Roundtable 2025

Roshell Amezcua ’14 is the director of Juvenile Justice Clinic (JJC), in which students represent juvenile clients facing criminal charges in Los Angeles County courts. In her role, Amezcua supervises clinical students performing client services in juvenile delinquency matters. Her work includes collaborating with other CJLP clinics. 

Prior to joining the JJC as director, Amezcua was a supervising attorney at The Bronx Defenders, a public defender nonprofit that annually represents about 30,000 low-income Bronx residents in criminal, civil, child welfare, and immigration cases. Her role included supervision of incoming law students and experienced attorneys in collaborative training and preparation for all appearances, case conferencing, client management, and caseload management. Previously, she served at the organization as family defense attorney – representing parents charged with abuse or neglect –, and the family defense and immigration counsel developing and conducting trainings across New York State on Padilla-like consequences of dependency proceedings. She also served as a mentor for interns and attorneys of color.

Prior to The Bronx Defenders, Amezcua interned at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office and was a post-bar law clerk at the Orange County Public Defender’s Office Appellate Division. Outside of the courtroom, Amezcua has shared her expertise as a speaker at Loyola’s Journalist Law School, the ABA National Conference on Parent Representation, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and PLI’s Children’s Law Institute. 

Born and raised in Santa Ana, California, Roshell (she/her/hers) identifies as a cis-gendered Latinx mom, partner, sister, and daughter.

Reuben Moreno is the Supervising Attorney for the Juvenile Division of the Sacramento County Public Defender’s Office.  He has dedicated nearly the entirety of his 20-year career in that office to the defense of children.  He has tried hundreds of juvenile delinquency cases at all levels of complexity and has served as a Juvenile Trial Attorney, Fitness/Transfer Attorney, Placement Attorney, Non-Minor Dependent Attorney, Juvenile Drug Court Attorney, Division of Juvenile Justice Resource Attorney, Juvenile Writs and Appeals, and the Lead Attorney of the Juvenile Division.

Reuben has litigated many cases in the CA 3rd District Court of Appeals, resulting in several published cases concerning juvenile delinquency.  He has spoken at local, statewide and national forums to both defense practitioners and judges on juvenile delinquency related topics including a presentation on Holistic Juvenile Defense Practices to The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges earlier this year. He has served on several workgroups with the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center in the past and is a current Board member on the National Advisory Board for the Western Region of the Gault Center.

Reuben was responsible for creating the SB395/SB203 Juvenile Miranda Advisement Program in Sacramento County, ensuring that attorneys are available 24/7, 365 days a year to go into the field and provide Miranda advisements to children prior to a custodial interrogation.  He also helped to create the Juvenile Trauma Response Court (JTRC).  JTRC centers on the trauma that children suffer, which in turn results in the behaviors that then bring them before the juvenile court. Starting off as a grant funded pilot program, Sacramento County now fully funds JTRC due to its success.

Forensic Social Worker: Erin Brown, LCSW, is a forensic social worker in private practice with over two decades of experience serving justice-involved individuals and families across California. Born and raised in New Orleans, Erin moved to San Francisco at the age of 19. She comes from a proud, three-generation lineage of social workers and considers it a deep honor to continue this legacy through her work. Since 2004, Erin has played a vital role on defense teams, providing comprehensive social history reports, rehabilitative disposition and sentencing recommendations and reentry planning for incarcerated individuals. She also facilitates workshops grounded in a commitment to equity and human dignity.

Erin holds a B.A. in Sociology, Spanish and Portuguese from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Social Work from California State University, East Bay. Fluent in Spanish, Erin has worked closely with undocumented and system- involved families from Latin America. Her approach is shaped by years of service in community-based organizations, centering cultural humility and client advocacy.

Throughout her career, Erin has contributed to more than 600 legal cases—ranging from juvenile transfer and fitness hearings to Franklin and other complex juvenile and adult matters—across 21 counties in California. She has testified in court over 60 times, providing expert insight rooted in social work values to support young people navigating the justice system. In addition to her direct practice, Erin has volunteered with transformative programs at San Quentin State Prison and co-founded a statewide alliance for independent forensic professionals. She remains passionate about building community, fostering collaboration, and advancing justice through human-centered advocacy.

Mitigation Specialist: Lisa Eager is a mitigation specialist, private investigator, and Defense Victim Outreach (DVO) specialist based in Northern California. Areas of specialization include capital and non-capital mitigation, Restorative Justice/DVO, and mitigation for Youthful Offender/Franklin proceedings. She has worked on behalf of indigent individuals at county, state and federal Public Defender agencies throughout the United States. In addition to direct casework, Lisa provides trainings, consultations, and mentoring to the defense community. 

Supervising Juvenile : SW Contra Costa Public Defender Office: Megan has 20 years of experience in client advocacy and social work. She has an extensive background in mental health and worked as a clinician with dually diagnosed transitional aged youth and adults in outpatient and acute crisis treatment programs in San Francisco prior to working in public defense. She is an Associate Clinical Social Worker (ACSW) and has been a forensic social worker in youth defense for nearly 10 years. Prior to joining CCPD, Megan was the senior forensic social worker with the Alameda County conflicts program. Megan has worked on nearly 30 juvenile transfer cases, and supported youth post-disposition at programs including camp, ranch, residential treatment, and DJJ.  She is a Steering Committee member of the California Defense Social Workers (CDSW), and co-chairs the CDSW Youth Defense consultation subgroup. She has presented trainings in report writing, boundary setting, and client interviewing, and has co-presented multiple trainings on testifying throughout the state. Additionally, she is a field instructor for MSW student interns at the Public Defender’s Office.

Deputy Public Defender, Office of the Public Defender – El Dorado County: Margaret “Peggy” Huscher graduated from Skidmore College in New York and McGeorge School of Law in California.  Following law school, she and her husband lived for three years in Micronesia where she advised the Kosrae State Court on issues such as due process, exclusionary rule, etc.  Upon her return to California, she worked as a public defender in Shasta County for approximately 20 years.  During that time, she represented clients in every aspect of the public defender practice including but not limited to murders, serious sex cases, general felonies, juveniles, misdemeanors, guardianships, and conservatorships.  In 2017, she was named the California Youth Defender’s Center “Defender of the Year.” In 2018, she accepted her dream job in the El Dorado County Public Defender’s office where she exclusively represents juveniles in an office that supports hiring experts and gives her enough time to be creative.

Professor Kristina Kersey joined the University of Tennessee College of Law in 2023, where she teaches in the Advocacy Clinic.  Her scholarship focuses on the juvenile carceral system and youth rights.

Professor Kersey brings over two decades of experience in the field of youth defense to UT.  Before joining Tennessee, she was Senior Youth Defense Counsel at The Gault Center: Defenders of Youth Rights (formerly The National Juvenile Defender Center), a national nonprofit dedicated to the zealous representation of youth.  She facilitated national training on trial skills and wrote creative and informative “Top 10” missives to the national youth defense community including a piece entitled “Jones v. Mississippi, Keeping up with the Joneses: 10 things I kinda maybe don’t hate about Jones.” At the Gault Center, she served as the liaison to the ABA Juvenile Justice Standards subcommittee, led national youth defense technical assistance, consulted on trial and appellate strategy, and was qualified and testified as an expert witness in the field of youth defense.

Prior to joining the Gault Center, she worked for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender for over 18 years, specializing in youth defense. She was the trial attorney in State in the Interest of N.H. in which the New Jersey Supreme Court held that youth are entitled to full and complete discovery prior to a transfer hearing for adult prosecution.  Her advocacy extended beyond the courtroom as she led several statewide initiatives including representation of all detained youth at every hearing including holidays and weekends, expungement assistance for youth clients, and post-disposition advocacy for incarcerated youth. She was a member of the New Jersey Council on Juvenile Justice and System Improvement, a member of the OPD Juvenile Training Committee and was the First Assistant Deputy Public Defender in the Essex juvenile unit prior to her departure from the agency.

Bleu Inkk Watkins is an Independent Forensic Gang Expert and a visionary artist whose work illuminates the intersections of survival, identity, and systemic harm. A former youth lifer and member of a Compton Crip gang with over 25 years of lived experience, Bleu now serves as a facilitator and coach with Success Stories, a transformative, peer-led program supporting healing and growth among people impacted by incarceration. Bleu is also the creator and performer of Found Suitable, an autobiographical stage production that explores incarceration, healing, and transformation, and has led performance and arts programming inside prisons across California. Their work sits at the powerful crossroads of cultural credibility and creative resistance.

In fall 2014, Sean Kennedy ’89 joined Loyola Law School as the Kaplan and Feldman Executive Director of its Center for Juvenile Law and Policy (CJLP).

Prior to this appointment, Kennedy was the Federal Public Defender for the Central District of California from 2006 to 2014 and has also served as Chief of the Federal Public Defender Capital Habeas Unit.

As an adjunct professor for more than 15 years, Kennedy has taught Appellate Advocacy and the Death Penalty Law Seminar at the Law School. He has coached the Byrne Trial Advocacy Team – himself a member of the Scott Moot Court Honors Board as a student. Additionally, he serves on the board of Loyola’s Advocacy Institute.

In 2013, Kennedy was named Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year by the Los Angeles County Bar Association and received the Fidler Institute Award for Defense Lawyer of the Year from Loyola. He is a recipient of the Public Interest Award by Loyola’s Public Interest Law Foundation. Prior to working in public defense, Kennedy was an associate at Talcott, Lightfoot, Vandevelde, Woehrle & Sadowsky, LLP, where he handled white collar criminal defense cases.

Julia Arroyo is the Executive Director of Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC) and a tireless advocate for marginalized communities, with over two decades of experience in community health, reproductive justice, rape crisis intervention, and supporting sexually exploited youth. Since joining YWFC in 2014, she has led the organization’s expansion across California, including in Santa Clara County, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Contra Costa County, while ensuring that healing and leadership development remain central to its mission.

Nationally, Julia provides technical support to initiatives with global impact, including collaborations with the United Nations and statewide programs in Nebraska, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington D.C., Hawaii, and California. A significant part of her policy work focuses on ending the incarceration of women, girls, and trans youth of all genders in California, transforming systems of oppression, and advocating for reproductive justice.

Julia’s reproductive justice efforts are grounded in her belief that all individuals, particularly women, girls, and trans youth, deserve autonomy over their bodies, access to healthcare, and the freedom to make decisions about their futures. She works at the intersection of reform, abolition, and reproductive justice, addressing the unique reproductive health needs of incarcerated women and youth while advocating for policies that protect their rights and end their imprisonment.

As a second-generation Xicana of Mexican and Filipino descent, Julia brings a deeply personal connection to her work. Having experienced the foster care system, underground street economy, and incarceration herself, she is dedicated to transforming systems that harm marginalized girls and helping them escape both systemic and interpersonal violence. Julia is a healer in the Mexica tradition and a student of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and is pursuing a degree in Women’s Studies at San Francisco City College while leading efforts to empower the next generation.

Lana M. Kreidie is the Assistant Director of Santa Clara County’s Independent Defense Counsel Office, a program that oversees and administers a conflict panel of defenders appointed to represent system involved youth and adults. Lana spent the first 11 years of her defender career serving as a deputy public defender in Riverside County and the next 5 years as a solo holistic youth and criminal defense practitioner in the Bay Area. Before joining Santa Clara County’s executive management team, Lana served as the Administrator of the Delinquency Panel with the Bar Association of San Francisco and as an Assistant Managing Attorney with San Mateo County’s Private Defender Program. Over the years, Lana has trained defenders locally, statewide and nationally on a variety of youth defense topics, has participated in a variety of legal reform efforts, and is active with youth and criminal justice organizations such as CJCJ, San Mateo CASA, CPDA, and CYDC.

Kate Weisburd is a Professor of Law at UC Law SF whose work focuses on criminal procedure, civil rights, and the impact of emerging technology on privacy and inequality. Her work on electronic monitoring, including the award-winning articles Punitive Surveillance and The Carceral Home, have been published in leading law reviews and recognized nationally. These articles analyze the legal and real-world harms of electronic monitoring, including its impact on privacy, inequality, and daily life.  Before joining UC Law SF, Professor Weisburd was a tenured professor at George Washington University School of Law, where she twice received the Distinguished Faculty Service Award. She previously founded and directed the Youth Defender Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center, supervising law students representing youth in juvenile court and school discipline proceedings.

Whitney Rubenstein practices both law and social work, and is the Director of the Social Work Practice at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) where she oversees staff, and graduate level social work and law student interns, in the provision of holistic representation to clients of EBCLC. Whitney’s legal work at EBCLC focuses on advocating for young people being pushed out schools and into the juvenile legal system. She engages in a full range of litigation, representing clients in expulsion hearings, special education proceedings, and in juvenile court. Whitney began her legal career as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at EBCLC. During her fellowship, she worked with families at the intersection of the public housing and juvenile justice systems, where she represented youth in juvenile court and their families in housing matters both in civil court and in administrative hearings. Prior to attending law school, Whitney was a Staff Social Worker at the Center for Family Representation in New York.

Jeanne McPhee is a licensed psychologist and a researcher in the Juvenile in Justice Behavioral Health lab at UCSF. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Drexel University with a focus in forensic and child and adolescent psychology. She has extensive experience delivering trauma-focused therapies to legally involved youth and families and is nationally certified in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Her research focuses on promoting positive outcomes for legally involved youth by adapting and implementing evidence-based treatment and policies for youth, their families and communities, and within the larger systems that they come into contact with, such as probation systems. Much of her research has been conducted at the systems-level to understand and integrate what legal system practitioners like probation officers and judges and legal teams think about policies and practices that specifically acknowledge and harness the strengths of adolescents, given where they are with brain and social development.

Dr. Kelline Hiday holds a Master’s degree in Professional Mental Health Counseling, with an emphasis in marriage and family counseling as well as being a Registered Play Therapist. Dr. Hiday received her Doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Alliant International University while simultaneously completing a certification in Infant/ Preschooler Mental Health. She completed her Pre-doctoral Internship at a local community mental health agency where she served diverse populations with services ranging from individual, group, and family therapy, psycho-education parenting classes, and psychological assessments. ​

Dr. Kelline Hiday’s clinical experiences range from supporting women domestic violence survivors and their children, working as a mental health consultant for a federally-funded early-intervention preschool, providing school-based mental health services to staff, students and their respective family members, as well as various private practice settings. Dr. Hiday also has experience performing diagnostic assessments, to include both cognitive and academic skill based, in conjunction with both the local Regional Center and local non-profit early intervention agency.

Dr. Hiday volunteers her time speaking at community engagements regarding the impact of children’s mental health issues. Dr. Hiday’s special interest include helping children and families alike navigate the windy road of mental health, particularly as it impacts social and academic performance, and the intersection of mental health and juvenile delinquency.

Over the course of her training and clinical experience as a registered play therapist, Dr. Hiday has used therapeutic interventions which have included talk and play therapy. She has developed specialized skills in assessing, intervening and providing parenting support to those who are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She is also certified in mother/ infant mental health which supports her growing practice involving parenting and parent advocacy.  Dr. Hiday also treats children and adolescents who present with emotional problems working with those who suffer from anxiety, depression, and other more complex mental disorders. Finally, as Dr. Hiday has completed research related to diagnosing and treatment of ADHD she has developed highly effective approaches to working with children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD.

Sajid A. Khan is a San Jose native and a first-generation Muslim, Indian-American attorney, writer, and civil rights advocate. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and his Juris Doctorate from UC Law SF. Since beginning his public defense career in 2008, Sajid has served for over 16 years as a Santa Clara County Deputy Public Defender and Alternate Public Defender. He is an award-winning advocate, honored with “The Heart of the Office Award” in 2016 for his service to the community and the CACJ Skip Glenn Award for Excellence in Advocacy in 2020. Throughout his career, Sajid has fought against mass incarceration, defended constitutional rights, and worked to uphold the dignity of all people he represents.

Raj Jayadev is a nationally recognized community organizer and criminal justice reformer based in San Jose, California. He earned his B.A. in Political Science from UCLA and co-founded Silicon Valley De-Bug in 2001, a multimedia and organizing platform for underrepresented voices. Through De-Bug, he launched the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project, pioneering the participatory defense model—a community organizing framework that empowers families to actively participate in defense strategies and shift power within court systems. His leadership in this work earned him a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018, and his efforts have been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, PBS, and other national outlets.

Lisa Eager is a mitigation specialist, private investigator, and Defense Victim Outreach (DVO) specialist based in Northern California. Areas of specialization include capital and non-capital mitigation, Restorative Justice/DVO, and mitigation for Youthful Offender/Franklin proceedings. She has worked on behalf of indigent individuals at county, state and federal Public Defender agencies throughout the United States. In addition to direct casework, Lisa provides trainings, consultations, and mentoring to the defense community.

Don Le has been a social worker since 2012, beginning his career in Child and Adult Protective Services. In 2018, he joined the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, focusing on clients facing severe mental health challenges.In addition to his work at the Public Defender’s office Don volunteers his time on the steering committee for CDSW, a statewide group of forensic social workers and mitigation specialists working in the defense field.  Don is passionate about meeting people where they are and believes the heart of social work and mitigation lies in empowering clients, especially when the odds feel stacked against them.

Mr. Spieckerman works in the juvenile delinquency unit of the Solano County Public Defender’s Office. He has spent half of his 15 year public defender career handling juvenile delinquency cases. In addition to his juvenile delinquency caseload, he also handles Youthful Offender Parole Hearing (SB 9/261/Franklin) cases for his office.  Mr. Spieckerman is a commissioner on the Solano County Juvenile Justice Commission and frequently represents the Solano County Public Defender’s Office at county-wide and regional juvenile justice events. Mr. Spieckerman is a San Francisco Bay Area native, and graduated with Honors from Pitzer College with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations.  Then, after graduating from UC Davis School of Law, King Hall, he began working as a deputy public defender in Mendocino County.  Mr. Spieckerman has been practicing in Solano County since 2005.  He lives in Alameda County with his amazing wife and their two rambunctious children.

Shannon Wentworth is the director of SJCL’s BREN Clinic, advocating for special needs kids from Kern County to Madera County. She also teaches Legal Methods. Wentworth graduated from SJCL in 2019, earning 4 Witkin Awards for Academic Excellence, the Hugh Goodwin Scholarship, the Elizabeth O’Neill Scholarship (twice), Ibarra / Casillas LawSUIT Scholarship, Association on Indian Affairs Florence Young scholarship, American Indian Graduate Institute fellowship, and the Loomis Legacy Medal of Distinction. She was an associate attorney at Mugridge Law Firm before starting her solo practice, Wentworth Law Firm, specializing in post-conviction criminal defense. She also volunteers with the Project First Step Clinic at Central California Legal Services. She was an instructor at CSU, Monterey Bay, and Hartnell Junior College. She has served on the boards of the North Fork Rancheria Indian Housing Authority, North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians Election Board, International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association Foundation, and San Francisco LGBT Center. She is the former CEO of Sweet, a groundbreaking lesbian travel company.

Prior to studying the law, Shannon had a long career in journalism, marketing, and travel, holding numerous management positions. Drawn to criminal law by the growing injustice in its execution, Shannon’s main goal is to ensure that every defendant receives a top-notch defense in accordance with the California and United States Constitutions. Additionally, Shannon worked as a temporary independent hearing officer for the City of Fresno from 2018 to 2020, deciding disputes between citizens and the City of Fresno over municipal citations.

Dr. Kafka is a licensed forensic psychologist in California (PSY24026) with over 15 years of experience conducting forensic evaluations, providing expert witness testimony and trial consultation, and supervising early career forensic psychologists. She is passionate about elevating the quality of forensic evaluations provided to attorneys and the courts. She enjoys training and consulting with attorneys to help them identify the strengths and weaknesses of forensic psychological and psychiatric reports brought before the court. She also enjoys training students and other mental health professionals in forensic evaluation and report writing, as well as in providing expert witness testimony. 

Dr. Kafka’s areas of expertise include assessment of adults on matters relating to criminal responsibility, violence risk, sexual violence risk, suitability for community placement/treatment (including mental health diversion), and competency to stand trial, as well as the creation of psychosocial profiles for the purposes of Franklin proceedings, sentence mitigation, and other legal matters.

Dr. Anne McBride is a child and adolescent forensic psychiatrist at the University of California, Davis. She is the Vice Chair of Outpatient and Community Clinical Services, Division Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at UCD, Program Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at UCD, and a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry. Her primary clinical work is at the Sacramento County Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services clinic and the Child Behavioral Health Center. Her primary forensic work involves consultation and evaluation of juveniles involved in the juvenile legal system. She is a former recipient of the John F. McDermott Assistant Editor-In-Residence for JAACAP and editor of JAACAP Connect, and current Assistant Editor for the JAACAP Journal Club. She serves as co-chair for the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Law Committee.

Michael Whelan has practiced law for over four decades, specializing in criminal and juvenile defense across multiple jurisdictions including California, Colorado, New York, and the District of Columbia. He has served on prominent defense panels such as the San Francisco Superior Court Juvenile Homicide-Transfer Panel and the Federal CJA Panels in both Colorado and the Northern District of California. His reported case, U.S. v. Khan, resulted in the suppression of statements in a high-profile terrorism prosecution. Beyond litigation, Mr. Whelan has been a sought-after faculty presenter, leading trainings on juvenile transfer hearings, investigation of juvenile cases, and health care fraud. He earned his B.A. in Psychology with honors from Cal State Sonoma and his J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law, graduating in the top quarter of his class.

Professor Kristina Kersey joined the University of Tennessee College of Law in 2023, where she teaches in the Advocacy Clinic.  Her scholarship focuses on the juvenile carceral system and youth rights.

Professor Kersey brings over two decades of experience in the field of youth defense to UT.  Before joining Tennessee, she was Senior Youth Defense Counsel at The Gault Center: Defenders of Youth Rights (formerly The National Juvenile Defender Center), a national nonprofit dedicated to the zealous representation of youth.  She facilitated national training on trial skills and wrote creative and informative “Top 10” missives to the national youth defense community including a piece entitled “Jones v. Mississippi, Keeping up with the Joneses: 10 things I kinda maybe don’t hate about Jones.” At the Gault Center, she served as the liaison to the ABA Juvenile Justice Standards subcommittee, led national youth defense technical assistance, consulted on trial and appellate strategy, and was qualified and testified as an expert witness in the field of youth defense.

Prior to joining the Gault Center, she worked for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender for over 18 years, specializing in youth defense. She was the trial attorney in State in the Interest of N.H. in which the New Jersey Supreme Court held that youth are entitled to full and complete discovery prior to a transfer hearing for adult prosecution.  Her advocacy extended beyond the courtroom as she led several statewide initiatives including representation of all detained youth at every hearing including holidays and weekends, expungement assistance for youth clients, and post-disposition advocacy for incarcerated youth. She was a member of the New Jersey Council on Juvenile Justice and System Improvement, a member of the OPD Juvenile Training Committee and was the First Assistant Deputy Public Defender in the Essex juvenile unit prior to her departure from the agency.

Bleu Inkk Watkins is an Independent Forensic Gang Expert and a visionary artist whose work illuminates the intersections of survival, identity, and systemic harm. A former youth lifer and member of a Compton Crip gang with over 25 years of lived experience, Bleu now serves as a facilitator and coach with Success Stories, a transformative, peer-led program supporting healing and growth among people impacted by incarceration. Bleu is also the creator and performer of Found Suitable, an autobiographical stage production that explores incarceration, healing, and transformation, and has led performance and arts programming inside prisons across California. Their work sits at the powerful crossroads of cultural credibility and creative resistance.