Ask a Mitigation Specialist – July 15

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If you need to speak with an Advisor but are unavailable during core Ask A Mitigation Specialist hours (3 p.m.–5:10 p.m. ET), or if you are an international practitioner who can only meet outside the times offered, please contact Reginald Lanier at [email protected]. We will do our best to accommodate requests outside of standard hours; however, availability for such calls cannot be guaranteed.

Heather Barrow

Heather began her career over 26 years ago working with Bryan Stevenson at EJI while still a college student earning her degree in History at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama. 

Heather worked on many projects during her two stints at EJI including race and poverty, pardon and parole revocation, direct rehabilitation and restoration with clients, discrimination in jury selection, reform of death in prison sentences for children, along with investigation and mitigation in post-conviction capital cases. 

She has been a self-employed mitigation expert in both capital trial and post-conviction cases in several states throughout the Southeast. She has worked as an Investigator & Mitigation Specialist in a post-conviction office in Tennessee, as Chief Investigator at a state post-conviction office in Florida, and at a Federal CHU in Florida. Recently, Heather worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was fortunate enough to work on multiple matters including censorship in education and was the investigator in the lawsuit filed by multiple nonprofits challenging the State of Louisiana imprisoning children on the former death row at Angola. That lawsuit led to the removal of children from Angola prison. 

Heather has worked on hundreds of capital cases in both trial and post-conviction.

She is currently a Special Investigator and Mitigation Specialist with the Kansas Capital Habeas Unit.

Miriam Bankston

Miriam Bankston began working as a mitigation specialist five years ago, after completing her Master of Social Work and spending a year as a therapist working with adolescents. Since making the professional shift, Miriam has been at the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Defenders in the Middle District of Alabama, where she was recently promoted to Chief Investigator. Among her team and others who work with her, she is known to be a dynamic leader who is devoted to her clients.

Miriam is committed to best practices and to keeping her clients and their humanity at the center of their cases. As the chief investigator, she has set standards for mitigation investigation in the unit, and changed the way the office interacts with clients, ensuring that teams fully consider their clients when making decisions. Miriam is also a mentor to her teammates, regularly offering support and guidance on casework and managing team dynamics. She is dedicated to supporting diverse mitigation specialists and fostering culturally responsive practices in mitigation. She does all this with compassion and professional sensitivity.

A participant in the ACLU’s Scharlette Holdman Mitigation Mentorship Program for 2021-2022, Miriam also regularly leads workshops and training sessions at the national and local level on working with clients and their families, unpacking difficult mental health diagnoses, and other topics.

Miriam continues to seek opportunities to improve her skills, support her clients, and raise the quality of mitigation in the field.