Ask a Mitigation Specialist

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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.

Danalynn Recer

Danalynn Recer began fighting the death penalty in Texas three decades ago, working initially as an investigator and later as an attorney with the Texas Resource Center. In 1995, she moved to New Orleans to work with Clive Stafford Smith at the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, nationally known for its aggressive and creative capital trial representation. While there, she participated in a dozen capital trials, secured life pleas for another 8 clients, and directed the Jefferson Parish Project, a consulting team that worked with the highest volume of indigent defenders in Louisiana to reduce the number of death sentences there. In 2002, Danalynn stepped in on a pro bono basis and founded the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) in the process. Since then, GRACE’s retrial/resentencing project has secured sentences of life or better for over two dozen former death row inmates. Today, GRACE provides direct representation, consulting services, and mitigation services to indigent capital defendants, as well as training and education to capital defenders around the country. Over the past thirty-two years, Danalynn has participated in the defense of over one hundred capital clients in all stages of litigation in state and federal courts in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Michigan, Tennessee, North Dakota, Florida, Kansas, Virginia, California, Missouri, Nevada, and Massachusetts. She holds a B.A., M.A., and J.D. from the University of Texas.

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 – May 20

Ask A Mitigation Specialist

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