Ask a Mitigation Specialist

Please only sign up for AMS if you can commit to attending, as this helps us and our advisors manage scheduling and keeps spots available for those who can fully participate. If an emergency or unexpected conflict arises, please notify us as soon as possible so we can adjust plans and honor the time our volunteer advisors generously offer.

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

Holly Clifton

Holly Clifton joined the Arizona Capital Representation Project (ACRP) in 2013 as an investigator and mitigation specialist. She is a licensed attorney and obtained her law degree in 2004 from the University of New Mexico School of Law. Holly worked as a trial attorney with the New Mexico Public Defenders Office for seven years before relocating to Tucson, Arizona in 2011. After relocating, Holly decided to explore investigation as an alternative career path and began working with a Tucson investigation firm. Soon after, she partnered with the Project and began her work with capital and JLWOP clients.

Since 1989, the Arizona Capital Representation Project has provided assistance in some form to most inmates on Arizona’s death row and has directly represented dozens of death-sentenced prisoners. The Project provides free consulting (including client relations, issue identification, legal research, drafting pleadings, developing and distributing general legal materials, hosting moot courts in preparation for oral arguments, and referring appropriate expert assistance) to capital defendants and their lawyers. In addition, the Project hosts free legal training seminars, which provide capital defense lawyers with the education and tools necessary for competent representation. The Project also provides community education about Arizona’s death penalty.

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.

Ask a Mitigation Specialist – February 18

Ask A Mitigation Specialist

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