Staff
Barbara O'Brien, Editor, is a Professor of Law at the Michigan State University College of Law, where she teaches classes in criminal law and procedure. She earned her J.D. at the University of Colorado School of Law, a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Michigan, and an A.B. in Economics from Bowdoin College. Her scholarship examines the role of race and other extralegal factors in criminal investigations, trials, and the administration of capital punishment. Her work applies empirical methodology to legal issues, such as identifying predictors of false convictions and understanding prosecutorial decision-making.
Simon Cole, Director and Associate Editor, is a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, where he teaches Miscarriages of Justice among other courses. His primary research area is the sociology and history of forensic science, and he has published on forensic science and on miscarriages of justice. Professor Cole is the author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification (Harvard University Press, 2001) and Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting (University of Chicago Press, 2008, with Michael Lynch, Ruth McNally & Kathleen Jordan).
Samuel Gross, Senior Editor and Co-Founder, is the Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Michigan Law School where he taught Evidence, Criminal Procedure and courses on false convictions and exonerations. He has litigated test cases on jury selection in capital trials, racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty, and the constitutionality of executing defendants in the face of a substantial known risk of innocence. Professor Gross has published many works on false convictions and exonerations, eyewitness identification, evidence law, pre-trial settlement and the selection of cases for trial and racial profiling.
Meghan Cousino, Executive Director, NRE Foundation, joined the Registry in 2016 as a special-projects researcher, launching the pre-1989 exoneration database. As Executive Director of the NRE Foundation, she now focuses on executing the Foundation's mission of providing the Registry with the necessary financial, operational, and community support to ensure its long-term sustainability. She earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 2004 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2007. Prior to joining the Registry, she worked as a corporate attorney at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago.
Jessica Weinstock Paredes, Executive Director, is a former criminal defense attorney. She has been the Denise Foderaro Research Fellow for the Registry since 2019. Jessica reviews and manages every exoneration added to all three databases. As Executive Director, she collaborates closely with the NRE Foundation, editors, donors and staff to sustain the Registry's operations and development. Before joining the Registry, Jessica was as an Assistant Public Defender in Miami Dade County and Hillsborough County, Florida. She earned her B.A. from Florida State University, and her J.D. from Florida International University.
Maurice Possley, Senior Researcher, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of five non-fiction books. He worked for the Chicago Tribune for 25 years, where he investigated numerous cases of wrongful conviction and wrongful execution as well as systemic problems in the criminal justice system. In 2009, he joined the Northern California Innocence Project to research and co-author a ground-breaking report on prosecutorial misconduct in California. He joined the Registry in 2012, where he researches and writes case summaries of exonerations added to the Registry.
Ken Otterbourg, Researcher, joined the Registry in 2018. He worked for the Winston-Salem Journal from 1990-2010, the last five as managing editor. The newspaper's investigation of a wrongful conviction was a principal factor in the creation of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission in 2006. Prior to working at the Registy, he was a freelance writer, with his work appearing in The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times, Fortune, National Geographic, and other regional and national publications. He researches and writes case summaries of exonerations, with particular attention to the Groups Registry.
Professor Jeffrey S. Gutman, Special Contributor, of the George Washington University Law School joined the staff of the National Registry in the spring of 2022 as a special contributor to expand the Registry’s coverage of wrongful conviction compensation issues. Since he co-counseled compensation cases brought in the District of Columbia on behalf of four wrongly convicted men several years ago, Professor Gutman has engaged in an empirical research project designed to determine which of the exonerees listed in the Registry sought compensation and how their claims were resolved. That research has identified many new exonerees who have been added to the Registry and has resulted in three law review articles. Professor Gutman's compensation articles focus on particular states or on general compensation issues of public interest in the NRE's series “Compensation Under the Microscope.” He also presents periodically updated state-by-state compensation data in “Compensation By the Numbers.” All material can be found on the NRE's compensation issues page.