2008 Board of Trustees

Judge Truman Morrison, Vice Chair

Justice Deborah A. Agosti

Judge Bruce Beaudin

Susan Brannen

The Honorable James G. Carr

Norm Early

John Gerold, Executive Committee

Dr. John Goldkamp

Robert J. Guttentag

John M. Hughes, Executive Committee

Doug Katz

Peter Kiers

Dr. Cynthia A. Mamalian, Executive Committee

The Honorable Tomar Mason

Carol Oeller

Chair Jerome E. McElroy is the executive director of the New York City Pretrial Agency (CJA), a nonprofit agency providing pretrial services to the City's Criminal Courts.  He has been an associate director of the Vera Institute of Justice and deputy administrator of the New York State criminal justice planning agency. 

Judge Truman Morrison attended Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisc., and the University of Wisconsin Law School, in Madison, Wisc., graduating in 1967 and 1970, respectively. Following law school, he clerked for Chief Judge John W. Reynolds in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Judge Morrison began work as a trial lawyer at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service in 1971. In 1975, he became head of the trial division and assumed supervision of 40 lawyers trying cases ranging from delinquency matters to first-degree murder cases. Judge Morrison was appointed by President Carter to the D.C. Superior Court in the summer of 1979. During his 20 years of full-time, active service as a Superior Court judge, he often rotated for one-year terms between the family, domestic violence, civil and criminal divisions of the court but spent the majority of his time in the criminal division hearing criminal cases of all kinds. In 1994, Judge Morrison was re-appointed to a second, 15-year term. In 1999, he assumed senior status at the court and began sitting part-time. For the past 20 years, Judge Morrison has been very involved in judicial education. For many years, he was the director of judicial education for the court. Judge Morrison designed and implemented dozens of pre-service and in-service judicial education programs for Superior Court judges, employing innovative pedagogic techniques. In 2003 and 2004, through a contract between a corporation formed by Judge Morrison and the Superior Court, he provided in-depth mentoring services to newly appointed judges. Judge Morrison has taught trial advocacy at Catholic University and The George Washington University law schools. From time to time, he teaches a seminar on the “Craft of Judging” at the GW Law School. He has long been a faculty participant in the annual Harvard University Law School Trial Advocacy Program. Judge Morrison lives in downtown Washington, D.C., with his wife Susan Shaffer, Esq.

Justice Deborah A. Agosti is a retired Supreme Court justice in Nevada.  She was the chief justice in 2003.  She was the first female justice of the peace in Reno Township, and the first woman to sit on the District Court Bench for Washoe County. She was elected to the Supreme Court of Nevada in 1998.  She was responsible for creating the Specialty Court Funding Committee and served as the co-chair for the Jury Improvement Commission.  She has also been an instructor at the National Judicial College. 

Judge Bruce Beaudin was a superior court judge in the District of Columbia from 1984 to 1994.  He is currently a senior judge, on call, in the District and is an active consultant in jurisdictions exploring the development of specialty courts, such as drug treatment courts.  Judge Beaudin was the director of the District of Columbia Pretrial Services Agency for 16 years. The U.S. Department of Justice recognized it as an exemplary program and it continues to serve as a model for new program development and existing program enhancement across the country. Judge Beaudin has provided leadership and inspiration to pretrial practitioners for many years and NAPSA recognizes his lifetime contribution to pretrial services at the Annual Conference and Training Institute by presenting an award in his name to a dedicated line practitioner.  Judge Beaudin has published extensively on various criminal justice processes, most notably pretrial and diversion practices.  He acted as a consultant to the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Estonia in implementing a system of law for an emerging country. 

Susan Brannen is currently the specialized services manager for Adult Probation in Columbus, Ohio, and serves as president of the Ohio Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.  She previously held the position of executive director of Pretrial Services Corporation in Rochester, N.Y., and served as president of NYAPSA.

The Honorable James G. Carr a graduate of Kenyon College and Harvard Law School, is the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, having been appointed as a district judge by President Clinton in 1994. Before then, he was a United States magistrate judge for that Court from 1979. From 1970-79 he was a professor of law at the University of Toledo College of Law. He has previously served as member of the Magistrate Judges Committee and the Criminal Law Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference, and as the chair of that Committee's Pretrial Services Subcommittee. He is the author of treatises on the Law of Electronic Surveillance and Ohio Juvenile Law, and other books and articles on criminal law and procedure and civil procedure. He has been a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court since 2002. He has been a member of the Institute's Board since 1992.

Norm Early is the former Denver district attorney.  He is now a principal in BounceBack and MarkeTouch Media.  Additionally, he serves as special counsel to Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley, P.C., a Denver law firm, and is media spokesperson for the National District Attorneys Association. Mr. Early was the developer of the District Attorney's Victim/Witness Assistance Program, the Drug Education Program, the drinking and driving program called “It's Not Worth It”, and others.  He has served as a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC. Mr. Early has been the recipient of a number of awards for his contributions to the community and the criminal justice system.  Mr. Early is the founder and first president of the National Black Prosecutors Association, former president of the Colorado District Attorney's Council, former president of the board of the National Organization for Victim Assistance and a member of the board of the National District Attorney's Association.  He is a founding member of the Sam Cary Bar Association, and sits on the boards of Crimestoppers, Make-a-Wish Foundation of Colorado, Pretrial Services Resource Center, Fight Crime Invest in Kids, Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, University of Illinois, College of Law (past board president), the Metropolitan Football Stadium District and the Civil Service Review Board.

Dr. John Goldkamp is a professor at Temple University and the current chair of the Department of Criminal Justice.  His research focuses broadly on discretion in criminal justice and innovation in the courts, with a special emphasis on treatment and alternatives to confinement. For a quarter of a century, his research focused on bail, pretrial release and detention, leading major bail reform experiments in Philadelphia and nationally, and resulted in three books and many articles, including “Two Classes of Accused”, “Policy Guidelines for Bail: An Experiment in Court Reform” (with M. Gottfredson), and “Personal Liberty and Community Safety” (with M. Gottfredson, P. Jones and D. Weiland). Over the past decade some of his research has dealt with problem-solving courts beginning with the drug court movement. He conducted the first nationally sponsored evaluation of a major drug court (the nation’s first drug court in Miami) and authored a Department of Justice white paper describing the early drug court movement. Dr. Goldkamp until 2004 served as the reporter and wrote the commentary for the American Bar Association’s new Pretrial Release Standards, which were approved by the ABA House of Delegates in February 2002.

Robert J. Guttentag is a retired business executive. He received an A.B. from Harvard in 1953 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1958 . He was a member of the U.S. Navy from 1953 to 1956. He was an executive vice-president at WJ Young Machinery Company, Inc., from1959 to1967 and division manager for Engineering Services with the Gillette Company from 1967 to 1992. Robert has been a board member for the Pretrial Justice Institute and its predecessor organization since 1976 (chair 1994-96), a board member of the Justice Resource Institute since 1976 (currently vice chair), a member of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct since 1991 (currently chair), and a board member of The Key Program Inc. since 2000. He was a member of the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Committee from 1993 through 2000 and a member of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers from 1993 through 2004. Other nonprofit activities include or have included The Massachusetts Public Health Council, Boston Police Foundation, Women's Technical Institute, and the Massachusetts Governor's Management Task Force.

John M. Hughes is assistant director for the Office of Probation and Pretrial Services at the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC), Washington, D.C.  He began his career in criminal justice in 1975 as a supervised release counselor for the Vera Institute of Justice’s Bronx Pretrial Services Agency.  Two years later, he moved to the federal system as a pretrial services officer in the Eastern District of New York.  He moved to AOUSC in 1983 as a pretrial services specialist to help implement the Pretrial Services Act of 1982 in the federal judiciary.   Mr. Hughes held several more positions at the AOUSC, including chief of the Administrative Services Branch, Operations Branch, and Policy and Planning Branch, before leaving in 1998 to become deputy chief probation officer in the District of Arizona.  He returned to the AOUSC a year later as chief of the Federal Corrections and Supervision Division.   In 2001, he was put in charge of the newly created Office of Probation and Pretrial Services.  Mr. Hughes received the 2006 Director’s Distinguished Service Award for his service to the federal probation and pretrial services system.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from Iona College and a master’s degree in Public Administration from the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.

Doug Katz is a partner with Wasserman/Katz, a management consulting firm founded in Washington, D.C., with offices currently in San Diego and Houston. For the past 30 years, the firm has been advising managers on the most intelligent ways to navigate their relationships with employees. Wasserman/Katz furnishes services to a wide array of industries across the country, from biomedical research to ship building, alternative energy exploration to public transit, academia to waste management and hospital administration to commercial sales. In addition to his direct consulting work, Mr. Katz delivers presentations and prepares client advisories on a full range of contemporary management topics. He is often retained to facilitate meetings and conferences addressing especially sensitive or controversial issues affecting a business or community. He has been involved in a 10-year study of national labor and employment trends to help his clients prepare for emerging workforce and workplace challenges. He has also been a guest instructor on Business Ethics in the University of Maryland’s Honors Program since 2002 and has served on the Board of Directors of a software development firm and an experimental theater company.  Mr. Katz earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from The American University in Washington, D.C. He was awarded an NIMH Research Assistantship and an NIMH Clinical Training Fellowship. Upon graduation, he completed a clinical internship, served as an editorial consultant with a publisher of academic texts and soon after co-founded Wasserman/Katz.

Peter Kiers is serving his first term as president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies (NAPSA).  He is the Director of Operations of the New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.  Mr. Kiers also serves as the Regional Director for the New York Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

Dr. Cynthia A. Mamalian is an independent consultant to the Pretrial Justice Institute and other criminal justice and victim service agencies in the Washington, D.C., area.  Her research interests include domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and more recently prisoner re-entry and issues related to pretrial justice. Prior to consulting, Dr. Mamalian worked as a senior analyst and social science analyst for five years for the Office of Research and Evaluation at the National Institute of Justice, U.S Department of Justice.  She also previously served as associate director of the Center for Crime Prevention Studies at Rutgers University. She holds doctoral and master degrees in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University.  

The Honorable Tomar Mason of the San Francisco Superior Court has been a state trial court judge for 16 years handling both civil and criminal matters.  She served on San Francisco's jail overcrowding committee; the committee’s development of jail alternative programs enabled San Francisco to satisfactorily end a 14-year old consent decree governing its jail.  Judge Mason has contributed to a number of other nontraditional criminal justice efforts, including drug and mentor courts for youthful offenders, as well as partnerships with public schools.  As a practicing attorney and later as a judge, she has fought for justice in child abuse and domestic violence cases.  In addition to her bench duties, Judge Mason serves on numerous state and national boards.  After an active role founding both the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) and its California counterpart, CADCP, for which she served as President, she was recognized by President Clinton for her support of resources for Drug Courts in the U.S. Crime Bill.  She was chosen as a coalition member for the Council of State Governments' Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project, is a NADA (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) Certified Acupuncture Detoxification Technician, has served on the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), has twice served as president of the Association for Criminal Justice Research of California (1998-99; 2003-05), currently serves on the Youth Law Center Board of Directors and serves on and was the immediate past chair of the Pretrial Services Resource Center (PSRC) Board.  Judge Mason often serves as faculty or presenter at national and international conferences.  Currently on faculty for the National Judicial College in Reno, she has also taught for the Nevada Judges' College.  She has addressed the Federacion Argentina De Comunidades Terapeuticas International Conference in Buenos Aires, the 47th Annual Conference of the American Society of Criminology in Boston, and numerous national symposia on drug courts and criminal justice in Annapolis, Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Sarasota, Seattle, Stockton and Washington, D C. She received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law in 1977, and her B.A. from Michigan State University in 1973. 

Carol Oeller has worked for Texas’ Harris County Pretrial Services for almost 30 years and has been director since 1999.  Ms. Oeller served on the NAPSA Board of Directors as an at-large director between 1989 and1992, and as vice-president from 1995 to 1997.  She was NAPSA’s Membership Committee Chair from 1991 to 1997, conference coordinator from 1989 to 1992, conference host in 2005, and a member of the release standards committee that completed the third edition of the Release Standards in 2004.  She received NAPSA’s highest honor, the Ennis J. Olgiati Award, in 1994.  In 1992, Governor Ann Richards appointed her to the Texas Council on Offenders with Mental Impairments where she served for eight years, for seven of those years as chair of the Council.  From 1998 to 1999, she co-chaired the Mental Health Association’s Criminal Justice Workgroup that lead to the Houston Police Department's implementation of a Crisis Intervention Team.  Ms. Oeller has worked on projects for the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Corrections.