentencing.
An April 2002 survey in Washingtonian magazine ranked Ms. Roberts first among Washington’s top 75 lawyers, calling her “the finest pure trial lawyer in Washington – magic with juries, loved by judges, feared by opposing counsel.” She was again named as one of the city’s leading lawyers in 2004 (“Top Lawyers,” Washingtonian, December 2004), and in 2006 was named by Legal Times as one of Washington’s 10 Leading Criminal Defense Lawyers (February 20, 2006). She is listed in The Best Lawyers in America (2006).
Claudia Saari, Interim Circuit Public Defender, Stone Mountain, GA
Claudia Saari is the Interim Circuit Public Defender with the Office of the Public Defender for the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit. Since joining the office in 1987, Saari has tried a wide variety of cases, ranging from DUI to death penalty cases. Her current focus is on representing clients in high profile cases, murder, and cases involving DNA evidence. She has had 78 homicide jury trials. Saari serves as Director of the internship program, is a member of the Executive Committee, and manages the training and supervision of all attorneys in the office. Saari received a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 1984 and a law degree from Emory University School of Law in 1987. She is a Fellow with the American College of Trial Lawyers, and is also a Master with the Lumpkin Inns of Court. She has served on the faculty of the Southern Public Defender Training Center since its inception.
