(3) Bios of Key Individuals
VADP Staff
Stephen Northup, Esq.
Executive Director
Steve is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame anda
1974 graduate of Harvard Law School. He is a retired partner from
the Richmond office of Troutman Sanders LLP where he practiced
law for 35 years. . During his legal career, Steve has represented a
number of prisoners in post-conviction challenges to their
convictions and sentences, including two inmates on Virginia's
death row. Steve and his wife Wendy Bauers Northup live outside
Ashland, VA.
Steve serves as Executive Director on a volunteer basis. Steve spearheads VADP’s legislative
strategy, carries out our legislative agenda, speaks at educational events across the state, and is
VADP’s media spokesperson.
Matt Sellman
Associate Director
Matt grew up in Vienna, VA. In 1999, he graduated with a BA
in Multimedia from James Madison University’s School of
Media, Arts, and Design. He has worked as a media analyst at
UVA’s Miller Center for Public Affairs and in media production.
in the San Francisco Bay Area. Matt joined VADP on January
1, 2008 after retuming to Virginia with his family. He has three
children and lives near Charlottesville, VA.
Matt works 25 hours per week and is responsible for overseeing the organization's finances,
communications, and day-to-day administration.
Matthew Engle, Esq.
President of the Board
Charlottesville, VA
VADP Board of Directors
| Matt Engle is the legal director of the UVA Law
School’ s Innocence Project Clinic. As the clinic’s
legal director, Matt helps students identify
innocence cases and works with students to represent the wrongfully convicted. Before arriving
at UVA, Matt worked at the Office of the Virginia Capital Defender, a public defender office
that specializes in capital murder cases. At the Office of the Capital Defender, he represented
indigent clients facing potential death sentences in trial courts throughout northem Virginia and
on appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Matt, a Cleveland native, graduated from
Washington and Lee School of Law in 2001. Afterward, he worked in Charlottesville at the
Virginia Capital Representation Resourve Center, where he represented Virginia death row
inmates in state and federal habeas corpus litigation, appeals and clemency proceedings.
Mary Atwell
Roanoke, VA
Mary Atwell is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Radford University
where she also chairs the Criminal Justice department. A Virginia
citizen since 1972, Mary grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and attended
Webster College and Saint Louis University. Much of her research
has involved topics related to capital punishment and she has
published Evolving Standards of Decency: Popular Culture and
Capital Punishment (2004) and Wretched Sisters: Examining Gender
and Capital Punishment (2007). She is at work on a revised edition
of Wretched Sisters and ona study of the execution of foreign nationals in the United States.
Mary served on the board of VADP from 2003 to 2008. She also serves on the Board of
Directors of the Women’s Resourve Center of the New River Valley and of Bethany Hall, a
residential drug treatment center for women in Roanoke.
Helena Cobban
Charlottesville, VA
Since October 2009, Helena has been Executive Director
of the council for the National Interest, a Washington D.C.
- based nonprofit that advocates for more fair-minded U.S.
policies in the Middle East. Previously, she was a writer, researcher and program organizer on
global affairs. She had a long relationship with The Christian Science Monitor. She worked as a
Beirut-based regional correspondent for the paper during 1976-81, and contributed a regular
column on Middle Eastem and other global issues to it during 1990-2007. She has written for
many other outlets, including the Sunday Times (London), The Nation (New Y ork), Foreign
Policy.com, the BBC, and Boston Review, where she is a Contributing Editor. Four of the seven
books she has published since 1984 have been on different aspects of the Arab-Israeli issue, and.
one has been on retributive versus restorative justice. Since 2003, she has published the well-
regarded blog on intemational affairs, “Just World News.” She was a co-director of Search for
Common Ground’s Middle East Initiative, 1991-92. Ms, Cobban is a member of Charlottesville
Friends Meeting. She speaks French and Arabic. She is married to UVA professor William B.
Quandt and has three adult children.
. Dr. Gregory Gelburd
Charlottesville, VA
* Dr. Greg Geburd was bom in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew
| upon the Jersey Shore. He attended Wake Forest
=" University, received an MS from University of Pittsburgh
School of Public Health, and D.O. from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Greg
moved to Greensboro, North Carolina where he did his residency in family medicine at Moses
Cone Hospital. He then practiced in a Community Health Center in Bertie County (2™" poorest
county in the state) for four years. Since 1989, Greg has practiced in Charlottesville, VA and for
the last eight years in a commumity oriented office with a sliding scale.
Greg has taken 26 medical trips to Honduras over past 16 years, 4 medical trips to Haiti in the
past 2 years, and 4 medical trips to Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. In 2008 he began a
program called Vwazen Nou, “Our Neighbor” to feed children in Port au Prince, Haiti. He has
been a member of 6 nonprofit boards over last 25 years, and is present member of The Bridge, a
prison ministry in Charlottesville, VA. He also tutors neighborhood children in grade school.
Greg is mamied to Kathy Clark Gelburd, an optometrist, and is the father of 5 daughters, ages 19-
25. He is has been a member of Christ Community Church for 20 years.
Jerry Givens
Richmond, VA
Jerry Givens: Jerry worked for the Virginia Department of
Corrections for 25 years. From 1982 - 1999 he also
served as the chief executioner for the Commonwealth
during which time 62 executions took place. Since his time with the DOC, Jerry has become an
outspoken advocate for abolition of the death penalty and is currently writing a book about his
experiences, “Another Day is My Promise’. He is an active member of Cedar Street Church in
Richmond and is a truck driver at LS Lee Inc.
Michael Hash
Culpeper, VA
“I was a juvenile at the time of the crime, so I
wasn't given the death penalty, but it could
have easily gone a different way. I was falsely
convicted and I can tell you, the only hope an
imnocent man has in prison is that the truth will
come out some day. That is why I’m proud to join the Board of VADP and why you should
support their work - because I know they are fighting forjustice. How can there be justice when
there is an irreversible penalty? Govemment doesn’t always get it right; I’m living proof of
that.” - Michael W. Hash, 2013
Phylissa Mitchell
Keswick, VA
Phylissa Mitchell is a native of Charlottesville, Va, a
graduate of the University of Virginia and Washington
& Lee University School of Law. She spent most of
her professional life in journalism producing television
news and writing for small community newspapers.
For the past decade she has taught joumnalism skills raid Fist Armendhiiene lau ot Wastineion ke
Lee, West Virginia University, and in Ukraine as a Fulbright Scholar in law.
Beth Panilaitis
Richmond, VA
Beth Panilaitis eamed a Bachelor of Social Work from.
Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master of Social
Work with a concentration in policy from the University of
Connecticut. From 2008-2010 she served as the Executive Director of VADP which included
conducting statewide public education on the death penalty, organizational oversight,
development, serving as spokesperson and media contact and serving as the organization’ s
lobbyist in the General Assembly. She was also an Advisory Board member of the Dreams
Project of Witness to Innocence to examine how to provide better supports for death row
EXONEIEES.
Beth currently serves as the Executive Director of ROSMY, a Richmond based nonprofit that
provides support groups to LGBT youth in Richmond and Charlottesville and conducts trainings
for human services providers throughout Central Virginia on working with LBGT young people.
Beth’s policy and direct service experience has included working with homeless individuals and
families, “at-risk” youth, incarcerated individuals, and individuals who are dually diagnosed.
She has a long history within the Episcopal Church including helping to found the VCU
Episcopal Campus Ministry, serving on the Episcopal national Standing Commission on
Domestic Mission and Evangelism from 2003-2009 and serving as an elected deputy to the
Episcopal National General Convention from 2000-2006.
Linell Patterson
Harrisonburg, VA
Linell became involved in the fight against the death
penalty in late 2001 after her father and step-mother were
murdered by her step-brother and some of his
acquaintances, and her cousin was killed in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, afew days later. Her
definitions of justice and healing did not match those of the press or the court system. To think
that yet another person would die and another family would suffer was haunting, and was
something she and her sister wanted no part in. To them, death does not equal justice and does
not promote healing; nor will it honor the ones they lost.
Since then, Linell has spoken in the legislature against the death penalty, and at events to support
moratoriums, and the abolition of the death penalty.
Linell is a RN on the oncology unit at Rockingham Memorial Hospital. She received both her
social work and nursing degree from Eastem Mennonite University. Linell currently lives in
Harisonburg, VA with her husband, Daniel, and their dog, Katy.
Rev. Lauren C ogswell Ramseur
Norfolk, VA
Lauren is a 1996 graduate of James Madison University
with a BA in Interdisciplinary Social Science and a 2000
of Candler School of Theiology of Emory
University wi with a Masters of Divinity. She was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian
Church (USA) in November of 2000.
She became deeply involved in the anti-death penalty movement while serving as a pastor at the
Open Door Comnumity in Atlanta, GA where she organized to end the death penalty and led the
vigils at the state capital when executions were scheduled. She provided pastoral care for five
years for men on death row, including accompanying Jack Alderman and Curtis Osbome through
their death watch and exeution. She also served on the board of directors for New Hope House,
aministry to people on Georgia's death row and their familis. Following that work, she became
engaged in the field of restorative justice, and became a victim outreach specialist, working with
family members of victims in death penalty cases. She served as the Project Coordinator for the
Council for Restorative Justice and assisted in the training of defense attomeys and victim
outreach specialists in the work of Defense Initiated Victim Outreach (DIVO). She has served a
s avictim outreach specialist on death penalty cases in Georgia, Florida and Virginia.
Lauren is currently serving as the Interim Pastor at Lynn haven Colony Congregational Church,
United Church of Christ in Virginia Beach. She also serves on the leadership team for Virginia
izing, South Hampton Roads Chapter. She is married to Doug Ramseur, the Capital
Defender for Southeastem Virginia. They live in Norfolk, VA and have one child.
Meghan Shapiro, Esq.
Alexandria, VA
Meghan is a solo criminal defense attomey in Alexandria
Virginia, and a former Deputy Capital Defender for the
Northem Virginia Capital Defender Officer. The majority
of her law practice is devoted to capital defense work, including challenges to Virginia’ s
methods of execution. Prior to working for the Capital Defender, Meghan clerked for the
Honorable Leonie M. Brinkema, Federal District Judge for the Eastem District of Virginia, in
Alexandra.
Meghan received her]J.D. in 2009 from the University of Texas School of Law, where she
studied at the school’s Capital Punishment Center and worked for a number of career capital
litigators in Texas, Alabama, Philadelphia, and Richmond. She has published a handful of pieces
on capital punishment law, including in the American Joumal of Criminal Law. A native
Virginian, she is proud to be back and fighting on behalf of indigent men and women facing the
death penalty in her home state, but dismayed by the shortcomings of Virginia’ s criminal justice
system that so often crystallize during capital proceedings.
Kent Willis
Arlington, VA
Bom and raised in Virginia, Kent is a 1971 graduate
of William and Mary with an AB in philosophy. He
worked in Richmond as an advocate for progressive
issues for nearly 40 years, first for environmental
reform (Bay Committee) and later for the rights of persons with disabilities (Goodwill Industries)
and racial faimess in housing (Housing Opportunities Made Equal, where he was executive
director for five of his ten years with the organization). From 1987 to 2012, Kent was employed
by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, the last 23 years as executive director. At the
ACLU, Kent helped to establish Virginians to Abolish the Death Penalty, VADP’s predecessor
that formed in the late 1980s. In 1998, he secured a grant to produce the first comprehensive
study of the death penalty in Virginia, Unequal, Unfair and Irreversible, which was followed by
Broken Justice, a second critique of the death penalty by the ACLU. Importantly, the ACLU
recognized VADP as the state’s preeminent voice for death penalty reform and provided free
office space and clerical support for its Richmond operations for nearly ten years as a means of
advancing the shared objectives of the two organizations.
Kent has been mamied to Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low-Income Housing
Coalition, since 1984. He has two step-daughters and six grandchildren.
