Strengthening the U.S. Medicolegal Death Investigation System: Lessons from Deaths in Custody (2025)
Chapter: Appendix A: Committee and Staff Biographies
Appendix A
Committee and Staff Biographies
COMMITTEE
Raymond J. Lohier Jr. (Co-Chair), J.D., has been a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since his unanimous confirmation and appointment in December 2010. Lohier served as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert P. Patterson Jr., of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and worked as an associate at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York. Following his work at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, he served as a senior trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and then as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he served as senior counsel to the United States attorney, chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, and chief of the Narcotics Unit, among other positions. A recipient of numerous awards, Lohier is a member of the Council and of the Executive Committee of the American Law Institute, is vice chair of the New York University School of Law Board of Trustees, member of the Harvard University Board of Overseers, and an adjunct professor of law. He is a past chair of the Defender Services Committee and current member of the Budget Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, as well as a commissioner and chair of the Supreme Court Fellows Program. Lohier earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1988 and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1991.
John A. Rich (Co-Chair), M.D., M.P.H., is the Harrison I. Steans Director of the Rush BMO Institute for Health Equity and professor of medicine at Rush Medical College. Rich is a primary care physician and public health leader who addresses urban violence, trauma, and health inequities, mainly as they affect underserved communities. Before joining Rush, he served as a professor of health management and policy at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, where he cofounded the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and the hospital-based violence intervention program Healing Hurt People. Before Drexel, Rich served as the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission, where he led the city’s initiatives on men’s health, cancer, cardiovascular health, and health disparities. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, he created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner-city young men as peer health educators. His book about urban violence, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men, shares stories of trauma and healing. In 2009, Rich was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Rich serves on the board of trustees at the Center for Health Care Strategies and Trust for America’s Health. He earned his A.B. degree in English from Dartmouth College, his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine, and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency in primary care internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a fellowship in general internal medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D., is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Psychiatry, Medicine & Law and director of the Center for Law, Ethics & Psychiatry in Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry, as well as a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He was previously the Arnold F. Zeleznik Professor of Psychiatry and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Appelbaum has conducted research and written extensively on law and ethics in clinical practice and research. He is a past president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Appelbaum received APA’s Isaac Ray Award for “outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence” and APA’s Adolf Meyer Award for career contributions to psychiatric research. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2000. He is a coauthor of the chapter on mental health evidence in the latest edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Federal Judicial Center. Appelbaum is a graduate of Columbia College, received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed his residency in
psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Edward K. Cheng, J.D., Ph.D., is the Hess Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School. His scholarship focuses on evidence, specifically expert and statistical evidence. He is the author of nearly 50 articles and is coeditor of the multivolume treatise Modern Scientific Evidence alongside M. J. Saks, D. L. Faigman, E. E. Murphy, J. Sanders, and C. Slobogin. Cheng is also the creator and host of “Excited Utterance,” a long-running podcast on scholarship in evidence and proof and is a former chair of the Section on Evidence of the Association of American Law Schools. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in statistics from Columbia University.
Dabney Friedrich, J.D., currently serves as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia. Previously, she served as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which promulgates and revises the federal sentencing guidelines and makes recommendations to Congress based on sentencing data and research. After serving two terms as a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Friedrich was detailed to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), where she made recommendations for educational and other programming reforms within the BOP. Formerly, she clerked, worked in private practice, and served as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of California, counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and associate counsel to the president. Friedrich is a graduate of Yale Law School.
Miriam S. Gohara, J.D., is a clinical professor of law and deputy dean for experiential education at Yale Law School, where she founded a clinic providing sentencing and postconviction advocacy to clients in prison or facing prison time. Before joining the Yale Law School faculty, Gohara spent 16 years representing death-sentenced clients in postconviction litigation, first as assistant counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and then as a specially designated federal public defender with the Federal Capital Habeas Project. She has litigated cases in state and federal courts around the United States, including the United States Supreme Court. At LDF, Gohara also spearheaded the Mississippi Gideon Project, a policy and public education campaign that aimed to establish a quality statewide public defender system and became a model for indigent defense reform efforts nationally. She serves on the boards of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem and the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. She earned her B.A. from Columbia and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Mark L. Graber, M.D., F.A.C.P., is professor emeritus of medicine at Stony Brook University, New York. Graber is the leading authority internationally on diagnostic error and how to address it. He is the founder of the annual Diagnostic Error in Medicine conference series and the journal DIAGNOSIS. Graber was the founder of both the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine and more recently the Community Improving Diagnosis in Medicine. He was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that drafted the 2015 report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. In 2014, Graber received the John M. Eisenberg Award from the Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum, the nation’s top honor in patient safety and quality for originating Patient Safety Awareness Week and establishing the new field of diagnostic safety.
Jonathan Lucas, M.D., is chief medical examiner for the Medical Examiner Department in San Diego County. Previously, he was the chief medical examiner–coroner for Los Angeles County from 2017 to 2022. Lucas is a board-certified forensic pathologist who has conducted over 5,000 autopsies, investigated many death scenes, and testified in criminal and civil courts. He is a member of the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the National Association of Medical Examiners, and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and is on the board of directors for the International Association of Coroners & Medical Examiners (IACME). Lucas has served on committees for the CAP and the American Board of Pathology. He received his medical degree from the University of Nevada School of Medicine; completed his anatomic and clinical pathology residency at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center; and completed his forensic pathology fellowship at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York City.
Roger Mitchell Jr., M.D., is president of the National Medical Association. Previously, he was president of Howard University Hospital. In that role he led the strategic vision of the hospital to improve quality and safety practices and ensure continued growth and alignment across the health system. Mitchell is a highly respected physician leader with decades of experience in health care who takes a multifaceted and dedicated approach to improving health care outcomes through strategic leadership and collaborative strategies. He harbors a distinct ability to lead high-level health care organizations poised for growth while partnering with executive level staff to advance unique challenges in the health care space. Mitchell has served as a tenured professor at Howard University’s Department of Pathology as well as on various boards and committees, including the Howard University Hospital Performance Improvement Committee, the Howard University Faculty Onboarding and Appointment Task Force, and the Howard University Promotions and Graduation Committee. He is a nationally recognized
health care leader. Mitchell is coauthor of the book Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It. In his spare time, he promotes raising awareness for gun violence in the community. Mitchell holds a B.S. in biology from Howard University and an M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Medical School. He completed a pathology residency at George Washington University and a forensic pathology fellowship at New York University/New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Josiah “Jody” Rich, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University and a practicing infectious disease and addiction medicine specialist. Since 1994, he has been on staff at the Miriam and Rhode Island hospitals and a consultant for the Rhode Island Department of Corrections, caring for incarcerated individuals with HIV and other medical problems. Rich is the senior medical advisor and cofounder of the Center for Health and Justice Transformation at the Miriam Hospital. He has advocated for public health policy changes to improve the health of people with addiction, including improving legal access to sterile syringes and increasing drug treatment for the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated populations. Rich has published more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and has had continuous federal research funding since 1995. His primary field and area of specialization and expertise is in the overlap between infectious diseases and illicit substance use, the treatment and prevention of HIV infection, and the care and prevention of disease in addicted and incarcerated individuals. Rich has served as an expert for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and other institutions. He has been appointed by former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo as an expert advisor to the Governor’s Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
L. Song Richardson, former dean of the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) School of Law from 2018 to 2021, is Chancellor’s Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law. Richardson returned to UC Irvine after serving as the 14th president of Colorado College. She previously served on the executive committee of the Association of American Law Schools, on the board of the Council of Independent Colleges, and as chair of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference’s Presidents Council. An interdisciplinary scholar, Richardson teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, criminal procedure, and law and social science. Her scholarship applies cognitive and social psychology concepts to criminal law, criminal procedure, and policing. Richardson has been consulted widely on issues of implicit bias, race, and policing, working with various public and private entities to address racial and gender disparities. She serves on the board of
directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities as well as Citizens and Scholars. Richardson is an elected member of the American Law Institute and previously served on the California Penal Code Revision Committee. Her scholarship has been published by law journals at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Cornell, Duke, and Northwestern, among others, and she has won numerous awards including the Association of American Law Schools’ Derrick Bell Award, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award, GlobalMindED’s Inclusive Leader Award for Higher Education, and the Council of Korean Americans’ Empower Award. The Thurgood Marshall Bar Association in Orange County established the L. Song Richardson Legacy Award to honor individuals who make extraordinary impacts in the legal community. Richardson received a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. from Harvard College.
Julie Robinson, J.D., was appointed a United States district judge for the District of Kansas in 2001 and served as chief judge from 2017 to 2021. She had prior judicial service as a United States bankruptcy judge from 1994 to 2001. Robinson was an assistant United States attorney for 11 years, handling civil and criminal cases. She is a member of the American Law Institute. By appointment of Chief Justice Roberts, Robinson currently serves as a member of the Budget Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, as chair of the Federal Judicial Center’s District Judge Benchbook Committee, and as a member of the federal judiciary’s Workplace Conduct Working Group. She previously served as chair of the Court Administration and Case Management Committee of the Judicial Conference, as a commissioner of the United States Supreme Court Fellows, on committees that developed the federal judiciary’s 2010 and 2015 strategic plans, and as a trustee of the American Inns of Court Foundation. A fourth-generation Kansan, Robinson taught trial practice at her alma mater, the University of Kansas School of Law, and served as chair of its Board of Governors.
Nancy Rodriguez, Ph.D., is director of the Latino Research Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Formerly, she was a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include inequality (race/ethnicity, class, crime, and justice) and the collateral consequences of mass incarceration. Rodriguez is the author of several books, and her work has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals. In October 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Rodriguez to serve as the director of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the scientific research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. During her tenure at NIJ, she worked with federal partners to address gaps in crime and justice research. Rodriguez was on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel on reducing racial inequality in
the U.S. criminal justice system. She is principal investigator of two multistate projects addressing the causes and consequences of prison violence and the nature and impact of family engagement among incarcerated persons (which is supported by Arnold Ventures).
Michael Rosenblum is a professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University and codirector of the Johns Hopkins Causal Inference Working Group. Rosenblum’s research focuses on design and statistical analysis of randomized and observational studies and appropriate handling of missing data. He was elected fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for “outstanding contributions to statistical methodology and applications, especially with respect to the adaptive design and optimal analysis of randomized trials.” Rosenblum serves on the ASA Advisory Committee for Forensic Science. Rosenblum is principal investigator of a grant from Johns Hopkins University titled “Evaluating Accuracy and Reproducibility of Forensic Science Methods Used in Criminal Courts.” He is an affiliate of the Statistics Task Group for the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He has a Ph.D. in applied math from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Marc F. Stern, M.D., M.P.H., is a general internist with 25 years of experience as a correctional physician in a variety of settings including as a jail medical director, a regional medical director for a state department of corrections (DOC), a regional medical director for a for-profit correctional health care vendor, and as assistant secretary/medical director for a state DOC. He has provided consultation and assistance on correctional health care to a variety of organizations and agencies including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Assistance, National Institute of Corrections, California Attorney General, Human Rights Watch, American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, federal courts, and the Namibian Correctional Service, and he currently serves as medical advisor to the American Jail Association, National Sheriffs’ Association, and the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs and as lead federal court-appointed monitor in a class action lawsuit against the Arizona DOC regarding health care and solitary confinement. Stern also conducts research and teaches at the University of Washington School of Public Health, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Correctional Health Care, and is past chair of the education committees of the American College of Correctional Physicians and the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health.
Peter Stout, Ph.D., M.S., Houston Forensic Science Center’s (HFSC’s) CEO and president, initially joined the agency in 2015 as its chief operating officer and vice president. He has more than 25 years of experience in forensic
science and forensic toxicology. Prior to joining HFSC, Stout worked as a senior research forensic scientist and director of operations in the Center for Forensic Sciences at RTI International. He also has served as president of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps. Stout is currently the president of the Texas Association of Crime Lab Directors. He has a doctorate in toxicology from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.
STAFF
Anne-Marie Mazza, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. She has served as the study director on more than 20 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reports on topics ranging from science and national security to governance of academic research and emerging technologies to voting technologies to science and the courts. Mazza was the senior staff director for three international summits on human genome editing and has served as senior director of the Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy; the National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable; and the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship Program. She has also served as a senior advisor to the president of the National Academy of Sciences and the president of the National Academy of Medicine. Mazza served in the White House as executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2021–2022) and as a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1999–2000). She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She holds a Ph.D., an M.A., and a B.A. from the George Washington University.
Steven Kendall, Ph.D., is a senior program officer for the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has contributed to numerous National Academies’ reports, including Facial Recognition Technology: Current Capabilities, Future Prospects, and Governance (2024); Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance (2021); The Emerging Field of Human Neural Organoids, Transplants, and Chimeras: Science, Ethics, and Governance (2021); Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy (2018); Optimizing the Nation’s Investment in Academic Research (2016); Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification (2014); Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (2009); and the third edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (2011). Kendall staffed the National Academies’ National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable from its inception
in 2020 until its sunset in 2024. Prior to joining the National Academies in 2007, he worked at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Huntington in San Marino, California. He received an M.A. in Victorian art and architecture at the University of London and completed a Ph.D. in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Renee A. Daly was a senior program assistant with the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of Policy and Global Affairs (PGA) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine until April 2025. Before coming to PGA, Daly worked with the Board on Animal Health Sciences, Conservation, and Research (formerly known as the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research) in the National Academies’ Division on Earth and Life Studies. She received a master’s degree in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science from Virginia Tech.
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