Assistant Professor Lisa Waters joins CUNY School of Law from practice at the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender (OPD). As a public defender in the Union Region, Lisa handled complex litigation and jury trials in felony cases ranging from drug possession to murder, developed and oversaw the intern program, and most recently served as the First Assistant, training and supervising staff attorneys.
Lisa was an inaugural member of the OPD’s statewide Forensic Science Workgroup and led the subgroup on firearm toolmark evidence. In this capacity, Lisa trained and consulted trial and appellate attorneys on firearm toolmark evidence and litigated a Frye challenge to the novel use of virtual microscopic imaging firearm toolmark identification 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, helping to draft the first OPD Parole Report. Lisa has also handled back-end re-sentencing advocacy for clients serving life sentences. Lisa litigated one of the first contested hearings in New Jersey following State v. Comer, which provides for re-sentencing for individuals sentenced to life/lengthy terms in prison for offenses committed as juveniles, securing the release of a life-sentenced client after 32 years in prison.
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.
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, and back-end resentencing and parole litigation.
