Board

Sara Totonchi, President

Sara Totonchi, Principal and Co-Founder, Lunoor Consulting, brings more than two decades of effective organizational leadership to her consulting work in support of nonprofits and social justice leaders. Specializing in strategy, culture, leadership, and organizational transitions, Sara provides hands-on support to organizations and leaders across the nation. For over two decades, Sara’s advocacy home was the Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based public interest law firm that works for equality, dignity, and justice for people impacted by the criminal legal system in the Deep South, where she served as Executive Director for eleven years.

Michael Stone, Vice President

A New Orleans native, Michael Stone is an independent strategy consultant and executive coach focused on improving the performance of mission-focused non-profits in and outside of education. From 2010 until 2018, Michael served as Chief External Relations Officer, President, and Co-CEO for New Schools for New Orleans, a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that every child in New Orleans attends an excellent school. At various points, Michael oversaw the organization’s school investment, talent investment, fundraising, finance, grant compliance, government relations, analytics, and communications functions. During his tenure, NSNO supported the launch of 31 new charter schools, helped develop a community-based process to determine school citing, and led the city’s effort to tell the story of education resurgence in Post-Katrina New Orleans. Before joining NSNO, Michael was a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s New York office. While at McKinsey, Michael worked on several projects for public and private sector clients, including product growth strategy, federal grant strategy, and organizational effectiveness. Prior to McKinsey, Michael taught 7th, 8th, and 9th grade math in public schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Michael is a former Aspen-Pahara Fellow and former Broad Resident. He has an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.S.T. in teaching from Pace University, and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Una Dean, Treasurer

Una A. Dean is a distinguished former federal prosecutor and former partner in Fried Frank’s White Collar Defense, Regulatory Enforcement & Investigations and Cybersecurity Practices. Ms. Dean was named to Crain’s New York Business’ 2019 list of Notable Women in Law, a feature honoring achievements of the brightest and boldest legal minds with both distinguished careers and exceptional civic and philanthropic activities. Ms. Dean is also profiled among Global Investigations Review’s 2018 Women in Investigations, a special feature highlighting remarkable women in the field of investigations, including lawyers and other specialists from a variety of countries and backgrounds. In addition, she was the recipient of the Director’s Award for Superior Performance and the Federal Drug Agents Foundation’s True American Hero award.

Maya Chaudhuri
she/her/hers

Maya Chaudhuri is an Equal Justice Works Fellow at Southern Center for Human Rights focused on challenging unconstitutional conditions of confinement in Georgia. Maya graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2021 with specializations in Critical Race Studies and the Public Interest Law and Policy programs. Before law school, Maya was a Senior Investigator at the Southern Center for Human Rights working on litigation and advocacy in the criminal legal systems in Georgia and Alabama. During law school, she was a summer clerk at the Promise of Justice Initiative and the Public Defender Service for DC. She also served as the Chief Executive Editor of the UCLA Law Review and was a Bunche Graduate Research Fellow.

Calvin Duncan

Calvin Duncan was the Project Director for the Light of Justice Project at PJI and a 2013 Soros Justice Fellow. Calvin’s project focused on reducing the procedural barriers prisoners face in securing justice for their cases. Calvin Duncan, who was wrongfully convicted, completed paralegal training at Northwest Missouri Community College from 1992-1993 and worked as a paralegal (Inmate counsel substitute) for 21 years; nineteen years were spent working with men on Death Row. He assisted in winning the freedom of several individuals who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and sentenced to lengthy sentences. He is a graduate of Lewis and Clark Law School.

Isley Gostin

Isley is counsel at WilmerHale in Washington D.C. where she represents clients in all stages of complex litigation and bankruptcy proceedings. Isley was named to the American Bankruptcy Institute's "40 Under 40" in 2020 and was named as Emerging Leader by the M&A Advisor in 2017 for her notable accomplishments in the field and in service to the community. Isley maintains a robust pro bono practice, which includes serving as co-lead trial counsel in a week-long post-conviction trial and appellate counsel for an individual serving a life-without-parole sentence. Isley graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 2006 and cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2008.

Diane O. Lucas

Diane Lucas is Pro Bono Counsel for Racial Justice Initiatives at Davis Polk and Wardwell, LLC. She works with lawyers across the firm and with nonprofit and community partners to develop, supervise and promote pro bono matters to address racial and social injustice and inequality.  Prior to that role, she was Senior Legal Counsel and Director of Community Engagement at the Justice Collaborative, where she worked on criminal justice reform policy nation-wide. In her position, she consulted with prosecutor offices to develop policies to identify and eliminate drivers of incarceration and implement decarceral policies throughout the criminal legal process.  

Diane previously served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. She handled matters in a wide range of areas, including immigration, criminal legal reform, education, consumer racial profiling, voting rights, and housing and employment discrimination. Before joining the Attorney General’s Office, Diane was a public defender in the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan. 

Diane is Social Action Chair of the East Kings County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She received a B.A. from New York University and J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Marquest “Quest” Meeks

Marquest “Quest” Meeks is an executive and in-house counsel in the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Before joining MLB, Quest worked in-house for Entergy, a Fortune 500 utility company based in New Orleans, Louisiana, and before that, he served as a federal prosecutor for several years. He previously served on the board of Boys Hope Girls Hope New Orleans and as the first board chair for unCommon Construction. He graduated from Tulane University and Georgetown Law. He was privileged to have PJI lawyers serve as his co-counsel on a post-conviction relief pro bono case and is now eager to serve on PJI’s board. 

Rita Radostitz

Rita Radostitz served as a public defender in Washington State courts and as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the District of Oregon, and as a capital defense attorney at the Texas Resource Center and later in private practice in Austin, Texas. In 2000, she closed her practice, rode her bike around the world and after returning earned a Master’s Degree in Journalism & Communications at the University of Oregon. She worked as a journalist and non-profit communications director for a decade before returning to the practice of law. She currently lives in Washington DC and works for the Military Commissions Defense Organization as counsel for one of the defendants charged in the 9/11 case in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Rita is the mother of twin daughters who are Ethiopian by birth, a voracious reader, and a lover of adventure. She is a graduate of the University of Oregon (BA, Political Science; MA Journalism and Nonprofit Management), and earned her JD from Villanova Law School.

Laverne Thompson

Hi, My Name is Laverne Thompson, I was born and raised in New Orleans Louisiana, and am currently a Supervisor in Environmental Services at Ochsner Medical Center where I have been promoted twice in the five years, that I was employed at Ochsner. I graduated from Delgado Community College where I earned an Associate Degree in Criminal Justice. I am the proud mother of four grown children and 12 grandchildren to whom I love dearly.

I am a widow of two years. My husband John Thompson was exonerated after 18 long years in prison. After coming home from prison John dedicated his life to helping others coming home from prison who were wrongfully convicted or just needed assistance. He started an organization called Resurrection after Exoneration that benefited so many others to become productive citizens in society. He just wanted everybody to succeed. I knew how committed he was to helping others and that inspired me to continue what he started.

So now I am the President of Resurrection after Exoneration to continue the work that is so badly needed to help people returning from prison and to help with recidivism. Also, I am a member of Witness to Innocence, an organization solely dedicated to helping those who were exonerated. We travel every year to different States/Countries to fight to abolish the Death Penalty and to seek justice for those that were wrongfully convicted.

I am proud to be a part of this board and honored to serve.

Honored Previous Members

Andrea Armstrong, Emeritus

Andrea Armstrong is an Associate Professor at Loyola College of Law where she teaches constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, and race and the law. She earned her Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School, her Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts from New York University. Prior to joining Loyola’s faculty, Ms. Armstrong clerked for the Honorable Helen G. Berrigan in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Ms. Armstrong litigated prisoner civil rights cases as a Thomas Emerson Fellow and researched international human rights issues for the International Center for Transitional Justice, the Center on International Cooperation, and the United Nations. She has published articles on prison conditions, reparations, peacebuilding, and pre-emptive war.

Chief Justice Pascal F. Calogero

Pascal F. Calogero was a native of New Orleans, was four times elected and re-elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court from a district comprised of the seven parishes in and around metropolitan New Orleans. Chief Justie Calogero graduated from St. Aloysius High School in New Orleans (1949) and Loyola University School of Law (1954), where he graduated first in his class and received his LLB. In 1982 he earned a Master of Laws Degree in judicial process from the University of Virginia. He served in the U.S. Army from 1954-1957 in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps – and separated with the rank of Captain. After clerking for the judges of the Civil District Court for New Orleans for a year, he formed a law firm in 1958 with Moon Landrieu and Charles A. Kronlage, Jr. He practiced law with the firm of Landrieu, Calogero & Kronlage until 1968, and then with the firm of Calogero and Kronlage until 1972 when he was elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court. He was elected three more times, where he served a total of 36 years; 18 of them as Chief Justice. He retired at the end of his final term in office on December 31, 2008. Upon his retirement, Chief Justice Calogero had served longer than any justice in the history of the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Melanie Carr, Emeritus

Melanie Carr is an independent consultant, investigator, and mitigation specialist, working on human rights and civil rights cases, primarily on behalf of poor people facing the death penalty or lengthy sentences.

After graduating from Harvard with a degree in social anthropology, Melanie moved to New Orleans ins 1997 to work as a capital defense investigator and mitigation specialist with the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center. In 2002, she received an Echoing Green Fellowship to establish A Fighting Chance, a nonprofit capital defense investigation and mitigation office. A Fighting Chance (now known as NOLA Investigates) expanded access to qualified investigators and mitigation specialists through aggressive funding litigation and improved investigation and mitigation standards through recruiting, training and supervising investigators and mitigation specialists. After rebuilding A Fighting Chance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Melanie transitioned the leadership of the organization and moved back to her native northeast in 2007.

As a solo practitioner now based in Brooklyn, Melanie’s clients have included the Jena 6, a Civil Rights Era innocence case in the Deep South, worker’s rights and discrimination class actions, juvenile detention conditions, police brutality and civil rights cases, and sentencing advocacy for juveniles service lengthy sentences in adult prisons. She also provides training on investigation and mitigation development for criminal defense team members.

Soren Gisleson, Emeritus

Soren E. Gisleson is a partner of Herman, Herman & Katz , L.L.C. Mr. Gisleson attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he earned a bachelor of arts in Philosophy in 1993. After receiving his B.A. from the University of Colorado, Mr. Gisleson attended Loyola University School of Law, where he received his Juris Doctorate in May of 1999. While at Loyola Law School, Mr. Gisleson became a member of Law Review in 1998 and published his casenote, Graham v. Willis-Knighton Medical Center: The Dissipation of Statutorily Admitted Liability in Medical Malpractice, 44 LOY. L. REV. 315 (1999). Mr. Gisleson served as articles editor of the Law Review from 1998-99, soliciting and editing legal writings ranging from death penalty litigation to environmental regulation and from constitutional law to admiralty. In 1999, Mr. Gisleson was also named to the National Law School Dean’s List.

Immediately upon graduation, Mr. Gisleson clerked for the Honorable Carl J. Barbier, District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

In the Fall of 2000, Mr. Gisleson became an associate with Herman, Herman & Katz. Mr. Gisleson handled a variety of cases including criminal pro bono cases. Since 2005, Mr.Gisleson has focused his practice on first party insurance cases on behalf of homeowners and businesses, and has even undertaken a special appointment by the State of Louisiana to prosecute an antitrust case against the insurance industry for their claims handling practices after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mr. Gisleson has also represented the New Orleans City Council in civil litigation involving utility, zoning and other regulatory matters.

Jancy Hoeffel, Emeritus

Professor Hoeffel is the Catherine D. Pierson Associate Professor of Law at Tulane Law School. She joined the Tulane law faculty in 1999. After graduating from Stanford Law School, she clerked in Chicago for a federal district court judge. Professor Hoeffel then joined the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she remained for six years, working as trial attorney, staff attorney supervisor, and appellate attorney. Subsequently, she entered private practice in Denver, Colorado, where she engaged in criminal and civil litigation. Professor Hoeffel teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, the death penalty, evidence, and law and gender. She was the recipient in 2005 of the Felix Frankfurter Distinguished Teaching Award, conferred each year by the graduating class. Professor Hoeffel served as Vice Dean of the Law School for three years from 2009 – 2012. She has also served on the Louisiana Public Defender Board and the Innocence Project New Orleans Board.

Judge Calvin Johnson, Emeritus

Calvin Johnson is currently the Executive Director of Metropolitan Human Services District and an adjunct Law Professor at Loyola University School of Law. Before retiring, he was District Court Judge for Orleans Parish Criminal District Court from 1990 through 2007, where he served as Deputy Chief Judge from 1999 to 2000 and Chief Judge from 2004 to 2006. Before becoming a judge, he worked as a Staff Attorney for Orleans Parish Indigent Defender’s Program.

Judge Johnson is a past president of the Louis A. Martinet Society and the founder of Orleans Parish Mental Health Treatment Center. He is the recipient of Louis A. Martinet Society’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 1985 and Distinguished Jurist Award in 2009. In 1992, he received the Justice Albert Tate Award. He is also the recipient of the 2008 Louisiana ACLU’s Benjamin Smith Award.

Denise LeBoeuf, Emeritus

Denny LeBoeuf has been the Director of the ACLU’s John Adams Project since 2008, participating in the defense of the capitally charged Guantanamo detainees. From 2011-2013 she was Director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, heading the organization’s integrated advocacy to achieve abolition by litigation, legislation, communications and policy change.

In 2006 Ms. LeBoeuf served as the Chair of the Orleans Public Defenders Board, where she assisted in the effort to re-establish and reform indigent defense in post-Katrina New Orleans. She also served as a Federal Habeas Corpus Resource Counsel, providing consultation to federal defenders, Capital Habeas Units, and panel attorneys representing death-sentenced inmates in federal habeas proceedings, and was the founding director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, the first state-funded capital defender office in Louisiana.  She has been a capital defender for 25 years, representing persons facing the death penalty at trial and in state and federal post-conviction proceedings.  She teaches and consults with capital defense teams nationally.

Wilbert Rideau, Emeritus

Wilbert Rideau is a writer, lecturer, and expert on criminal behavior, the world of prison (prison culture, sexual violence, journalism & censorship), capital defendants and the death row experience. Since 2008, he has coordinated the Life Support Project for the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project; and since 2006, has served as faculty for continuing legal education programs and as consultant to capital defense teams with “difficult” clients. 

From 1961-2005, Mr. Rideau was an inmate in the Louisiana prison system. While incarcerated, he became editor of The Angolite, the prisoner-produced newsmagazine, and was the first prisoner in American penal history to win freedom from censorship. Over the next quarter century, he won many of the nation’s highest journalism awards, including the prestigious George Polk Award, for his outstanding contributions to public understanding of the criminal justice and prison systems. In 1979, he became the first prisoner ever to receive the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award for an investigative exposé, “Conversations with the Dead,” that resulted in the release of a number of long-term inmates “lost” in the Louisiana prison system. In 1984, he was selected to participate in an unprecedented nationally televised dialogue with Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court on ABC-TV’s Nightline. In March 1993, Life magazine called him “The Most Rehabilitated Prisoner in America.” That same year, he ventured into broadcast journalism, producing award-winning reports for national radio and television. In 1996, he became the only prisoner ever to receive the Louisiana Bar Association’s highest journalistic honor for a documentary film he co-produced, Final Judgment: The Execution of Antonio James. In 1998, he co-directed a documentary, The Farm: Angola, USA, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. He is the co-editor of The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana, a textbook now in its fourth edition; Life Sentences, an anthology of articles from The Angolite; and In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, his autobiography.

Michael Rubenstein, Emeritus

Mr. Rubenstein is a litigator with a diverse commercial practice encompassing business bankruptcy, complex business litigation, and criminal law. His bankruptcy practice is largely, though not exclusively, devoted to the representation of creditors in complex reorganizations. He routinely represents leading financial institutions throughout Texas and Louisiana.

Mr. Rubenstein has extensive experience in general business litigation and government enforcement proceedings. He also has substantial arbitration experience. In both the criminal and civil contexts, Mr. Rubenstein has managed complex and difficult electronic discovery projects.

Also, by order of the Louisiana Supreme Court, Mr. Rubenstein represented an inmate on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. This representation resulted in a compromise with the State whereby the client was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and a life sentence. In recognition of this work, Mr. Rubenstein received the Camille Gravel Pro Bono Award from the New Orleans Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and the firm received the Beacon of Justice Award from the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.