Elbegdorj Tsakhiagiin

Former President of Mongolia, Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow, 2022-2023 & 2023-2024 at Standford University

Bio

Former President of Mongolia Elbegdorj Tsakhiagiin joined the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in 2023 as Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow from February 2023 to July 2023, and from November 2023 to April 2024, after a career in public service to Mongolia as a Member of Parliament, Prime Minister, and President. Currently, Mr. Elbegdorj is continuing his work to improve public policy, governance, and democracy through the Elbegdorj Institute, a think tank he founded in 2008.

Sister Helen Prejean

American Catholic Sister, Author and Advocate

Bio

Sister Helen is the public face of the Ministry Against the Death Penalty. She spends most of her time giving speaking engagements across the USA and internationally, teaching people about the realities of the death penalty and encouraging people to educate themselves on the issue. She has forthcoming work, her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

Professor Corinna Barrett Lain

George E. Allen Chair in Law at University of Richmond

Bio

Professor Corinna Lain is the George E. Allen Chair in Law at the University of Richmond School of Law. Professor Lain’s scholarship focuses on two areas—Supreme Court decision-making and the death penalty—and she has published numerous articles and essays about lethal injection over the last decade.

Her work has appeared in the nation’s top law journals, including the Stanford Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, UCLA Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal, among other venues. Professor Lain is a frequent presenter at both national and international conferences, and is co-author (with Ron Bacigal) of the Virginia Practice Series on criminal law, a four-volume treatise for the bench and practicing bar with new editions each year.

She clerked on the Tenth Circuit and then was a prosecutor for three years before joining the Richmond Law faculty in 2001. Professor Lain is a recipient of the University of Richmond’s Distinguished Educator Award and is a veteran of the United States Army. She has also authored, "Secrets of the Killing State: the Untold Story of Lethal Injection."

Robin M. Maher

Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center

Bio

Robin Maher has extensive experience in the death penalty field, including direct representation and training of judges and defense lawyers throughout the United States and internationally. Her work with legislators, prosecutors, judges, defenders, and bar associations has been focused on improving the fairness and accuracy of death penalty cases and reducing the errors and mistakes that lead to wrongful convictions. Previously, Ms. Maher worked as Senior Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Access to Justice; as a division chief at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Defender Services Office; as an assistant federal public defender at the Capital Habeas Unit, Federal Community Public Defender, Eastern District of PA; and as Resource Counsel at the Texas Habeas Assistance and Training Project. For thirteen years, Ms. Maher was the Director of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project, where, under her leadership, the ABA produced guidelines for lawyers and judges in death penalty cases that are now the national standard of care in the United States. Since 2010, she has also been a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where she has taught classes on public interest law and capital punishment. Internationally, Ms. Maher has organized training seminars with judicial groups and bar associations in China, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Vietnam; trained capital defense lawyers working in Africa at Cornell Law School’s Makwanyane Institute; and trained and consulted with capital defense trial teams representing detainees held at Guantanamo.

She is a frequent speaker at national and international death penalty conferences and has also published several articles on the professional and ethical responsibilities of defense counsel in death penalty cases. Ms. Maher is the recipient of awards from the American Bar Association, Witness to Innocence, and the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates & Mitigation Specialists.

Mario Marazziti

Former deputy in Italy's Camera dei Deputati and a spokesman for the Community of Sant'Egidio

Bio

Mario Marazziti is a spokesperson for the Community of Sant'Egidio on death penalty abolition issues, a founding member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and a former deputy in Italy's Camera dei Deputati. He is the author of the book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty.

Mark Olive

A nationally recognized death penalty litigation expert

Bio

Mark Olive's national practice of law focuses on death penalty litigation and educating lawyers, judges, and law students about capital punishment and habeas corpus practice. Mr. Olive has litigated capital cases throughout the country, both state and federal, including in the United States Supreme Court. Mr. Olive was the Director of the first Capital Resource Center in the country, opened in Florida in 1985.

The Center provided assistance to pro bono attorneys, as well as direct representation, in capital cases. He was later the Director of both the Georgia and Virginia Resource Centers. He has taught in law schools around the country, and today teaches the Death Penalty and the Supreme Court seminar at the University of North Carolina College of Law in Chapel Hill. Mr. Olive has been awarded: the National Legal Aid and Defender Association's Life in the Balance Achievement Award; one of the the Florida Supreme Court’s highest awards, the Tobias Simon award for pro bono service; the Kentucky Furman award for national service to death sentenced inmates; and the California Death Penalty Focus award for lifetime service. Mr. Olive has been a member of HAT, with John Blume, since the project's inception in 1996.

William Schabas

Professor of International Law at Middlesex University of London

Bio

Professor William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He joined the Middlesex University faculty in 2011 after a distinguished career as a practicing lawyer (member of the Québec bar) and academic, having previously been professor of law at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the University of Galway.

Professor Schabas is also emeritus professor at Leiden University and the University of Galway, honorary chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, and invited visiting scholar at the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po). He has appeared as counsel before several international and national courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, and the Supreme Court of Canada.

Professor Schabas was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006. He has been awarded the Vespasian V. Pella Medal for International Criminal Justice of the Association internationale de droit pénal, the Gold Medal in the Social Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy, and he holds several honorary doctorates. Professor Schabas served as one of the commissioners of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, from 2002 to 2004.

In 2014, he was appointed by the president of the United Nations Human Rights Council as chairman of the International commission of inquiry to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014.

From 2009 to 2011, he was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights. Professor Schabas has prepared the quinquennial reports of the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the status of capital punishment for 2010, 2015 and 2020.