Speaker Biographies

Daniel R. Alonso is a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP where he focuses his practice on white collar defense of corporations and individuals, internal investigations and complex civil litigation. He has been appointed by the Governor of New York to the New York State Commission on Prosecutorial Conduct. He also currently serves on the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct, and is a former member of the Attorney Grievance Committee for New York’s First Judicial Department. He served in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York for nearly a decade, including three years as Chief of the Criminal Division, and was later the Chief Assistant District Attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, where he teaches a seminar on transnational corruption.

Clark D. Cunningham is Professor of Law and W. Lee Burge Chair in Law & Ethics at the Georgia State University College of Law. He is the Director of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism and the Co-Editor of the International Forum on Teaching Legal Ethics & Professionalism (www.teachinglegalethics.org). He served as Co-Reporter to the Georgia Chief Justice’s Commission on Indigent Defense, the recommendations of which led to the establishment of a state-wide public defender system in Georgia. He served on the Fulton County Criminal Justice Blue Ribbon Commission, whose report on improving criminal justice in metropolitan Atlanta was adopted unanimously by the Board of Commissioners of Fulton County. He is one of the longest serving members of the Chief Justice of Georgia's Commission on Professionalism.  As the faculty director of law school clinics, he has worked on both the defense and prosecution sides of the criminal justice system.

Mawuli Mel Davis, the founding partner of Davis Bozeman Johnson Law, is an African-Centered Civil Rights Attorney, Human Rights Organizer, and Author based in Atlanta. Davis Bozeman Johnson Law is one of Georgia’s largest African American-owned law firms with offices in Savannah, Statesboro, and Decatur. He has represented activists in the Occupy Movement, Moral Monday, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. He has represented victims of police brutality and community members falsely accused of crimes. He was awarded the 2019 Ben Johnson Public Service Award by Georgia State University College of Law, which is the highest award the College of Law bestows. He has been named a Super Lawyer for 7 consecutive years in Atlanta Magazine and received the Justice for All Award by Rolling Out Magazine. The DeKalb Lawyers Association named the Mawuli Davis Legal Warrior Award in his honor.

Paula Frederick is General Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia.  As General Counsel she is responsible for interpreting the ethics rules for lawyers, prosecuting lawyer discipline cases, and providing legal advice to the officers and directors of the organization.  She has served in the Office of the General Counsel for 32 years and was Deputy General Counsel for Discipline before becoming General Counsel in 2009. She is a Past President of both the Atlanta Bar Association and the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys.  She is the American Bar Association State Delegate for Georgia.  She sits on the ABA Standing Committee on Bar Activities and Services and recently chaired the Standing Committee on Professional Regulation.  In the past she served on the Commission on the Future of Legal Services, chaired the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and the ABA Diversity Center, and served as a member of the Board of Governors.   

Nicole Smith Futrell is a Professor of Law at CUNY Law School where she is Co-Director of the Defenders Clinic, Director of the Center for Diversity in the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the W. Haywood Burns Chair of Human and Civil Rights Program. In her clinical practice, she and her students represent clients in a variety of criminal defense-related contexts, including state court misdemeanor cases, parole and clemency petitions, wrongful conviction matters, and civil claims related to criminal convictions. Her teaching and scholarship focus on criminal procedure, legal ethics, post-conviction relief, reentry, and social justice lawyering. Her work explores the relationship between racial justice advocacy and criminal legal reform and practice. Prior to joining the CUNY faculty, she was a public defender in the Criminal Defense Practice of the Bronx Defenders.

Bruce A. Green is the Louis Stein Chair at Fordham Law School, where he directs the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of legal ethics and criminal law.  He recently became chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility; he is a past chair of the ABA's Criminal Justice Section; and he has been involved in various other bar association activities.  Before joining the Fordham faculty in 1987, he was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and since then, he has engaged in part-time public service, including as a member of the attorney disciplinary committee in Manhattan, and as Associate Counsel in the office of the Iran/Contra prosecutor.

Karlise Yvette Grier is the Executive Director of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism. Prior to assuming her current position, she was the managing attorney of Grier Law Office, P.C., an Atlanta law firm that concentrated in the areas of adoption, divorce, and family law. She served as a Magistrate Court judge in Fulton County, as a Judicial Officer in the Fulton County Superior Court Family Division and as a Judge Pro Hac Vice in the former City Court of Atlanta. She served as the Vice Chair of the State Bar of Georgia’s Child Protection and Advocacy Section.  She is a past president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and of the League of Women Voters of Atlanta-Fulton County.

Todd Hayes has served as Cherokee County’s Solicitor-General since 2019. He previously served as Chief Assistant Solicitor-General for Cherokee County and as Assistant District Attorney for the Bell-Forsyth Judicial Circuit. He is co-chair of the SB92 Rules Committee for the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia.

Caren Myers Morrison is an associate professor of law at the Georgia State University College of Law, where she teaches evidence, criminal procedure, and law & literature.  She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Eastern District of New York from 2001 to 2006, where she prosecuted international narcotics traffickers and organized crime. Her research focuses on police violence, domestic homicide, the place of women in the common law, the impact of electronic information on the criminal justice system and on mechanisms of jury selection.

David E. Nahmias is a partner at Jones Day. He is a former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, where he served for nearly 13 years. After law school, he was a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and then worked for a large law firm in Washington before serving for almost 15 years in the U.S. Justice Department, including service as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Fraud, Counterterrorism, and Appellate Sections. He served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 2004 to 2009. The U.S. Chief Justice appointed him to serve on the U.S. Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Civil Rules from 2013 to 2018.

Dalia Racine is the District Attorney for the Douglas Judicial Circuit. She has more than 14 years of prosecutorial experience, specializing in homicides, crimes against women and children, and human trafficking. She also served as an Attorney–Advisor with AEquitas, where she provided training and technical assistance around gender-based violence investigations and prosecutions to prosecutors, law enforcement, and allied professionals across the country. She is co-chair of the SB92 Rules Committee for the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia.

Maybell Romero is the Felder-Fayard Associate Professor of Law and a Gordon Gamm Faculty Scholar at Tulane Law School. She researches and teaches at the intersection of criminal law, criminal adjudication, and professional ethics. Much of her writing focuses on rural criminal legal systems and prosecutorial ethics, informed by her nearly 10 years of law practice as a prosecutor, defense attorney, and general practitioner in a small community in northern Utah. Her work has featured in a variety of publications including the Journal of Criminal Law Criminology, the Maine Law Review, the University of Richmond Law Review, the University of Miami Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review online and is forthcoming in the Washington University Law Review and The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, among others.

Don Samuel is a partner at Garland, Samuel & Loeb, P.C. He is past-President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 1999, he was elected to membership in the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. In 2000, he was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is the author of Georgia Criminal Law Case Finder, Eleventh Circuit Criminal Handbook, and Federal Criminal Trials. He has been listed in Best Lawyers in America every year since 1993. In 2014, Best Lawyers in America named him Lawyer of the Year in the field of criminal law in the State of Georgia. He was awarded the Rees Smith Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in 2014. He is an adjunct professor at the Georgia State College of Law where he teaches White Collar Criminal Defense.