Ask a Mitigation Specialist
Ask a Mitigation Specialist, a resource program that allows defenders to meet directly and privately with a mitigation specialist for specific technical assistance. Complete the form below for a 40-minute session with experienced mitigation professionals. The information discussed during each session is confidential. Register using the link below.
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.–5:10 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.
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.
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.
Ask a Mitigation Specialist, a resource program that allows defenders to meet directly and privately with a mitigation specialist for…
Holly Clifton & Kristen Samuels
Ask a Mitigation Specialist, a resource program that allows defenders to meet directly and privately with a mitigation specialist for…
Mirra Schwartz & Dana Cook
Ask a Mitigation Specialist, a resource program that allows defenders to meet directly and privately with a mitigation specialist for…
Mirra Schwartz & Lisa Eager