Washington, DC (Nov. 13, 2024) – Seven individuals were elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) at the Association’s Fall Board Meeting in Nashville, TN. The Board Members below join those who are currently serving their terms on the NACDL Board of Directors.
Natasha Dartigue – Baltimore, MD
Natasha Dartigue has served as the Maryland State Public Defender since 2022 and is the first person of color to lead the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Dartigue started her legal career as a clerk in the Baltimore City Circuit Court for the late Judge Roger W. Brown and subsequently worked as a trial attorney at the Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore City in the juvenile, district, and circuit court divisions. She also served as felony trial supervisor, Deputy District Public Defender for Baltimore City, and Acting District Public Defender, before accepting the position of Maryland State Public Defender in May 2022. She is an advocate, active member, and leader of various professional organizations, including the Monumental City Bar Association, Alliance of Black Women Attorneys, the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, and the Women’s Bar Association. She serves on the Maryland State Bar Association (MSBA) Board of Governors Executive Council and as Vice-Chair of the MSBA Criminal Law and Practice Section Council. She is the current President of the Baltimore City Bar Foundation. She also works with Maryland Youth and the Law (MYLAW), Associated Black Charities, and Innovation Works and is a social equity strategist who creates workshops to promote shared understanding and greater awareness of diversity, equity, and inclusion issues. She provides implicit bias training and leadership development instruction at local, state, and national conferences. Her service to NACDL includes roles as 2024 Race Matters Conference speaker, 2023 Bureau of Justice Assistance Public Defense Meeting participant, and 2020 “Progressive Prosecutors” panelist. Dartigue received her J.D. from Howard University School of Law and her B.S. from State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Ryan Garry – Minneapolis, MN
Ryan Garry is the founder and owner of the Law Offices of Ryan Garry, LLC where he focuses on serious state and federal criminal defense. He is certified as a Criminal Law Specialist by the Minnesota State Bar Association (MSBA), a certification reserved for the top 3% of criminal defense lawyers. He currently serves on the MSBA Criminal Law Certification Board. He accepts federal criminal cases on the federal CJA panel for the Eighth Circuit and has been active in pro bono work, receiving the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (MACDL) 2020 “Distinguished Service Award” for pro bono representation of a lawyer whose office was searched and client files seized in a case which went from the trial court, through the appellate courts, and to the Minnesota Supreme Court. He is a Past President of MACDL and served as a board member and editor of the organization’s magazine. He is an active member of the NACDL Criminalization of Voting Rights Committee, the Membership Committee, the Task Force on AI Committee, and the Budget Committee. He serves on the Board of Trustees for the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice. Garry received his J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law and his B.S. from Saint Cloud State University.
Deborah Katz Levi – Baltimore, MD
Deborah Katz Levi has been a public defender since she began her career in 2006 and is currently the Director of Special Litigation for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore City. In this role, her team worked with NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project to build one of the strongest police and prosecutor misconduct databases in the country, which she now oversees. In addition to her work as a trial attorney, she frequently trains other lawyers in pretrial practice and contributes to policy development. She has testified in front of the Maryland state legislature on behalf the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and serves on the executive committee of the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative, a unique partnership aimed at eliminating mass incarceration in Maryland. She was awarded the American Bar Association's Charles H. Dorsey Award in 2018, which recognizes exceptional work by a public defender or legal aid attorney. And in 2016, she was awarded the Baltimore City Paper's Best Lawyer award for her successful litigation regarding internal affairs records and secret surveillance of cell phones. She was Co-Chair and a presenter at NACDL’s 2024 Race Matters Seminar and has participated in NACDL’s Strengthening the Sixth Program as a faculty instructor in Bismark, North Dakota in 2022 and in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2024. She is an active member of NACDL’s Diversity Committee and Task Force on Police Accountability. Levi received her B.A. from University of Maryland, College Park and her J.D. from S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah.
Lindsay Lewis – New York, NY
Lindsay Lewis is a Partner at Dratel & Lewis, where she defends clients in federal and state court on both the trial and appellate level and in matters including high-stakes sex crimes, assault, white collar, terrorism and extradition cases, school disciplinary cases, and government investigations. For the past eight years, she has served as Co-Chair of the Women in Criminal Defense Committee and as Vice Chair of NACDL’s Second Circuit Amicus Committee. Since its inception, she has served as Co-Chair of NACDL’s Criminalization of Abortion Task Force. In these roles, her contributions include co-authoring NACDL’s Report on Criminalization of Abortion in America, authoring a chapter on experts and the introduction to NACDL’s Defending Abortion-Related Prosecutions Litigation Manual, speaking on a panel at the 2022 State Criminal Justice Network Conference, planning and presenting at NACDL’s Post-Dobbs summits in Washington, D.C. and Knoxville, and authoring a resolution to serve as NACDL’s position on issues related to women in prison. She has also served on NACDL’s National Security, Membership, and Nominating Committees, and previously served two consecutive terms on NACDL’s Board of Directors from 2016 to 2022. Lewis received her B.A. from Vassar College and her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Norman Mueller – Denver, CO
Norman Mueller serves as Special Counsel for Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, P.C. His practice includes appellate and postconviction cases, civil litigation, and professional disciplinary matters. He has previously coordinated pro bono work for his firm and continues to perform substantial pro bono work. In 2012, he was appointed to the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) for two terms. In this role, he supported CCJJ’s mission to seek legislative changes and policy reforms to reduce incarceration rates in Colorado. For nine years, he was a member and Chair of the Judicial Performance Commission for the Second Judicial District (Denver County), which evaluates judges’ standing for retention under Colorado’s merit selection system. He was also a member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel in federal district court for many years. From 2006 - 2012, he served as Colorado representative for the 10th Circuit Criminal Justice Act Standing Committee. He is a member of the Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee for the 10th Circuit and has been a member of the Colorado Supreme Court Committee on Appellate Rules for almost 30 years and now serves on the Evidence Rules Committee. He is a Life Member of NACDL and was elected to fill a vacancy in the Board of Directors in a special election in November of 2011 and reelected for full terms in 2013 and 2016. He has been a member of the Public Defense Committee and a 10th Circuit Vice-Chair on the Amicus Committee for many years. Mueller received his J.D. from Yale University and his B.A. from the University of Kansas.
Steven Ragland – San Francisco, CA
Steven P. Ragland is a Partner and Associate General Counsel of Keker, Van Nest & Peters, where he has worked since 2004. Some of his notable criminal law work includes trying one of the first criminal stock options backdating cases in the country; defending numerous individuals charged with violating marijuana laws; representing individuals facing antitrust charges arising from real estate auctions; defending against allegations of securities and mail fraud for multiple clients; defending clients against wrongful death charges arising from on-the-job accidents; and representing a prominent developer facing trial next year on charges of public corruption. His contributions to NACDL include presenting at the Defending Modern Drug Cases Seminar and organizing and presenting panels at NACDL’s 2017 and 2018 Corporate Counsel Conclaves. His numerous papers and presentations for NACDL include co-authoring “Obstruction Seduction: The increasingly long reach of the obstruction of justice statutes” for NACDL’s Second Annual White Collar Crime Seminar in D.C., and “Clean Hands and Dirty Money” published in the August 2022 edition of The Champion. Since 2020, he has co-chaired NACDL’s West Coast White Collar Conference and is a member of the White Collar and Membership Committees. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Disability Rights Advocates. Ragland is listed in Best Lawyers in America, has been recognized as a Northern California Super Lawyer every year for more than a decade, was named by a California Lawyer of the Year by the Daily Journal in 2017, and was recently selected by Lawdragon as one of the 500 Leading Litigators in America. Ragland received his J.D., summa cum laude, from American University Washington College of Law and his B.A., with high honors, from Lehigh University.
Melinda Sarafa – New York, NY
Melinda Sarafa is an attorney in private practice in New York City. She began her legal career as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Houston, Texas after serving as a law clerk to two federal judges. In New York, she spent 15 years actively defending federal, state and international criminal matters, and 10 years as in-house counsel to a registered investment adviser. She served two consecutive terms on NACDL’s Board of Directors from 2011 to 2017. As a Life Member of NACDL, she helped launch a Women’s Initiative in 2012 and led efforts to establish a standalone Women in Criminal Defense Committee, which she chaired from its inception in 2015 to 2019. From 2017 through 2020, she served as Vice-Chair for Quarterly Meetings of the CLE Institute, and from 2017 through 2019 she co-chaired the Predictive Policing Task Force. She co-chaired the White Collar Committee from 2011 through 2012 and served as an Advisory Board Member and on the Faculty of the White Collar Criminal Defense College at Stetson from 2013 through 2016. She has served on the NACDL Nominating Committee and currently chairs the organization's Investment Committee. Sarafa received her J.D. from Stanford Law School and her B.A. from Princeton University.
Contacts
Jessie Diamond, Deputy Director, Public Affairs and Communications, (202) 465-7647 or jdiamond@nacdl.org
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's many thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal legal system.
