Our Mission: to establish a fair and just criminal justice system in Texas, with an emphasis on improving the quality of representation afforded those facing the death penalty.  
    Our Staff
 
Texas Defender Service Staff Members:

Andrea Keilen, Executive Director
John Niland, Capital Trial Project Director
Kathryn M. Kase, Senior Staff Attorney, Managing Attorney of Houston Office
Maurie Levin, Senior Staff Attorney
Gregory W. Wiercioch, Senior Staff Attorney
Alma Lagarda, Staff Attorney
Morris Moon, Staff Attorney
Jared Tyler, Staff Attorney
Kirsten Brix Jacobvitz, Volunteer Attorney
Kelly Josh, Director of Finance and Administration
Araceli "Sally" Sepulveda, Office Administrator
Gloria Flores, Legal Administrative Assistant
Melisa "Liz" Waters, Paralegal
Rindy Fox, Paralegal
Andrea Keilen
Executive Director

Andrea Keilen graduated from the University of Denver College of Law in May 1993. She is licensed in Colorado and Arizona. After a year in a criminal defense firm, she spent three years as a deputy public defender in Colorado, handling all phases of court proceedings from pretrial motions to appeals. She then spent three and a half years as a trial deputy for the Office of the Legal Defender, handling serious felony and homicide cases, both capital and non-capital. She has extensive litigation experience, including motions practice, jury trials, and post-conviction relief. She has attended numerous training seminars about capital trial practice, mitigation investigation and presentation, habeas corpus, and state and federal death penalty law in general. Andrea Keilen was the Deputy Director of TDS from 2003-2006 and became the Executive Director in 2006.
John Niland
Capital Trial Project Director

John Niland graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1971. He practiced in El Paso where he was President of the El Paso Young Lawyers Association and chosen Outstanding Young Lawyer. He served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Texas Young Lawyers. He practiced law in Kentucky from 1992 until May of 2000 during which time he was contract manager, directing attorney and regional manager for Kentucky's Department of Public Advocacy (DPA). He has maintained an active capital defense caseload and has presented at capital training programs around the country. He was DPA's Gideon Award recipient for the year 2000 and was named the 2005 Public Citizen of the Year by the Austin Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers of Texas. He is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Texas School of Social Work and was named among Texas Super Lawyers in Criminal Law in 2005.
Kathryn M. Kase
Senior Staff Attorney, Managing Attorney of Houston Office

Kathryn Kase was graduated, cum laude, in 1990 from St. Mary's University School of Law, where she was an Articles Editor for the St. Mary's Law Journal. She is licensed to practice law in Texas, New York and the District of Columbia, and she is admitted to practice in a number of federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, the Southern District of Texas, and the Southern District of New York. Before joining TDS in 2002, she practiced criminal defense with Crane, Greene & Parente in Albany, New York. She served on the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers from 1998 to 2006, and is a past-president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College and NACDL's Capital Voir Dire College. In 2002, the Criminal Justice Section of the New York State Bar Association named her the Outstanding Criminal Practitioner. In May 2005, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. She is fluent in Spanish.
Maurie Levin
Senior Staff Attorney

Maurie Levin has represented death sentenced inmates in state and federal court since 1993. Along with her work at TDS, Maurie is an adjunct professor at the University of Texas’ School of Law, where she co-teaches the capital punishment clinic (often bringing students in to assist on TDS cases) and participates in planning Capital Punishment Center events (some of which are co-sponsored by TDS). In 2001, she received a President’s Commendation from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in recognition of her death penalty work in Texas.
Gregory W. Wiercioch
Senior Staff Attorney

Greg Wiercioch is a 1992 graduate of the Washington and Lee School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. In 1992-93, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Jerry Buchmeyer in Dallas. Since then he has worked exclusively on the post-conviction cases of indigent death row inmates, first with the Texas Resource Center and, since 1995, with Texas Defender Service. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Southern and Northern Districts of the U.S. Courts in Texas.
Alma Lagarda
Staff Attorney

Alma Lagarda graduated in 2005 from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a member of Boalt Hall’s Death Penalty Clinic and served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. In 2003, Alma interned at Texas Defender Service through the University of San Francisco's Keta Taylor Colby Death Penalty Project, which sends eight to ten law students each summer to work with capital defense attorneys in the South. Upon graduation, she received a two-year fellowship from Reprieve. Her work focuses on screening new arrivals on Texas’ death row in order to identify cases with meritorious issues and providing assistance to appointed lawyers in state habeas proceedings.
Morris Moon
Staff Attorney

Morris Moon graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1999 and is licensed to practice law in the State of Florida, the State of Texas, the Northern, Eastern and Southern Districts of Texas, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. As a law student, Mr. Moon spent a summer with the Loyola Death Penalty Resource Center in New Orleans assisting in the representation of death-sentenced inmates. During law school he worked in the Law Office of Joe Margulies, where he assisted with federal habeas cases in Texas and Missouri. Prior to joining the Texas Defender Service, Mr. Moon was an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade County where he tried approximately 36 felony and misdemeanor cases. Mr. Moon currently represents several death-sentenced inmates in federal habeas, provides consulting assistance to both state and federal habeas counsel, has taught at habeas training seminars and is the co-author -- with David R. Dow, Jim Marcus, Jared Tyler, and Gregory Wiercioch -- of the recently published article, The Extraordinary Execution of Billy Vickers, the Banality of Death, and the Demise of Post-Conviction Review, 13 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 305, 521 (2004).
Jared Tyler
Staff Attorney

Jared Tyler graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston Law Center in 2003 and joined the Texas Innocence Network in the summer of 2003. In his capacity as Deputy Director, he has represented both capital and non-capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings in state and federal court. He has taught Innocence Investigations at the University of Houston Law Center and supervises students in capital case investigations. He joined TDS as a staff attorney in 2006. Recent published articles include Is It Constitutional to Execute Someone Who Is Innocent (And If It Isn’t, How Can It Be Stopped Following House v. Bell)? with David R. Dow; Jared Tyler; Frances Bourliot; Jennifer Jeans. 42 Tulsa L. Rev. 277 (Winter 2006)
Kirsten Brix Jacobvitz
Volunteer Attorney

Kirsten graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law as valedictorian in January, 1985. Primarily a commercial lawyer, she practiced in Chicago, Singapore and Providence, Rhode Island. After moving to Texas she joined Dell, Inc. where she concentrated on building the Asia Pacific Law Department in Penang, Malaysia, and later Dell's United States Export Regulations practice. After leaving Dell, she obtained her secondary education certificate and taught in East Austin. In 2003 she joined TDS. She assists the organization with its publications and data collection, conducting research and editing reports. She also provides research and analysis for ongoing cases through the Capital Trial Project.
Kelly Josh
Director of Finance and Administration

Kelly Josh recently returned from 12 years in Central America where she monitored the construction of civilian police forces and efforts to reform national judicial systems. While in Central America she traveled extensively throughout the region and participated in projects focusing on democratic development, transparency in governance and civil society strengthening.
Araceli "Sally" Sepulveda
Office Administrator

Sally Sepulveda has been with TDS in the Houston office since 1996. Prior to that she was with TRC serving as a paralegal. She has been working in private law offices and nonprofit law firms in Texas since 1984.
Gloria Flores
Legal Administrative Assistant

Gloria Flores worked 22 years for Transco/Williams. At Transco/Williams, she worked as a Data Entry Operator, a Gas Scheduling Administrative Assistant, and eventually a Gas System Scheduling Analyst. While working there she received an Associate Applied Science Legal Assistant Degree in Legal Technology from the Houston Community College. After leaving Transco, she volunteered as a legal administrative assistant for the Texas Attorney General Child Support Bankruptcy Division before coming to Texas Defender Service in 2004.
Melisa "Liz" Waters
Paralegal

Melisa "Liz" Waters has 12 years of paralegal experience. She has been committed to social justice issues since childhood. That interest was put into action at Guilford College where she earned her B.S. in Justice & Policy Studies. Liz has a profound belief in the possibilities of social change through individual and collective power. She is trained in victim/offender mediation and currently dedicates her spare time volunteering in the areas of conflict transformation, community building, and restorative justice.
Rindy Fox
Paralegal

Rindy Fox began her work toward social justice in Bryan-College Station, TX where she advocated for people living with mental retardation, both on a local and state level. When the HIV/AIDS crisis hit, she provided support and case management to people battling this disease at AIDS Services of Brazos Valley. She has also worked as a case manager at AIDS Services of Austin and for the Austin-Travis County MHMR C.A.R.E. Program. There she provided case management and specialized in housing support for people living with the challenges of HIV, substance abuse, mental illness, mental retardation and homelessness. Throughout her jobs in the social work field, she has acquired a substantial knowledge about mental retardation, mental illness, physical abuse, substance abuse, and incarceration. She uses this knowledge to assist TDS' clients as a paralegal.
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