I am a career public defender who has spent nearly twenty years shaping the future of appellate law in Arizona—from the courtroom to the classroom to the committees that write the rules every Arizona attorney and judge operates under.

I supervise the Appeals Unit of the Maricopa County Public Defender's Office in Phoenix, where I’ve handled more than 140 appeals across every level of the Arizona court system, from justice courts to the Supreme Court of the United States. My love for appellate work began my first year as a lawyer, when I argued and won a special action before the Arizona Court of Appeals. Over my career I’ve argued 29 cases before the Arizona Court of Appeals and Arizona Supreme Court, including cases involving the constitutional limits of criminal sentencing, Fourth Amendment search and seizure, and the rights of people facing execution. In one of my most significant victories, I successfully petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse a long line of Arizona Supreme Court decisions that had prevented people facing a death sentence from telling juries that life-without-parole was the sole alternative to execution.

My contribution to Arizona law extends beyond my caseload. As a member of the Arizona Supreme Court's Rule 32 Task Force, I drafted requirements that now compel attorneys to demonstrate meaningful review of post-conviction cases—closing a loophole that had allowed cursory representation to go unchecked. On the Arizona State Bar’s Criminal Jury Instructions Committee, I drafted the instruction now used statewide to explain that parole is not available in capital sentencing proceedings. An instruction later affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court. In addition to my ongoing work with jury instructions, I currently serve on the Arizona Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence, the Arizona State Bar Appeals Section Board, and the Maricopa County Bar Association’s Criminal Law Section. I've also contributed to the broader legal conversation through scholarship—including two law review articles examining constitutional questions I believe Arizona courts have gotten wrong.

Teaching is the other half of my professional identity—and the part I’m most proud of. I built the Public Defender Legal Writing Intensive from scratch, a program that began as a two-day workshop for Arizona public defenders and has since traveled to Montana, Washington, and the national stage. I am a repeat faculty member for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association's Appellate Defender Training, the premier national program for appellate public defenders. I’ve taught at the Arizona Judicial Conference, the Arizona State Bar Annual Convention, and Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, where I have guest lectured on storytelling and advocacy. For more than a decade I’ve coached the law school's New York City Bar Moot Court team. My philosophy is simple and consistent across everything I teach: lawyers tell stories. The craft of legal writing isn't just about logic and structure—it's about moving people. That conviction has driven a regular legal writing column, two articles in Arizona Attorney Magazine, and a body of teaching that spans courtrooms, classrooms, and conference rooms across the country.

I'm a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the 2016 cohort of the Flinn Foundation's Center for Civil Leadership, and a past President of both Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the Horace Rumpole Inn of Court. My work has been recognized with the Jack Williams Appellate Achievement Award from Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, the Outstanding Attorney Award from the Arizona Public Defender's Association, and the Coach of the Year Award from the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law Moot Court Board.