Ineffective Assistance of Counsel: Investigative Strategies

This webinar will focus on the role of mitigation in identifying and supporting IAC claims, with guidance on what defense teams should look for, how to avoid common pitfalls, and the ethical responsibilities involved. Topics will include engaging with trial counsel, obtaining affidavits, and working with experts. More information will be available soon.

Register for this event by clicking here.

This webinar is Part 2 of a two-part series. For more information about Part 1, click here.

For more information, please read Mitigation that Worked: Empirical Evidence of Why Jurors Rejected the Death Penalty in Some Highly Aggravated Capital Cases, White is Right: The Racial Construction of Effective Assistance of Counsel, or Back to the Future: (Re)Constructing Ineffective Assistance of Counsel.

Presenter Bios

Amy Williams, LCSW

Amy is a licensed clinical social worker and the founding principal of Williams Mitigation and Consulting. She provides mitigation investigation services on capital cases and serves as a mitigation consultant for the Texas Habeas Assistance and Training Project (TxHAT) and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). Prior to these roles, she was the CHU Chief Investigator at the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Public Defender of the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, Texas. She has practiced capital mitigation in trial, state, and federal post-conviction proceedings for over ten years.

Amy graduated from the University of Houston where she researched parent-child dyads’ contributions to the development of anxiety and depressive disorders in children and later in graduate school, co-sponsored a study focused on African-American women’s needs for trauma-informed, culturally competent mental health care. Amy is published in the Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health and has worked as a psychotherapist in inpatient and outpatient treatment settings in New York and Texas since 2018.

Susan Garvey

Susan Garvey is the National Mitigation Coordinator, a position she has held since January 2024.  Before attending law school, she worked as an investigator on federal habeas cases at the California Appellate Project in the early 1990s. She went on earn her law degree at the University of California, Davis, and worked at the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco from its inception in 1999 until she accepted the National Mitigation Coordinator position. HCRC provided direct post-conviction representation for the country’s largest death row. Sue deepened her skills in mitigation investigation and habeas litigation at HCRC and became its Deputy Director of Training in 2018. She has national experience in training as well and served for several years as a co-chair of California’s Capital Case Defense Seminar, the country’s largest capital defense training program.