Staff

IPNO is made up of full time staff-attorneys and support staff, aided by a constellation of Interns and Volunteers including pro-bono counsel.

IPNO Staff

Emily Maw
Director

Director Emily Maw has been with IPNO since 2003. Emily is licensed in Louisiana and Mississippi and litigates cases of wrongful conviction while directing operations for the rest of the organization.

Before she began at IPNO, Emily worked with the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center for several years as an investigator for capital cases in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. She also worked at the Texas Defender Service.

Emily received her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh and her Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School.
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William Aquino
Law Clerk

William Aquino is a law clerk who originally served as an intern at IPNO in 2007. Bill is employed part-time on case review with the District Attorney's Office on the IPNO initiated Orleans Parish Post Conviction DNA testing project.

During law school, Bill was a summer intern and later student attorney at the Tulane University Domestic Violence Clinic.Before law school, he worked as a licensed private investigator in San Francisco. Bill also served as an investigator for the city of New York's Civilian Complaint Review Board, working on investigations and departmental prosecutions of NYPD officers stemming from complaints of abuse of authority and excessive force.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of California Los Angeles and received his Juris Doctor from the Tulane University Law School in 2009.
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Richard Davis
Case Manager, Law Clerk

Richard Davis is a law clerk and IPNO's case manager. He came to New Orleans for a four-month internship at IPNO in 2005, and has remained with IPNO since. Davis also oversees IPNO's internship program.

Richard earned his Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sheffield.
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Brandon Early
Investigator

Brandon Early has been an investigator at IPNO since 2008.

Brandon, a native New Orleanian, has a background in community-based participatory research and social policy research. His experiences began with the Southeast Community Research Center in Atlanta where he supported the development and implementation of a NIH-supported community-based participatory research method project aimed at addressing bioethics in research and health disparities among marginalized communities of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Brandon has also worked with the Lindy Boggs National Center of Community Literacy at Loyola University to support the development of a participatory action research led inquiry into employment and literacy among black men in distressed communities of New Orleans.

Before returning to New Orleans, Brandon honed his investigation and research skills during his time with MDRC in New York, conducting social policy research evaluations of real-world policies and programs designed and operated by government agencies and others geared towards low-income populations and communities. During his time at MDRC Early assisted in the implementation stage a rigorous evaluation of the New York City-based Center for Employment Opportunities, a highly regarded employment program for ex-prisoners.

Since returning to New Orleans in 2007, Brandon has also committed himself to working with New Orleans' youth by way of Students at the Center.

Brandon studied at Morehouse College and graduated from Loyola New Orleans with a Bachelor of Science in Sociology and a minor in Biology.
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Duane Hollis
Case Review Manager

Duane Hollis joined the IPNO team, through the Jesuit Volunteer Program, in 2009 as a case review manager. He has previously worked as a case manager for the homeless in Hartford, Conn. and as a Child Life Volunteer with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Duane grew up in Washington State and attended the University of Washington in Seattle. He graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and a minor in Chemistry. He continues to stay connected to his home state by serving as an Evaluator for Washington Future Problems Solvers, an extra curricular program for grade school and high school students.
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Paul Killebrew
Staff Attorney

Paul Killebrew is a staff attorney who originally served as a summer intern at IPNO in 2005.

During law school, Paul did internships with the United States Attorney's Office and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York. After graduating from law school in 2007, he clerked for a federal district court judge in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Before law school, Paul worked as a grant writer for the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, a social service agency, and was a literacy instructor for adults with developmental disabilities.

He has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Political Science from the University of Georgia and received his Juris Doctor from New York University.
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Jane Legendre
Financial Manager

Jane Legendre has been managing IPNO's finances since 2003 and keeping the books of all organizations that IPNO hosts or for which it serves as fiscal sponsor. She brings years of experience to the job. Jane and her husband are active members of their church in Covington and run several community service programs that benefit hundreds of the area's residents.
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Tom Lowenstein
Policy Director

Tom Lowenstein joined IPNO in 2008 as an investigator and later became IPNO's policy director.

Tom is a former editor at The American Prospect magazine as well as DoubleTake magazine. He has also worked as a political organizer, a teaching fellow for Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard and an investigative journalist. His writing has appeared in several local and national magazines. Tom first worked on a political campaign at age three, riding around Brooklyn, holding the fried chicken bucket while his father gave speeches from the back of a mustang.
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Carolyn Matthews
Office Assistant

Carolyn Matthews is IPNO's office assistant. She received her Bachelors degree in Psychology and a minor in Chemistry at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. Previously she was instrumental in creating and assisting youth organizations such as the Royal Priesthood Youth Ministry, Hip-Hop dance Ministry and the Mt. Sinai youth choir. She also has a background in Christian counseling.
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Shelagh O'Donnell
Investigator

Investigator Shelagh O'Donnell began working as the case review manager at IPNO in August 2008 as part of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps program. Shelagh is currently employed part-time at IP-NO on case review with the District Attorney's Office on the IPNO initiated Orleans Parish Post Conviction DNA testing project

Shelagh graduated from Boston College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a minor in History. Her focus was Islam and the Middle East and she wrote her thesis on nation-building in Afghanistan. During college, she studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland and traveled to the Appalachian region and Kingston, Jamaica on service immersion trips. Before arriving at IPNO, she interned with the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration.
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Jené O'Keefe Trigg
Communications and Development Director

Jené O'Keefe Trigg joined IPNO in 2010 as the organization's first ever communications and development director. Jené brings to IPNO nearly 15 years of experience of nonprofit communications and management. As managing director of Pro-Media Communications, a social issues public relations firm she worked with numerous nonprofits including but not limited to the Correctional Association, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Safe Horizon and Death Penalty Information Center.

Prior to Pro-Media, Jené was the executive director (and hired originally as the development director) of The Moratorium Campaign, a national anti-death penalty education campaign based in New Orleans and led by Sister Helen Prejean.

At Pyramid Communications, a public affairs firm in Seattle, Jené worked with Legal Aid of Washington Fund, Columbia Legal Services, the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, Mara Leveritt - author of "Boys on the Tracks" and "Devil's Knot" and the 2000 Gore/Lieberman Campaign, to name just a few. She has also been a Court Appointed Special Advocate volunteer and a mentor with the Women's Prison Association and for over 12 years assisted with publicizing the wrongful convictions of three men known as the "West Memphis Three."
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Christo Raines
Exoneree Advocate

Christo Raines is IPNO's exoneree advocate. A graduate of Saint Mary's College, he joined IPNO in 2008 as part of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps program to assist with the transition and specific needs and challenges IPNO exonerees face as they reintegrate into society. He also works extensively with Resurrection After Exoneration, a support organizations for exonerees and the wrongfully convicted across the U.S.

Christo earned a degree in Psychology from Saint Mary's College.
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Kristin Wenstrom
Staff Attorney

Kristin Wenstrom is a staff attorney who began working at IPNO as an intern in 2006 and officially joined the ranks as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in 2008.

Kristin's fellowship entails representing wrongfullly convicted youth sentenced to life without parole in Louisiana and utilizing their cases and stories to reform policy that allows for these injustices to occur. Currently, Kristin is working to convince Louisiana law enforcement agencies to adopt a practice of video recording their custodial interrogations.

Kristin received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics from New York University in 2002 and her Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School in 2008. Before law school she worked for three years as a legal assistant at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen, and Loewy, LLP in New York City.
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Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE) Staff
Click here for more on RAE

John Thompson
Founder and Director

John Thompson, is the founder and director of Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE), a nonprofit founded in 2007 by exonerees to promote and sustain a network of support among formerly wrongfully incarcerated individuals in the South.

John is from New Orleans and spent 18 years wrongly imprisoned (14 on death row) for a crime he did not commit. The prosecutors in his case deliberately withheld evidence of his innocence. When he was exonerated in 2003, John quickly noticed that fellow exonerees coming home from prison were struggling and needed a stronger support network in order to succeed. RAE emerged in response to this need and has become a real advocate for change in the criminal justice system. It is the first exoneree run re-entry initiative in the country. Echoing Green invested in John's vision and awarded him a two-year fellowship as seed money to start RAE. IPNO supports RAE as it becomes an independent organization.

Ora Nitkin-Kaner
Communications and Development

Ora Nitkin-Kaner began working as an exoneree advocate with RAE in 2008, as part of Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps. She has stayed on as RAE's communication and development manager.

Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Ora received a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Arts from the Centre for Religious Studies at the University of Toronto.

Tina Wexler
Exoneree Advocate

Tina Wexler is an exoneree advocate and program assistant for RAE. She has been working with RAE and IPNO since September 2009 through her fellowship with AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Tina has previously worked as a research assistant and clinical case manager at St. Barnabas hospital in New York and as a research assistant and grants manager at Queens College, City University of New York.

She graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion.