Mark E. Olive has been practicing criminal law and specializing in capital defense since 1978. He has represented death-sentenced clients, in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, in proceedings at all levels from trial through federal habeas, and he has argued, been counsel of record, co-counsel, and counsel for amici curiae in many capital cases in the United States Supreme Court. After leaving his teaching position at the University of North Carolina College of Law in Chapel Hill, he moved to Florida where he founded and served as director of the Volunteer Lawyers Resource Center, the nation’s first capital representation resource center. Mark also served as executive director of the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, served as director of the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, and was the chief assistant and litigation director of Florida’s Office of the Capital Collateral Representative. Now in private practice in Tallahassee, Florida, Mark has served as Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel since the project’s inception in 1996.

Kathryn M. Kase was graduated, cum laude, in 1990 from St. Mary's University School of Law. She is licensed to practice law in Texas, New York and the District of Columbia, and she is admitted to practice in a number of federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, the Southern District of Texas, and the Southern District of New York. Before joining TDS in 2002, she practiced criminal defense with Crane, Greene & Parente in Albany, New York. She served as a board member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers from 1998 to 2006, and is a past-president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She is a faculty member of the National Criminal Defense College and NACDL's Capital Voir Dire College. In 2002, the Criminal Justice Section of the New York State Bar Association named her the Outstanding Criminal Practitioner. In May 2005, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute.

Margaret O’Donnell has been a part of the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project since 2003. The main emphasis of her Project work continues to be the coordination of the Project’s overall efforts as well as the planning and implementation of all training for Federal Death Penalty attorneys. Margaret also acts as the liaison between the Federal Death Penalty Trial and Habeas Resource Counsel Projects. Margaret is a 1985 graduate of Indiana University at Indianapolis School of Law. She is admitted to practice law in Indiana, Arizona, Kentucky and New York. Margaret has worked as a public defender for the State of Indiana as well as Maricopa County, Arizona. She has been in private practice since 1990, but the majority of her work continues to focus on the representation of indigent clients. Margaret has been appointed to represent two clients sentenced to death under the Federal Death Penalty Act, as well as a trial level client, whose Federal Death Penalty trial resulted in a life sentence. She also represented Kevin Stanford, Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361 (1989), in clemency proceedings which resulted in the 2003 commutation of his death sentence.

Margaret Case is 1981 graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law. After graduation, she enjoyed a year-long federal district court clerkship, followed by private practice, during which she was a panel attorney litigating direct appeals for indigent clients. In 1989, Margaret decided to take up indigent defense full-time by becoming a staff attorney with the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy. Since then, she has handled every level of litigation -- at trial, on direct appeal, and in post-conviction. For nine years, her practice was limited to death penalty cases, first in post-conviction and later as the capital conflict attorney for half of the state. Her proudest moment may have been as lead counsel for the client charged with killing Kentucky’s first female law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty; a death sentence seemed a foregone conclusion, but the jury’s verdict was straight life imprisonment with no limits on parole eligibility. Currently, Margaret is general counsel for the statewide public defender system. She holds membership in the Kentucky and National Associations of Criminal Defense Lawyers. In 2004, she received DPA’s Gideon Award, which is presented annually to a person “who has demonstrated commitment to equal justice and courageously advanced the right to counsel for poor people in Kentucky”.

Wendy Peoples received her JD from Boalt Hall School of Law, in Berkeley, California. She has worked on capital cases in California as a legal research attorney in the capital trial unit of the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office, as a staff attorney at the California Appellate Project (CAP), as a senior deputy at the Office of the State Public Defender, and with a small law firm specializing in representing death row inmates in state and federal habeas corpus proceedings. As co-chair of the Death Penalty Committee for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Wendy has testified in the California legislature about proposed legislation related to the death penalty and state habeas corpus practice, and authored amicus briefs on those subjects, as well as federal habeas corpus issues. Now in private practice in Florida, Wendy continues to represent death row inmates and provides assistance to attorneys in state and federal habeas corpus proceedings. She also maintains the Habeas Assistance and Training website of capdefnet.org, which provides information about recent habeas-related developments, as well as access to training materials and sample briefing. She has lectured nationally for the past decade on issues related to federal habeas corpus practice and death penalty developments.