Staff
Dolores Angeles, Legal Assistant
Karen Daniel, Senior Staff Attorney
Steven Drizin, Legal Director
Dolores Kennedy, Volunteer Coordinator
Jennifer Linzer, Assistant Director
Jane E. Raley, Senior Staff Attorney
Karen Y. Ranos, Case Coordinator
Mayra Ruiz, Legal Assistant
A. Sage Smith, Director Client Services
Jeffrey Urdangen, Senior Staff Attorney
Rob Warden, Executive Director
Dolores Angeles, Legal Assistant
d-angeles@law.northwestern.edu
Dolores Kennedy, Volunteer Coordinator
Dolores Kennedy supervises the undergraduate intern/volunteer program at the Center on Wrongful Convictions. When she joined the Center in 2005, her primary responsibility was the organization of materials for a database, now known as the National Registry of Exonerations. In addition, she created a program designed to teach undergrad students, both from Northwestern and other universities around the country (and, on occasion, the UK), about the causes and effects of wrongful convictions.
Prior to coming to the Center, Dolores managed a law firm in Chicago. A graduate of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, she was a newspaper reporter for many years. In 1985 she met William Heirens, incarcerated for 66 years before his recent death, and began to advocate for his release. This led to the publication of her first book, William Heirens: His Day in Court, and, the following year, A Killing Day, the story of Florida's Aileen Wuornos. Subsequently, Heirens became a client of the Center.
In the late 1990s, Dolores was a member of the steering committee for the National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty, which led to the formation of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
d-kennedy@law.northwestern.edu
Jennifer Linzer, Assistant Director
Assistant Director Jennifer Linzer began her association with the Center as a volunteer in January 2001 and became the Assistant Director the following August. Her duties include event planning and coordination for the Center's fundraising benefits, management of Center budgets and web site, photography for publications and various other duties related to the Center's day-to-day operations.
Prior to joining the Center, Jennifer worked as a freelance writer and photographer for 10 years. Her clients included various departments of Northwestern University, the Robert Lurie Cancer Center, Barat College, Lewis University, College of Lake County and Time Life Books where she researched and wrote the first draft of Paying For College, part of the series Your Money Matters.
Jane E. Raley, Senior Staff Attorney
Senior Staff Attorney Jane Raley represented hundreds of indigent felony defendants as an assistant Illinois appellate defender from 1982 until 1997, winning reversals in appellate courts throughout the state and in the Illinois Supreme Court.
From 1990 to 1994, Ms. Raley's practice was devoted entirely to capital cases at the Illinois Appellate Defender's Capital Resource Center, where, in addition to litigating cases herself, she recruited and trained attorneys to work on death penalty appeals in post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings.
Among Ms. Raley's more significant cases have been those of Robert Kubat, whose death sentence was overturned in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, and Alejandro Hernandez, who was sentenced to death along with Rolando Cruz for a highly publicized DuPage County murder they did not commit.
Ms. Raley decided to devote her career to public interest law after interning at a public defender's office while a student at Indiana University School of Law, from which she graduated in 1982.
Karen Y. Ranos, Case Coordinator
Karen Ranos, Case Coordinator for the Center on Wrongful Convictions, joined the organization in 2004. In that capacity, Karen investigates and reviews the numerous requests for counsel that are received each month from prisoners with claims of innocence. This may include speaking with the prisoner, his family and friends, and seeking court documents and forensic reports to substantiate an innocence claim. During this process, she often works closely with Sage Smith, the Center's Director of Client Services.
In addition to her position as Case Coordinator, Karen's additional duties include maintaining databases devoted to the status of the individuals requesting assistance and also maintains files on all prisoners requesting assistance from the CWC.
Karen is also involved in the daily operations of the CWC, and contributes to the administration of CWC development, which includes creating grant proposals, and planning and supervising fundraising events. She maintains the CWC mailing list and assists in the design and development of brochures for public education.
Karen is a 2006 graduate of DePaul University School of Law. She is a licensed attorney in both Illinois and Indiana.
Mayra Ruiz, Legal Assistant
A. Sage Smith, Director Client Services
A. Sage Smith, the Center's director of client services was formerly incarcerated. During his incarceration, Mr. Smith earned an associate degree in sociology from Lewis University and a paralegal certificate from Rend Lake Junior College.
In prison, Mr. Smith served eight years as coordinator of legal services at the Stateville Correctional Center and seven years as the law clerk for prisoners on death row at the Menard Correctional Center.
After his release in May of 2003, Mr. Smith received a Humanitarian Award from the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty (ICADP) "for his enormous assistance to death row inmates." From his release until he joined the Center in January of 2004, he was employed as a paralegal at the Illinois Institute for Community Law.
Mr. Smith is a member of the advisory boards of the John Howard Association, Positive Anti-Crime Thrust (PACT), and the ICADP. He also is a member of the Governor's Task Force on Re-Entry, a program under the auspices of the Illinois Department of Human Services.
Rob Warden, Executive Director
Executive Director Rob Warden is an award winning legal affairs journalist who, as editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer magazine during the 1980's exposed more than a score of wrongful convictions in Illinois, including cases in which six innocent men had been sentenced to death.
Before founding Chicago Lawyer in 1978, Mr. Warden was an investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor at the Chicago Daily News. In 1989, Mr. Warden sold Chicago Lawyer to the Law Bulletin Publishing Company, which has continued to publish it. After that, before co-founding the Center on Wrongful Convictions with Professor Lawrence C. Marshall in 1999, he worked as a political issues consultant, executive officer of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, and consultant to various law firms and the litigation department of General Electric Medical Systems.
He has won more than fifty journalism awards, including the Medill School of Journalism's John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, two American Civil Liberties Union James McGuire Awards, five Peter Lisagor Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Norval Morris Award from the Illinois Academy of Criminology. In 2003, he was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.
