MJF 40th Anniversary Celebration

300 Washington Avenue Southeast,Minneapolis MN 55455

28 September, 2022

Description

This year we are excited to welcome keynote speaker Robin Maher, longtime capital defense lawyer and federal defender, former Director of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project, now working at the US Department of Justice, Office for Access to Justice, speaking on the topic of “The Stories We Tell: Humanity and Hope in the Justice System.” We will also be honoring the winners of our 2022 Outstanding Service Awards. Robin M. Maher is a lawyer at the Office for Access to Justice, United States Department of Justice, and Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School. Ms. Maher graduated cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School and began her legal career at the Minneapolis law firm of Rider, Bennett, Egan & Arundel, where she worked on her first death penalty case as a volunteer lawyer. In 2001 she became the Director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project, where she worked nationally to improve the quality and availability of legal representation for people charged with or convicted of capital crimes. After leaving the ABA in 2014, Ms. Maher worked in the federal public defender system on state and federal death penalty cases. In addition to direct representation, Ms. Maher has more than twenty years’ experience training judges and lawyers throughout the United States on the professional and ethical obligations of capital defense counsel and the importance of a zealous defense effort. Internationally, Ms. Maher has lectured on the death penalty throughout Europe and Asia; organized training seminars for judges and lawyers in China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam; trained and consulted with capital defense trial teams representing 9/11 defendants in military commissions proceedings in Guantanamo Bay; and participated in judicial training and criminal legal reform efforts in Pakistan. Ms. Maher was the grateful recipient of an MJF scholarship while a law student and was proud to receive the MJF Private Practice Lawyer Award in 1997. She is also the recipient of awards from the American Bar Association, Witness to Innocence, and the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates & Mitigation Specialists. She is the author of numerous articles on the right to counsel and the death penalty and in 2017 delivered the keynote address at the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.