DEFENDERS, DVP, & LSRJ present "Defense of Battered Spouses Who Kill Their Batterers" with Andrea Lyon, Dean of Valparaiso Law and Death Penalty Defense Attorney. Please join us on February 16th in Room III for an interesting talk provided to us by a zealous and lifelong advocate for indigent criminal defendants. Professor Alison Siegler will be introducing Dean Lyon. Lunch will be Provided.

Andrea D. Lyon was appointed as the 12^th - and first female - Dean of Valparaiso University Law School in June of 2014, leading one of the oldest American Bar Association-accredited law schools in the United States. Prior to joining Valparaiso Law, Andrea served as a clinical professor of law, Associate Dean of Clinical Programs, and Director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases at DePaul University College of Law. Lyon received her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University and her law degree from Antioch School of Law.

After graduating from law school, Andrea worked for the Cook County Public Defenders' Office in the felony trial division, post-conviction/habeas corpus unit, and the preliminary hearing/first municipal unit and the appeals division. She also was chief of the Homicide Task Force, a 22-lawyer unit representing persons accused of homicides.

 She has tried over 130 homicide cases, both while in the Public Defender's Office and after her tenure with the Public Defender’s Office. She has defended more than 30 potential capital cases at the trial level and has taken 19 cases through penalty phase -- and won all 19 cases.

 In 1990, she founded the Illinois Capital Resource Center and served as its director until joining the University of Michigan Law School faculty as an assistant clinical professor in 1995. A winner of the prestigious National Legal Aid and Defender Association's Reginald Heber Smith Award for best advocate for the poor in the country, she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of death penalty defense and a passionate advocate for criminal justice system reform in the United States.

Andrea is the author of “Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer,” and her latest book, the just released“The Death Penalty. What’s Keeping it Alive.”