Online Course: Mitigation Mechanics

COURSE DETAILS

Course start/end: September 15 , 2025 – October 6,  2025

Class small group meeting time

• Mondays at 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm ET

Registration Deadline – September 8, 2025

Price: $350 for NAPD Members.  $450 for Non-Members.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Mitigation has been called the “heart and soul of just and merciful sentencing.” Mitigation is not only critical for negotiating a lesser sentence or alternative sentence for your client, but it is also important to understand the life, experiences, and needs of the person your team is representing. This four-session course is for new practitioners to mitigation work – new sentencing advocates, mitigation specialists, dispositional advocates, etc. You will learn about the history of mitigation and the mechanics necessary for mitigation development: how to begin mitigation development from the initial client meeting, how to request and digest records, and finally how to outline your mitigation report and begin to write! This course is geared to brand new mitigation practitioners and is the first of two courses on mitigation (the second course being The Critical Examination of Mitigation and Our Role in Uncovering It!). Mitigation Mechanics consists of four live Zoom course sessions as well as weekly content review and assignments from the online learning management system.

Who This Course is For:

New to the field mitigation specialists, sentencing advocates, dispositional advocates, social workers, and others performing similar functions in defense-based systems. This course provides the fundamental information necessary to begin to perform mitigation.

Course Objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Have knowledge of the history of mitigation as a practice in defense-based work;
• Learn how to build rapport to meet with clients to learn about their lives and ask questions to develop mitigation with them and on their behalf;
• Request medical and other collateral records related to a client’s history;
• Digest records for use in mitigation; and
• Develop a mitigation report outline.

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.

Michael Moore has over 20 years of experience as a social worker. Michael was the first Mitigation Investigator hired at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Maryland. He was responsible for developing mitigation reports that positively impacted sentencing. He also advocated for clients to get into alternative to incarceration programs and assisted in trial preparation. At the Office of the Federal Public Defender, Michael created the Social Work Internship Program. He was the Field Instructor for the University of Maryland, School of Social Work. He supervised students’ training with the objective of developing a professional competent social worker.

Michael served as faculty and conducted training for the Administration Office of the US Courts Defender Services Training Division. He has developed training on the Role and Responsibilities of a Mitigation Specialist/Social Work in a Non-Capital Case.

From 2015 – January 2020, Michael was on the Executive Committee of the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigating Specialist (NASAMS). NASAMS is the only national organization devoted to the educational and professional development of sentencing advocates and mitigation specialists.
Currently, Michael is the Social Work Supervisor for the Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Practice in the Bronx. Also, he is a member of the National Association for Public Defense where he co-facilitates a bimonthly discussion group of Social Work Supervisors across the country.

Michael received a Bachelor of Arts Degree at Hampton University in May 1994. In June 1998, he received a Master of Social Work Degree at Hunter College – City University of New York.

What to Expect:

Mitigation Mechanics takes place over 4 week (4) weeks with four live (virtual) 90-minute engaging group learning sessions that include a combination of lecture/content presentation and small groups, and asynchronous learning in a state-of-the art online learning platform. The course is in a virtual classroom setting with assignments where faculty provide feedback. At the end of the course participants will have the knowledge, information, and confidence to engage in the initial client meeting, request and digest records, and outline mitigation information in preparation for report writing or collaboration with the defense team.