Staff and Legal Counsel | Texas Defender Service

Burke Butler

Executive Director

Burke Butler is Executive Director of Texas Defender Service, where she leads TDS’s vibrant, committed team in their mission to build a more humane, just, and equitable criminal legal system. She previously worked as a Staff Attorney at TDS and has served on TDS’s Board of Directors.

Ms. Butler has worked on criminal justice matters for over ten years. Her experience spans policy, research, appellate litigation, and advocacy. Ms. Butler graduated from Yale Law School in 2011, where she was a recipient of the C. LaRue Munson Prize for Excellence in a Law School Clinical Program. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Harris L Hartz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and to the Honorable Keith P. Ellison of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

In 2013, Ms. Butler was awarded an Arthur Liman Fellowship from Yale Law School to spearhead a comprehensive investigation of Texas’s use of solitary confinement. Later, as a Staff Attorney at Texas Defender Service and then as a Principal at Phillips Black, Ms. Butler represented capitally sentenced prisoners in their post-conviction proceedings in state and federal court. At the Justice Collaborative, Ms. Butler engaged local elected officials to institute progressive policies to transform the criminal punishment system. She is a 2007 graduate of the University of Chicago, where she majored in English literature.

In 2019, she was named a Premier Woman in Law by the Houston Association of Women Attorneys.

Samantha Chammings

Mitigation Specialist

Sam has a Law Degree from the University of Manchester, an MSC in Human Rights from the London School of Economics, and an LLM from the University of Texas School of Law. Before joining TDS, she worked as a Mitigation Specialist at the OCFW, worked with survivors of sexual violence at Refuge, and worked as an Advice and Information Officer at Liberty (National Council for Civil Liberties).

Randi Chavez

Deputy Director and Head of Mitigation

Randi Chavez received a Master of Science in Social Work in 2003. While completing her graduate degree she interned at Texas Defender Service as a mitigation specialist. Upon graduation, she was hired as the first full-time mitigation specialist for the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) and later worked independently as a mitigation specialist at both the trial and post-conviction levels. She then honed her clinical skills for three years as a clinical social worker in an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Austin, Texas. Ms. Chavez returned to Texas Defender Service in 2009 as a mitigation specialist.

Gloria Flores

Paralegal

Gloria Flores received an Associate Applied Science Legal Assistant Degree in Legal Technology from the Houston Community College. She worked for 22 years for Transco/Williams, as a Data Entry Operator, a Gas Scheduling Administrative Assistant and as a Gas System Scheduling Analyst. After leaving Transco/Williams, Ms. Flores volunteered as a legal administrative assistant for the Texas Attorney General Child Support Bankruptcy Division before joining Texas Defender Service in 2004.

Emily Follansbee

Staff Attorney

Prior to joining TDS, Emily practiced criminal defense in Colorado. She spent over 7 years as an attorney for the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office where she defended indigent individuals at trial for all types of criminal offenses including homicide. Emily’s practice also included successful appellate and post-conviction litigation at the state level. Emily holds a J.D. from the University of Oregon and a B.A. from Union College.

Kyle Harmon

Junior Mitigation Specialist

Kyle Harmon received a Master of Science in Social Work from UT Austin in 2021 and B.A.s in English and Psychology UNC Chapel Hill in 2016. Kyle joined TDS as an employee in 2021 and interned with the organization prior to starting full-time. Their previous experience includes working as a therapist for kids and adults experiencing mood, anxiety, or eating disorders; organizing resource distribution for folks who are unhoused; and fundraising for greater access to quality educational and wellness resources.

Estelle Hebron-Jones

Staff Attorney

Estelle holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.A. in literature from the University College London. Before joining TDS, she was a Staff Attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery.

Nayeli Moreno

Mitigation Specialist

Nayeli Moreno received a Bachelor of Social Work in 2018 and a Master of Science in Social Work in 2019 from the University of Texas at Austin. During her time at UT, Nayeli completed internships at the UT Law Criminal Defense Clinic and at Texas Defender Service as a Mitigation Intern. She joined Texas Defender Service as a Junior Mitigation Specialist in 2019.

Jamie Newsome

Mitigation Specialist

Jamie Newsome received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Latin American Studies from Colgate University and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Master of Science in Social Work. During her graduate studies, Jamie completed an internship with the Council for At-Risk Youth. She spent her final semester in graduate school as an intern with Texas Defender Service before joining full time as a mitigation specialist in 2018.

Miranda Nolen

Mitigation Unit Manager

Miranda received her law degree from the University of California, Hastings in San Francisco in 2012. During law school, she worked at Bay Area Legal Aid providing family law and immigration services to indigent survivors of domestic violence. Following her legal studies, Miranda worked in a school, where she continued to develop her interest in empowering vulnerable individuals. Miranda went on to earn a Master of Science in Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. While completing her graduate degree, she interned at the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs in Austin, Texas. Miranda joined Texas Defender Service as a mitigation specialist in 2017.

Caden Otunu

Manne Family Fellow

Caden Otunu is a non-attorney Manne Family post-graduate fellow with Texas Defender Service. She received her B.A. in international affairs with a Latin American concentration from The George Washington University in 2015 and her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 2020. Prior to joining TDS, she worked at Appellate Advocates in New York. She will sit for the Texas bar in February 2022.

Robert Owen

Special Counsel

Rob Owen is a criminal defense attorney with more than thirty years’ experience in capital cases. A native southerner, Rob earned degrees in Comparative Literature (A.B., 1984) and Speech Communication (M.A., 1986) at the University of Georgia before attending Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude (J.D., 1989). Since then, he has defended clients facing the death penalty at every level of the state and federal court system. His background includes six years at the Texas Resource Center, where he represented Texas death row prisoners in post-conviction litigation, three years as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Seattle representing clients on charges ranging from traffic offenses to homicide, and more than a decade combining private criminal defense practice and clinical teaching on the law faculties of the University of Texas at Austin and Northwestern University. Rob appears regularly as a faculty member at capital defense trainings around the nation and has testified before state legislatures in Washington and Texas regarding proposed changes in death penalty law. In 2011, the Conference of the Bar of the City of Paris gave him a medal to honor his work in the struggle for human rights. Among many other capital appeals, he has successfully argued four death penalty cases at the United States Supreme Court (Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U.S. 274 (2004); Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U.S. 286 (2007); Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman, 550 U.S. 233 (2007); and Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U.S. 521 (2011)).

Caitlin Purcell

Mitigation Unit Manager

Caitlin holds B.A. from Yale University and a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Texas. Before joining TDS in 2018, she was a Clinical Caseworker in Austin’s Community Court.

Ashlee Qussad

Office Manager

Ashlee started working with TDS in Nov of 2019. Before starting at TDS she lived in Dallas where she studied Psychology at TWU.

Nicole Ramos

Junior Mitigation Specialist

Nicole Ramos received a Bachelor of Arts in Vocational Missions with emphasis in Sociology and Global Studies from Abilene Christian University in 2015. During her undergraduate studies, she piloted a social justice service-learning program in 4 schools in South Dallas, partnering with an international organization aimed at empowering youth. She served in the Peace Corps in Panama from 2016-2018, teaching English and community development to an indigenous village. Nicole went on to graduate from Northeastern University with a Master of Science in International Relations. During her graduate studies, she worked with unaccompanied child refugees from Central America, as an outreach coordinator for the homeless, and as a legal assistant in immigration law. Nicole joined TDS as a Junior Mitigation Specialist in 2021.

Jennae Swiergula

Post-Conviction Director

Before joining the Texas Defender Service, Jennae was a staff attorney at the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, where she represented death-sentenced prisoners in Texas in their state habeas proceedings. Prior to joining the OCFW, she was a staff attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, where she represented clients sentenced to death and clients sentenced to life without parole as children in all stages of state and federal post-conviction proceedings. She also represented other indigent clients subjected to excessive or unfair convictions and punishment and litigated challenges to the conditions of confinement in Alabama prisons. Previously Jennae was an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and she interned with Judge Michael H. Dolinger on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She received her J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 2008.

Kevin Trahan

Staff Attorney

Kevin Trahan is a G. Rollie White legal fellow with Texas Defender Service. He received his B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University in 2015 and his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 2020. Before law school, Kevin was a journalist covering sports and sports law.

Jared Tyler

Senior Counsel

Jared Tyler graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston Law Center in 2003. After graduating, he worked for three years as Deputy Director of the Texas Innocence Network, in which capacity he represented both capital and non-capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings in state and federal court and taught a course on innocence investigations at the University of Houston Law Center. He first joined TDS as a staff attorney in 2006 until 2009, where he represented capitally sentenced clients at all levels of state and federal post-conviction review. In addition to direct representation, he regularly consults on other state and federal capital post-conviction cases. Mr. Tyler rejoined TDS in 2017. He is licensed to practice law in Texas and admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Staff

Staff Bios

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