Online Course – The Critical Examination of Mitigation and Our Role in Uncovering It

This course is for Sentencing Advocates, Client Service Professionals, Mitigation Specialist/Experts, Life History Investigators, Mental Health Social Workers, and those in similar fields who work in and want to know more about the function and development of mitigation. The focus of this six-week course is on the roles family, systems, culture, and trauma play in the lives of our clients, culminating in how we tell the story of our clients through mitigation writing.

If you are interested in bringing together the impact of systems on our clients’ stories and telling these stories in writing, this course will supply you with tools and examples. This training course provides in-depth opportunities to investigate aspects of our clients’ lives and the environments in which they live or grew up in order to create compelling writing for mitigation. In this course participants will engage in strategic training which includes the intersectionality of and use of self in mitigation development, client-centered representation advocacy, environmental and community factors impacting clients, report writing, and the inclusion of special topics to understand and explain a client’s history.

You are encouraged to have a case in mind (though not required) to explore how individual, community, and social determinant elements discussed in the course impact a specific client. The capstone project at the conclusion of the course will require you to prepare a report and summary presentation that relies on the content learned from the modules through this course.

Faculty 

Stephanne Cline Thornton is a West Virginia native who has worked in and around criminal defense and mitigation for more than 20 years in Georgia, Colorado, and West Virginia. She is currently the Social Work Training and Resource Coordinator for NAPD, Clinical Director for the West Virginia Judicial and Lawyer Assistance Program, and owner of Transform Legal, a consultancy focused on mitigation, training, and sustainability. As a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and Master Addiction Counselor, Stephanne focuses on proper assessment for and access to trauma and substance use disorder treatment to ensure the health and well-being of affected individuals. Stephanne is on the Trauma-Informed Care Network Speakers Bureau and uses that platform to call attention to the intersection of secondary traumatic stress and legal practice. She approaches her work with clients, lawyers, social workers, and mitigation specialists through a contextualized mitigation lens.

Denise M. Smith, LCSW-C – Forensic Social Worker & Mitigation Specialist

Denise founded Smith Consulting Group, LLC in 2011, offering a distinctive approach to Forensic Social Work and Mitigation services. Her focus on defense-based advocacy not only gives a voice to truth but also restores dignity to the accused. Believing in second chances, Denise’s mitigation practice is primarily dedicated to serving post-conviction clients sentenced as juveniles and younger adults serving life in prison.

Denise brings extensive experience. Before transitioning to a larger role, she gained expertise as a Forensic Social Work Field Education Instructor with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and as a Field Education Liaison with the University of Maryland School of Social Work for over a decade. With nearly 25 years in forensic social work and mitigation, she is a trusted source of expertise and guidance.

As a teacher and mentor, Denise dedicates her work to shaping and guiding the professional growth of social work students in understanding systemic oppression and cultural humility related to the criminal justice system and mass incarceration. She trains and coaches mitigation professionals nationwide. Social justice, defense-based advocacy, social work education, and professional development in mitigation inspire and define her practice. Denise’s commitment to the field was recognized when she was named the University of Maryland School of Social Work Field Instructor of the Year in 2018 and when she was elected Chair of the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigation Specialists (NASAMS) Executive Committee in 2023. In 2024, her expertise in social work and advocacy led to an appointment by Governor Wes Moore as a Parole Commissioner to the Maryland Parole Commission. This role continues her lifelong work, which highlights the humanity and redemption of the unlikely.