Board of Directors

Gary Udashen
President
An experienced trial and appellate attorney in Dallas. Udashen has over 25 years experience trying cases in both Federal and State courts. He frequently appears as a speaker at seminars for groups such as State Bar of Texas, Dallas Bar Association and the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Udashen is Board Certified in Criminal law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has been named as a Texas Monthly Super Lawyer each year since 2003 and is listed in the publication Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Appellate Law, White-Collar Criminal Defense and Non-White Collar Criminal Defense. In 2008, Udashen was appointed by the Court of Criminal Appeals to serve as a member of the newly formed Criminal Justice Integrity Unit

Walter Reaves
Vice President
Walter Reaves has been a criminal defense lawyer since 1980. During that time he has represented defendants charged with all types of offenses, ranging from minor misdemeanors to death penalty cases. During his career, he obtained an exoneration for Calvin Washington, who had been convicted of capital murder and spent 16 years in prison. Reaves was also able to obtain the exoneration of his co-defendant, Joe Sidney Williams, after successfully winning the reversal of his case on appeal several years earlier.

Recently, Reaves has represented defendants in cases involving forensic issues. Those cases started with his representation of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed despite evidence being presented that the fire which killed his children was not intentionally set. As a result of that experience, Reaves is currently involved in the litigation of several arson cases.

Reaves has been board certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1985. He has written numerous articles on various areas of criminal law, and has also written a book – “Understanding Habeas Corpus.” He currently writes a blog, which can be found at www.wacocriminallawblog.com.

Mike Ware
Vice President
Mike Ware lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated with honors from the University of Texas with a degree in philosophy. He graduated from the University of Houston Law School in 1983, where he was research editor for the Houston Law Review and the Houston Law Review's Texas Rules of Evidence Handbook. In addition, he was a law clerk for the Honorable David O. Belew, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth from 1983 to 1984.

In 1984, Ware began private practice, specializing in criminal defense. His practice included representing police officers in criminal, civil and administrative matters as well as investigating and litigating whistle-blower claims. He became board certified in criminal law in 1990. His criminal defense practice has involved pre-charge investigations, grand jury proceedings, trials, direct appeals and other post-conviction proceedings in both state and federal courts throughout the United States.

From July 2007 until July 2011, Ware was the Special Fields Bureau Chief for the Dallas County District Attorney's office, which included the Conviction Integrity Unit. In April 2009, Ware was featured in “Dallas DNA,” a six-week television series on Investigation Discovery (ID) based on his work with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU). In July 2011, Ware resumed private practice in Fort Worth. Ware was a faculty member at the Criminal Trial Advocacy Institute in Huntsville, Texas from 1993 to 1996, and has an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell. Ware's peers voted to name him a "Texas Super Lawyer.”

Currently, Ware is an adjunct professor at Texas Wesleyan School of Law and is the supervisor of the Wesleyan Innocence Project.

Jeff Blackburn
Chief Counsel
Jeff Blackburn handles criminal defense and civil rights cases throughout Texas. He also represents the wrongfully convicted. In 2009, he represented the family of Tim Cole, a young man falsely accused of rape who died in prison, and got the first posthumous exoneration in Texas. He also represented 38 people falsely convicted in the infamous Tulia drug bust, eventually obtaining full pardons and civil damages. He is the founder of and chief counsel to the Innocence Project of Texas. He was named criminal defense lawyer of the year by the State Bar of Texas for 2002/2003. He has received the Frank Spurlock award, the Henry B. Gonzales award, and the Maury Maverick award for his civil rights work. He is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Jani Maselli
Secretary
Jani Maselli is a practicing appellate attorney and an Adjunct Professor of Law, Legal Research and Writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She has handled direct appeals and writs of habeas corpus to the state courts of appeals, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Maselli formerly worked as a staff attorney for Inmate Legal Services in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and was a staff attorney for the Honorable Charles F. Baird, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Bruce Anton
A noted criminal defense attorney from Dallas. He has been named as a Texas Monthly Super Lawyer each year since 2003 and is listed in the publication Best Lawyers in America. he is also Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Anton formerly served as Legal Director for the Dallas Civil Liberties Union. Anton practices trial, appellate and post-conviction law throughout the State of Texas.

Catherine Greene Burnett
Catherine Greene Burnett is the Associate Dean of Clinical Studies and Director of the Pro Bono Honors Program at South Texas College of Law in Houston, where she teaches courses on criminal procedure, international criminal law, and capital punishment. She also serves as co-Chair of the State Bar of Texas Committee on Legal Services to the Poor in Criminal Matters. Burnett previously worked as an assistant attorney general and practiced criminal defense for 11 years.

Nicole Casarez
Nicole Cásarez is an attorney and a communication professor at the University of St. Thomas, where she teaches journalism and media law. She has directed an innocence investigations class at UST since 2001, and she and her students have worked on numerous capital and non-capital cases through the Innocence Project of Texas and the Texas Innocence Network. She currently serves on the board of the Texas Defender Service, and is the director of the University of Houston Law Center’s Prelaw Summer Institute. She is a member of the American Law Institute.

Steve Egger
Professor Egger is currently an Associate Professor of Criminology (tenured), Convener of Criminology Program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in Houston, Texas. His educational background includes the Management Development Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University in June 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in 1985 and was awarded an assistantship and research fellowship during his time there. Professor Egger also has a Masters of Science in Criminal Justice degree from Michigan State University and was awarded an assistantship before graduating in 1972. He received a Bachelor of Science in Police Administration with “High Honors” from Michigan State University in 1970.

In addition to teaching at UH- Clear Lake, Professor Egger is currently building a database on serial killers with K. Egger and is in the process of writing and editing several books on serial killers and criminal investigation. Professor Egger has published numerous books and articles in the field of criminal justice and investigation. In September 2010, Professor Egger became involved with IPOT in coordinating Internships, independent studies, and volunteers from the University of Houston – Clear Lake student community.

Bill Habern
Bill Habern is a 1972 graduate of the Texas Tech School of Law. He served as a member of the Texas Prison public defenders organization until 1974 when he left to start his own practice. Currently he is “of counsel” to the firm of Habern, O’Neil and Pawgan LLP whose primary office is in Huntsville, Texas where the firm specializes in prison, parole and post conviction issues.

Habern has served as executive director of the Texas Criminal Defense Project, and served for 10 years as a member of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Board of Directors. He served two terms as co-chairman of the post conviction committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is the author of a number of articles on post conviction topics.

Anthony Robinson
Anthony Robinson was wrongfully convicted of a Harris County rape in 1986 and was exonerated in 2000 thanks to DNA evidence that proved he was innocent of the crime. After his release from prison, Robinson went on to earn his J.D. from the Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law. He put his law degree to work in the field of international law, focusing his efforts in Texas and China. Robinson currently works for RCI Consulting International.

Sarah Roland
Sarah is a criminal defense trial and appellate lawyer. She inherited a passion for representing the least among us from her late father, George Roland. She attended Texas Tech School of Law where she was awarded the Clifford W. Brown Award by the Lubbock Criminal Defense Lawyers Association for excellence as a student attorney. It was at Texas Tech that Sarah was one of first student volunteers for the Innocence Project of Texas.

Sarah also serves on the Board of Directors for the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and is the immediate, two-term past president of the Denton County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. She has also recently been selected for inclusion on the 2012 Texas Rising Stars list, featuring outstanding young lawyers in the state.

Katherine Scardino
Katherine Scardino is a practicing criminal defense and family law attorney in Houston. She earned her J.D. from the University of Houston law school in 1984. Among several notable cases, Scardino represented Joe Durrett, who was acquitted of capital murder. She is also an attorney for Anthony Graves, who is facing a re-trial following the reversal of his death penalty capital murder conviction. Scardino has been named as a Texas Monthly Super Lawyer since 2006 and has appeared frequently on television including the late Johnny Cochran’s Cochran & Company and MSNBC.

Bob Wicoff
Wicoff has been board certified in criminal law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization for more than 20 years. He recently became one of the first lawyers in Texas to become board certified in criminal appellate law.He has personally authored more than 600 appellate briefs, having represented appellants in criminal appeals in every court of appeals in Texas. He has argued in front of both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court. He represented Josiah Sutton, who was released from prison in 2003 after new DNA testing proved that Sutton was innocent of the sexual assault for which he had been convicted. He also represented Michael Anthony Green, who was released in July of 2010 after 27 years in prison, when DNA testing proved Green to be innocent. Bob was the director of the Houston Police Department (HPD) Crime Lab Review Panel, which investigated mistakes made by the HPD Crime Lab in 200 homicide and sexual assault cases from the 1980s. The investigation resulted in the release of Gary Alvin Richard after 22 years of imprisonment. In 2009, Bob was selected as one of three attorneys to represent all indigent defendants in Harris County in post-conviction DNA litigation, a post he held until 2011, when he became the Chief of the Appellate Division of the new Harris County Public Defender’s Office (PDO).

Philip Wischkaemper
Philip Wischkaemper is a 1989 graduate from the Texas Tech University School of Law. After graduation, he prosecuted for the Hockley County District Attorney’s Office in Levelland, Texas for one year. He then traded in his white hat for a copy of the constitution and entered the employ of his brother, Bill Wischkaemper, in 1990. After an 18 month stint with Bill, he joined a partnership in Lubbock where he concentrated on criminal practice.

Philip handled his first capital case in 1994 (a federal habeas case) and began to concentrate on capital litigation, both trial and post-conviction in 1998. In 2001, Philip was hired as the Capital Assistance Attorney for the Texas Criminal Defense Project, a position he has held since that time. He is a frequent speaker at events for the Center for American and International Law, Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and occasionally, the Texas State Bar. He is the co-editor for the Texas Criminal Codes books, Texas Punishment Manual, Texas Rules Book, and the Texas Trial Notebook published by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. He is also the former Chair of the Region 16A Grievance committee.

Most importantly, he is married to Lois, also an attorney, who concentrates on healthcare law. They have no kids, but cats, one of which is Dakota, a certified therapy cat who visits the Children’s Hospital at University Medical Center in Lubbock weekly.