madeline cohen

board of directors vice-chair

Madeline Cohen is a founding board member of NHI and currently serves as the organization’s Vice President. She believes deeply in NHI’s mission of using education, litigation, and standards development to ensure that prisoners and immigration detainees receive high-quality representation in habeas proceedings.

Madeline first encountered the lack of access to habeas representation for non-capital prisoners as a law clerk for Judge Betty B. Fletcher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. “So many prisoners whose convictions and sentences are marred by serious constitutional flaws must try to present those complex legal and factual issues in handwritten, self-represented filings. Too often, such claims are ignored by the judges and law clerks who must try to decipher them, allowing wrongful convictions and excessive sentences to go uncorrected. NHI is working to fill this gap in the criminal justice system.”

Madeline now works as a capital appellate and post-conviction attorney in Boulder, Colorado. A graduate of Vassar College and Stanford Law School, she worked for several large, international law firms where she handled death penalty cases on a pro bono basis. She then spent 14 years in the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Denver representing capital and non-capital clients in appeals and habeas cases. In late 2015, Madeline opened her own practice, representing death-sentenced prisoners in state and federal court and in executive clemency proceedings. She also provides strategic communications support to capital defenders around the country.

Madeline spends as much time as possible enjoying the Colorado outdoors with her family, climbing, cycling, skiing, and hiking, except between May and August, when they decamp to the Northwoods of Wisconsin and add stand-up paddle-boarding and other water activities to the mix. Madeline has engaged in social justice work in many different capacities over the years, including as a current member of the ABA’s Death Penalty Representation Project Steering Committee, a past member of the Colorado Innocence Project screening committee, and a past board member of the Mountain States region of both the Anti-Defamation League and Congregation Har HaShem in Boulder. She is currently working with a coalition of concerned citizens in Bayfield County, Wisconsin to address racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.