Our Board
2013 Executive Committee
David Rothman, Chairman, is a founding partner of the Miami criminal defense firm Rothman & Associates, formerly Thornton & Rothman, formed in 1980. Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Rothman served as an Assistant State Attorney under Richard Gerstein and, later, Janet Reno. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law, teaching in the Litigation Skills Program. Mr. Rothman has served as president of the Dade County Bar Association, Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Miami Chapter (FACDL – Miami) and FACDL, Statewide. He has served on the Board of Governors of The Florida Bar and was recently appointed to the Florida Bar Foundation board of directors.
Robert Cromwell, Chair-Elect, retired as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville Division after nearly a 30-year career in law enforcement.During his career, Bob received numerous commendations from the Director of the FBI for his investigative accomplishments, primarily in the field of Violent Crime. He is also a former Navy Cryptology Technician, a New Jersey Police Officer and a Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Today, he is owner of a Security and Investigative Consulting firm and is co-owner of PoliceCommunity.net, which provides online training for police officers throughout the nation.
Michael Ufferman, Secretary, is a board certified criminal appellate lawyer. His practice in Tallahassee, FL, focuses exclusively on state and federal criminal appeals and criminal post-conviction motions. Mr. Ufferman earned his B.A. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his J.D. from the Florida State University College of Law. After law school, he clerked for Justice Major B. Harding at the Supreme Court of Florida. Mr. Ufferman is currently the co-chair of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Committee and the chair of The Florida Bar Appellate Court Rules Committee. He also sits on the executive committee of FACDL and will serve as president in 2015.
The Honorable Janet Ferris, Treasurer, served as a judge on the Second Judicial Circuit from 1999 until she retired in 2009. Before becoming a judge, she worked for nearly 20 years in various aspects of Florida’s criminal justice system. Judge Ferris began her career as a prosecutor in Fort Lauderdale, and then served as Chief of the Attorney General’s Civil RICO Section. In addition to a short stint in private practice, she also served as General Counsel to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Secretary of the Florida Department of Business Regulation, Chief Inspector General, and General Counsel for the Department of Juvenile Justice. She has been active in the Tallahassee community through volunteer activities and through service as a Board member for Turn About, ElderCare Services, and The Florida Children’s Campaign. Judge Ferris is a member of Leadership Florida, and serves on the Smart Justice Advisory Board for Florida Tax Watch.
Members
Talbot “Sandy” D’Alemberte, IPF’s Founding Chairman, is a lawyer, professor, former politician, former educational administrator, and former president of the American Bar Association (1991 to1992). He represented Dade County in the Florida House of Representatives from 1966 to 1972. Mr. D’Alemberte served five years as Dean of the College of Law and nine years as President of Florida State University. He is currently a Professor of Law at FSU and a partner of D’Alemberte & Palmer, a Tallahassee firm specializing in appellate work.
The Honorable Harry Lee Anstead was appointed in 1994 to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Lawton Chiles and retired in 2009. He served as Chief Justice from 2002 to 2004. Justice Anstead was a trial and appellate lawyer in South Florida before joining the bench and served a stint with the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. between undergraduate and law school at the University of Florida. Justice Anstead was raised as the youngest of six children by a single mother in Jacksonville’s Brentwood housing project just after the Great Depression and in the years during and after World War II.
Barney Bishop heads Barney Bishop Consulting, LLC., and previously served as president and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida (AIF). A native Floridian, Mr. Bishop returned to Florida after college and opened a detective agency in Orlando. In 1979, he began lobbying for the Florida Association of Private Investigators. He sold his detective agency in 1983 and moved to Tallahassee to work for then-state Insurance Commissioner Bill Gunter. In 1984, Mr. Bishop became state president of the Florida Young Democrats. In 1993, after stints at the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers and the Florida Democratic Party, he opened his own lobbying firm, The Windsor Group, which specialized in appropriations in the behavioral healthcare field. He sold the firm in 2005 to join AIF.
Allison DeFoor is a seventh-generation Floridian who practices law in Tallahassee. He is the chair of the Project on Accountable Justice at FSU and is a Board Member of Tallahassee Community College. He was a long-time adjunct faculty member of the University of Miami Law School in the Litigation Skills Program. In addition to a law degree, he holds a M.A. in Criminology, and a doctorate in theology. Dr. DeFoor began his legal career in the Florida Keys, serving as assistant public defender and in the state attorney’s office. In 1982 he was elected Judge of the Monroe County Court, serving until 1987, also serving as a circuit judge. In 1988, Dr. DeFoor was elected Sheriff of Monroe County, serving until becoming Gov. Bob Martinez’s running-mate for Lieutenant Governor. He also served as Gov. Jeb Bush’s “Everglades Czar”. He also served in the Crist and Scott administrations in areas relating to law enforcement and justice. He is an Episcopal priest and his parish is inside Wakulla Correctional Institution.
William Michael Dillon was exonerated in 2008 after serving 27.5 years in the Florida prison system for a murder that DNA testing proved he did not commit. In the Fall of 2011, he released a CD of original music called Black Robes and Lawyers. All of the songs were written while Mr. Dillon was in prison. He is a strong advocate of criminal justice system reform and speaks publicly about his wrongful conviction and imprisonment. In 2012 he was (finally) compensated for his wrongful conviction through an individual claims bill. He makes his home Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Reverend Bryan Fulwider served in local church ministry for more than 25 years in Colorado, Arkansas and Florida. From 1999 to 2012 he served as Senior Minister of First Congregational Church of Winter Park in Florida. In 2012 Rev. Fulwider followed his passion for “interfaith ministry to the larger community” to write, lecture, and to become the Managing Partner of The Three Wise Guys to help expand the interfaith work that he, Rabbi Engel, and Imam Musri have shared in since 2000. He is also the Executive Director of Building Us, a nonprofit organization that is committed to building better communities through conversation and education that focuses on the development of the human spirit in pursuit of deeper human, cultural, and religious understanding, acceptance, and cooperation. Rev. Fulwider is a native of and grew up in California. He holds a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in History from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas and a Master of Divinity degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. He lives with his wife, Marilyn, in Central Florida and has two grown sons.
Robert Kerrigan, after graduating with honors from Florida State University College of Law in 1971, assumed a position with the Public Defender’s Office, where he was later named Chief Assistant. In 1973, went into private practice with an emphasis on criminal defense trial work. In 1975, he formed a partnership with George Estess and began to concentrate on personal injury litigation. Mr. Rankin, Mr. McLeod and Mr. Thompson later became partners in the firm as it is presently constituted. Mr. Kerrigan was one of nine trial lawyers selected by the Governor of the State of Florida to prosecute the State’s claim for Medicaid recovery against the tobacco industry. He has tried to verdict multiple capital murder and serious criminal cases, obtaining multimillion dollar verdicts from many of them. The Best Lawyers in America has recognized him for the past 10 years. Mr. Kerrigan co-hosts Within Reason, a local TV show.
Rabbi Gary Klein currently serves as spiritual leader for Temple Ahavat Shalom, a position he has held since July 1987. Prior to assuming the pulpit of Temple Ahavat Shalom, he served for nine years as spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel, Altoona, Pennsylvania. In the Tampa Bay area Rabbi Klein serves as the Secretary of Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Catholic Jewish Studies at St. Leo University. He has also served on the Mease Hospital Ethics Committee, the Board of Directors of the Long Center and the Board of Directors of the Palm Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He has served as President of the Pinellas County Board of Rabbis and he was one of the 1988-1989 designees for Leadership Pinellas.
James R. “Jim” McDonough is a former Army colonel who commanded troops in Vietnam and Africa. He served as Florida’s drug czar, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control. In 2006, he was appointed by Former Governor Jeb Bush as Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections. He served in this position for two years and is credited with cleaning up a corrupt prison system. During his active military service he held a number of key assignments and concluded his career in command of the Southern European Task Force (SETAF) Infantry Brigade. In addition to his military assignments, Mr. McDonough served as an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the United States Military Academy and served as a consultant on criminal justice programs for the JEHT Foundation. He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
Greg Miller, formerly United States Attorney, served for six years as the lead prosecutor and chief federal law enforcement officer in North Florida. Appointed in 2002, Mr. Miller was also responsible for defending and prosecuting all civil lawsuits in which the United States was concerned. Mr. Miller began his law career in 1980, while serving as a Judge Advocate in the United States Marine Corps. He has also served as an Assistant State Attorney in Florida, as an Organized Crime Prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, and as an attorney in private practice. Mr. Miller has also taught nationally and internationally on a variety of legal subjects for the World Bank, the United Nations, and many foreign and national agencies. He currently manages the Tallahassee law office of Beggs and Lane.
Paula Saunders is a 1980 graduate of Hofstra University School of Law and spent two years in private practice before joining the Public Defender’s Office in Tallahassee. As an assistant Public Defender, Ms. Saunders has worked in the misdemeanor, felony and appellate divisions and has handled dozens of capital cases in both trials and appeals. She was also the training director of the Tallahassee P.D. Office for 10 years. She authored the Public Defender Pretrial and Trial Training Manual, a comprehensive text analyzing all aspects of criminal procedure from a defense perspective, which is currently in its fourth edition. Ms. Saunders is past president of both the FACDL and the Tallahassee Chapter of FACDL. She previously served on the Second Judicial Circuit Grievance Committee, the Appellate Court Rules Committee, and the Executive Council of the Criminal Law Section of The Florida Bar. She is a founding member and on the Board of Directors of the Holocaust Education Resource Council. Ms. Saunders and her husband, Roy Forman, are the proud parents of two daughters, Laine and Kaitlin, two rescued greyhounds, Lucy and Scout, and a vacant lot in North Carolina, where they hope to retire someday.
Mark Schlakman, Past Chairman, serves as a senior program director for the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. Prior to joining the faculty in 2002, Mr. Schlakman held several senior government positions at the state and federal levels, including special counsel to Gov. Lawton Chiles; special advisor for Gov. Jeb Bush during his first several months in office; senior advisor to Governor Kenneth “Buddy” MacKay when the governor served as White House Special Envoy for the Americas during the final two years of the Clinton administration; and as a special advisor to U.S. Senator Bob Graham before returning to Florida. During his tenure in Washington, D.C., he also served as a Foreign Affairs Officer for the U.S. Department of State during the George W. Bush administration with tours as a special assistant and interim foreign policy advisor to four-star Marine General Peter Pace, Commander, SOUTHCOM, and as an Alternate Representative to the U.S. Permanent Mission to the Organization of American States (OAS). He currently serves as Board Chair for the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas (FAVACA), as President of the newly established Chapter of the American Committees on Foreign Relations in Florida’s Capital City and is a member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s Florida Advisory Committee, which is co-chaired by former Gov. Jeb Bush and University of Miami President Donna Shalala.
Brian Tannebaum, Esq., is the managing partner at Tannebaum Weiss, P.A., in Miami and President of the Florida Association of Bar Defense Lawyers. Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Tannebaum was a trail lawyer in the largest public defender’s office in Florida. He has served as the President of FACDL and the FACDL Miami Chapter. He is one of only two members of FACDL to have received all three Presidential Service Awards. He is a frequent lecturer, having spoken at statewide and local seminars including The Florida Bar Annual Meeting, “Showcase on Sentencing,” “Basic Criminal Law,” “Practicing with Professionalism,” and his own seminars entitled “The Practice,” and “What Every Civil Lawyer Needs to Know About Criminal Law.” Multiple Florida and national publications have named him one of the top criminal defense attorneys. The National Law Journal named his acquittal in US v. Dow as one of the “Top 10 defense verdicts in the U.S.”
After nearly a 30 year career in law enforcement, Robert Cromwell retired as Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville Division. During his career, Bob received numerous commendations from the Director of the FBI for his investigative accomplishments, primarily in the field of Violent Crime.
He is also a former Navy Cryptology Technician, a New Jersey Police Officer and a Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Today, he is owner of a Security and Investigative Consulting firm and is co-owner of PoliceCommunity.net, which provides online training for police officers throughout the nation.