Lisa Waters

Associate Professor Lisa Waters teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Adjudication, Lawyering Seminar III: Criminal Trial Practice, and Punishment: Practice, Reform, and Resistance. Lisa is also the faculty advisor for the CUNY Parole Advocates.

Before joining CUNY Law, Lisa was a public defender for nine years. At the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD), Lisa handled complex litigation and jury trials in felony cases ranging from drug possession to murder, developed and oversaw the intern program, and served as the Union Region’s First Assistant, training and supervising staff attorneys.

Lisa was an inaugural member of the OPD’s Forensic Science Workgroup and led the subgroup on firearms examination evidence. In this capacity, Lisa trained and consulted trial and appellate attorneys on firearms examination evidence and litigated a Frye challenge to the novel use of automated firearm examination technology in a murder case. Lisa has also litigated forensic issues involving the admissibility of cell site location evidence and bitemark evidence in homicide cases.

Lisa has a passion for back-end advocacy for individuals serving life or lengthy prison sentences. After serving as a volunteer advocate with the Parole Preparation Project in New York, Lisa worked to provide non-legal parole readiness assistance to individuals in the New Jersey prison system and served on OPD’s Parole Working Group. Lisa also handled back-end re-sentencing advocacy for clients serving life sentences. Lisa successfully litigated one of the first contested hearings in New Jersey following State v. Comer, which allows courts to revisit lengthy sentences imposed on youth.

Before becoming a public defender, Lisa clerked for the Honorable J. Michael Ryan on a felony criminal docket at the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. She earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she represented clients in misdemeanor criminal cases, parole revocation hearings, and long-term prisoner advocacy as a student attorney in the Criminal Defense and Prisoner Advocacy Clinic. She also interned with the Bronx Defenders, Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and Alexandria Public Defender’s Office, and competed on the mock trial team. Lisa has a B.A. from Vanderbilt University in her home state of Tennessee. While studying abroad in South Africa as an undergraduate, Lisa developed and taught a class for teenagers in a juvenile detention center.

Always a public defender at heart, Lisa brings this practice experience to both her classrooms and scholarship. Lisa’s research interests emerge from issues that have directly impacted her clients. They include examining methods of decarceration by challenging the use of flawed forensic evidence and emerging technology in criminal prosecutions, coercive plea bargaining tactics, and back-end resentencing and parole litigation.