Daniel Signs

STAFF ATTORNEY

Dan joins Innocence Project Delaware as our first staff attorney.

Prior to joining the Project, he was a public defender for 10 years at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. At the Defender Association, Dan served in several units, including the Major Trials Unit and the Juvenile Special Defense Unit. He represented clients facing a wide range of charges, from drug possession to rape and attempted murder, in all aspects of litigation, including pretrial motions, trial, sentencing, and violations of probation. Before joining the Defender, Dan spent one year as an assistant defender at the State Appellate Defender Office in Detroit.

Dan is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where he investigated and litigated claims of actual innocence as a student in the Michigan Innocence Clinic. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Sophia Block

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT MANAGER

Sophia Block joins Innocence Project Delaware as the Community Engagement Manager.

Sophia is a graduate of Brown University who concentrated in Sociology and International and Public Affairs. She conducted original research on the criminalization of disability and the intersection of racism and ableism in policing. She also worked as a research assistant with Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, contributing to a book, Crime Fictions, which examines false confessions and wrongful convictions of Black juveniles. Prior to joining Innocence Project Delaware in this role, she was an intern with the Project, where she assisted in case review and evaluation.

Maddy deLone

INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Maddy deLone joins the staff of Innocence Project Delaware as its Interim Executive Director. 

Maddy is a non-profit consultant who uses her extensive leadership and managerial experience to support mission-driven organizations and leaders to better meet their goals. In the last five years she has served as the Interim Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, the Institute for Justice and Opportunity at John Jay College, and Death Penalty Focus. She is thrilled to be working with the Innocence Project Delaware.

Before beginning her consulting work, Maddy was the Executive Director of the Innocence Project from 2004 until 2020, a period of tremendous growth for the organization. Before joining the Innocence Project, deLone was an attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society, a Skadden Fellow and staff attorney with Children’s Rights, Inc., and a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet, in the Southern District of New York. Maddy grew up in Philadelphia, is a graduate of Girls High School, received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, her Masters of Science in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health, and her law degree from the New York University School of Law. She serves on the boards of the Alliance for Justice, CAI, and Just Leadership USA. 


Mylon Medley

DNA Legal Fellow

Mylon Medley joins Innocence Project Delaware as its DNA Legal Fellow.

Prior to joining the Project, Mylon was an appellate judicial law clerk for the Hon. Lori A. Dumas of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Mylon earned her law degree from the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Mylon maintains that her most fulfilling experience in law school was her yearlong participation in Villanova’s Farmworkers’ Legal Aid Clinical Program as a student attorney where she co-managed client representation that culminated with an immigration court hearing.

Mylon pivoted to the legal profession with a decade’s-worth of experience as a journalist in the Greater Washington, D.C. area after obtaining a Master of Arts in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University. Immediately after completing journalism school, she served as a video intern for The White House’s Office of Digital Strategy under the Barack Obama Administration. Mylon has extensive experience a multi-media journalist, television and web producer, and on-air talent covering religious organizational governance, humanitarian and disaster response efforts, religious freedom advocacy, faith-based community initiatives, and race relations for an international Christian denomination. Her assignments took her throughout the United States to rural communities in Thailand and even the Amazonian Rainforest in Brazil. Mylon also supported programming for SONScreen, a small, progressive film festival for Christian college students. Mylon’s undergraduate degree is from Oakwood University where she graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and minor in Political Science.

John Butler

INVESTIGATOR

We are thrilled to have John Butler join Innocence Project Delaware as our first investigator.

John is a professional investigator with more than 12 years experience conducting criminal and administrative investigations in multiple jurisdictions across the Northeast. John began his career investigating NYPD misconduct in New York City for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, where he investigated the most serious allegations at the agency including police involved shootings, deaths in custody, and false official statements. John then conducted post-conviction, criminal defense investigations for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, conducting background investigations, interviewing witnesses, subpoenaing evidence, and testifying in court across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between. Lastly, John worked as a staff investigator for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS), widely regarded as the best public defender's office in the United States. John founded Butler Investigations after seeing the need for skilled, hardworking, and trusted investigative professionals in the legal services community.

Board of Directors

  • Judith Ritter has been a professor at Delaware Law School since 1994. She was the founding director of the school’s Criminal Defense Clinic. She is the Director of the Taishoff Advocacy, Technology and Public Service Institute. She teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Evidence and Federal Habeas Corpus.

    Professor Ritter began her legal career as a public defender in New York where she tried felony and misdemeanor cases. Professor Ritter speaks and writes on a number of criminal procedure issues including: the confrontation clause; federal habeas corpus; and jury instructions. She earned a B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

  • Herbert W. Mondros is Special Counsel at the Wilmington, Delaware firm of Rigrodsky Law, P.A.. Herb is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University and graduated magna cum laude from Tulane University School of Law, where he served as a member of the Tulane Law Review, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, and was awarded the Order of the Coif. After graduating law school, Herb entered the U.S. Department of Justice through the Honors Program where he served as a Trial Attorney in the Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney and then as Chief Appellate Counsel for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Presently, Herb represents plaintiffs and defendants in corporate and commercial civil litigation.

    Herb also has an active pro bono practice, representing defendants in innocence cases and plaintiffs in prisoner civil rights cases, and is most proud of working with defense teams that exonerated and freed two innocent men who had been wrongfully convicted sentenced to death, and collectively served more than thirty years on Delaware’s death row, and two other innocent men who collectively served more than 45 years in Delaware prisons for crimes they did not commit. After Delaware's death penalty was struck down in 2016, Herb and others founded the Delaware Innocence Project.

  • Rebecca Scalio practiced law in Delaware in the areas of corporate litigation and business bankruptcy. She is the Associate Director of Academic Success at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.

    Prior to embarking on her teaching career, Rebecca was in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware where she worked for the law firms of Richards, Layton & Finger, P.A. and Potter Anderson & Corroon L.L.P. While with Richards, Rebecca was a member of the bankruptcy group where she represented debtors and creditors in chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. While with Potter, Rebecca was a member of the corporate litigation group where she represented various corporations and shareholders in both litigation and transactional matters.

    Rebecca earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Delaware, graduating magna cum laude. She earned her law degree from Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law, where she served first as a Staff Member and then as an Executive Editor of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review. During her third year of law school, Rebecca was selected for the Federal Judicial Clerkship Clinic, and she worked in the chambers of The Honorable Stephen M. Orlofsky (now retired) of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

    Rebecca resides in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. She is a board member of Innocence Delaware, which works to release innocent incarcerated individuals from Delaware prisons, provide post-exoneration support, and helps to educate the public about criminal justice reform. In her free time, Rebecca enjoys traveling, hiking, kick boxing, and reading.

  • Alice Eakin is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Students at Delaware Law. Professor Eakin received a B.A. in Political Science/Honors from Temple University in 1984 and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law in 1987. Following graduation from law school, Professor Eakin was an Assistant Public Defender in Kansas City, Missouri, and in 1989 became a Trial Team Leader in that office. After returning east in 1990, she worked at the Delaware Criminal Justice Council and clerked for Judge Carl Goldstein of the Delaware Superior Court. Professor Eakin was a full-time Legal Methods instructor at Widener from 1993 to 1996, teaching Legal Methods I, II, and a seminar course entitled Selected Topics in Criminal Defense. In 1996 she joined the law school’s administration, serving as Assistant Dean for Career Development from 1997- 2000. Professor Eakin taught as an adjunct professor from 2002 - 2007 and then returned to the fulltime faculty in 2007 as an Assistant Legal Methods Professor and Co-Director of the Academic Success Program. Professor Eakin also serves as an Academic Advisor in the Office of Student Affairs. Professor Eakin served on the Board of Directors for the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware from 2000 – 2017, and served as the Affiliate Affirmative Action Officer for that organization from 2007 - 2014. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Common Cause Delaware and Innocence Project Delaware.

  • Suzanne Mannes received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is trained as a cognitive psychologist, specializing in text comprehension, and memory in general. She has used this background to develop expertise in eyewitness identification and has been qualified as an expert to testify about mistaken eyewitness identification in the Pennsylvania courts. Dr. Mannes’ research has focused most recently on effectiveness of simplifying penalty stage jury instructions on application of the death penalty, and the factors most likely to affect an incarcerated individual’s time to exoneration.

  • David McBride is partner at Young Conaway. He represents both defendants and plaintiffs in areas of corporate law and corporate and commercial litigation, represents corporate clients in mergers and acquisition litigation in Delaware Court of Chancery, and counsels boards and stockholders in transactions and proxy contests.

    He has been involved in many of Delaware's significant corporate law cases, particularly in the area of mergers and acquisitions.

  • Stacie Burton has lived and worked in Sussex County Delaware her entire life, with nearly 20 years of public service and has previously served as the Community Liaison for Governor John Carney.

    Her passion for making positive changes in the community is evident through her on going service and commitment to various boards which include, The Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence, Innocence Delaware, Delaware’s Foster Grandparents Advisory Committee, and the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. Stacie’s passion and involvement with the community is an intricate part of her life. She believes strongly in the importance of community engagement and philanthropy. Stacie also serves as the President of the Sussex County Women’s Democratic Club and has previously mentored school- aged children at Big Brothers Big Sisters.

    Stacie recently launched her very own consulting business, Burton Consulting. She remains highly motived and continues to increase her expertise, education, and community involvement. Stacie graduated from Wilmington University in 2015, with a Master of Science degree in Public Administration and completed her second master’s degree in Organizational Leadership in May 2017.

    Stacie believes in working hard and has a great passion and determination for making communities better by serving the public, mentoring youth, and remaining active on various boards and committees. Stacie strongly believes that greatness is contagious and is willing to learn more and help lead others to becoming greater and more civically involved.

  • Marguerite (“Reity”) focuses her practice on corporate litigation in the Delaware Court of Chancery.  Reity served as a judicial law clerk to Vice Chancellor Lori W. Will on the Delaware Court of Chancery before joining Ross Aronstam & Moritz LLP.   She began her legal career at Milbank LLP in New York City, where she primarily represented public companies, financial institutions, and asset management firms in government investigations.  Before her legal career, Reity was a reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative news organization, where she covered campaign finance and lobbying at the state and federal levels.

    Reity also has an active pro bono practice. She has represented criminal defendants through the federal Criminal Justice Act panel, plaintiffs in housing discrimination cases, asylum seekers, and public interest groups seeking disclosure of body-worn camera footage from law enforcement. While at Milbank, Reity was part of the team that represented Mark Purnell alongside Innocence Project Delaware and successfully convinced the State of Delaware to dismiss its murder case against Purnell after he had spent 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

  • Julie P. Devlin, Esquire is currently the Chief of Staff with the Delaware Division of Services for Aging and Adults with Physical Disabilities (DSAAPD). There, she works to develop policies and practices to support Delaware’s aging and disability communities. Prior to joining DSAAPD, Ms. Devlin served as the Program Coordinator of the Delaware Youth Opportunities Initiative (DYOI) at the Delaware Center for Justice. Ms. Devlin helped to advance better services and supports for youth aging out of the foster care system in Delaware, working on several key pieces of legislation and honored at a White House Foster Care Symposium for her efforts. She has experience working on capital punishment issues, having spent her law school internships at the American Bar Association and the Innocence Project of Florida. In 2010, she was honored to receive the Delaware Governor’s Award in National Service for her work with the Project for Older Prisoners (POPs). Ms. Devlin is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University and the Widener University Delaware Law School, where she served as an editor of the Widener Law Review.

  • Nitika Gupta Fiorella focuses her practice on complex patent litigation, spanning a wide range of technologies. Nitika has managed cases involving medical devices, pharmaceuticals (including Hatch-Waxman litigation), oil and gas technology, software, automotive design and innovation, and polymer chemistry.

    Nitika has extensive courtroom experience, including experience examining witnesses and arguing jury instructions at trial, arguing claim construction, summary judgment, and post-trial motions. In addition to her District Court experience, Nitika has considerable experience representing clients in post-grant proceedings, and has appeared in matters before the U.S. International Trade Commission.

    Nitika also has a robust appellate practice – she has led or worked on over three dozen appeals and has argued multiple times before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She has secured appellate wins for a number of clients in various fields, most recently securing a rare reversal of a Patent & Trademark Appeal Board unpatentability decision.

    Nitika is consistently recognized for her work. Her recent accolades include being recognized as one of the top 40 Delaware professionals under 40 years old by the Delaware Business Times (2021) and one of the top “40 Under 40” professionals for the entire Philadelphia region by the Philadelphia Business Journal (2021). She was also recognized as one of the “Women Worth Watching in STEM,” by the Profiles in Diversity Journal (2021) and as one of the “Ones to Watch” by the Best Lawyers in America (2022). According to clients, Nitika is a “superstar” and her “technical ability, her writing and her critical thinking is just superb.”

    Nitika rejoined the firm in 2016 after serving as a law clerk for the Honorable Kent A. Jordan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (2014 – 2015) and for the Honorable Chief Judge Sharon Prost of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (2015 – 2016). Prior to attending law school at New York University, Nitika attended the University of Delaware as a Eugene DuPont Scholar, where she obtained dual degrees in chemical engineering and political science. She is also fluent in Hindi.

  • Lauren O’Neill Shermer, Ph.D. is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Widener University. She received her B.S. in Law and Justice from The College of New Jersey, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Criminology and Criminal Justice at University of Maryland, College Park. She teaches a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels including Introduction to Criminal Justice, Criminology, Understanding Divergent Lives, Nature of Crime, Research Methods, Crime as a Public Health Crisis, and Advocacy for Justice Issues. Her research interests include prisoner reentry, wrongful convictions, and crime over the life course. Prior to her academic career she was a criminal defense investigator and conducted background investigations for the federal government. Lauren joined the Innocence Project Delaware Board of Directors in June 2021.

  • Richard Morse is Senior Counsel at Community Legal Aid Society, Inc., where he is responsible for impact litigation and mentoring younger lawyers. He was legal director of the ACLU of Delaware from 2010 to 2017, and a trial lawyer at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor from 1975 to 2010.

    He has been president of Delaware Volunteer Legal Services and the Delaware Trial Lawyers Association, General Chair of the Combined Campaign for Justice, and Coordinator of the Federal Civil Panel. He twice received the U.S. District Court’s Caleb R. Layton III Service Award and is a recipient of the DSBA Christopher W. White Distinguished Access to Justice Award for Service to Children.

    He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Cornell University.

  • Jermaine Marlow Wright brings a powerful perspective to the work of Innocence Project Delaware. Having served decades in prison for a crime he did not commit on a conviction that was ultimately reversed, Marlow knows just how many innocent people are incarcerated and in need of a lawyer to fight for them. Marlow has also successfully navigated the difficult reentry process that those who are fortunate enough to prevail on their legal claims must undertake. He currently works in construction and acts as a community activist to help others who have been wrongfully convicted.

  • Dr. William N. Shafarman is the Director of the Institute of Energy Conversion at the University of Delaware. He joined the Materials Science Department after working since 1986 at the Institute of Energy Conversion where he is now the Director. His research group investigates materials, processing, and characterization of compound semiconductors for their application in thin film solar cells and related optoelectronic applications. This research has had a particular emphasis on copper indium gallium diselenide [Cu(InGa)Se2] and related alloys along with newer, promising materials including hybrid perovskites. At IEC, these thin films are deposited using a wide range of processes and in the fabrication of complete solar cell devices. The main objective of this research is to explore the complex relationships between processing, materials properties, device design, and electronic characteristics of the solar cells. In this work, he has collaborated extensively with university and industrial research groups both in the US and internationally. Dr. Shafarman earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester after earning his B.S. in physics from the University of Delaware.

  • Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Ph.D., is a professor and director of graduate studies with the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His research focuses on racial and ethnic inequality in the criminal justice system and broader challenges to communities. He examines the intersections of inequality, punishment, and social control in a variety of institutional contexts, including death penalty judgments, the identity politics of criminal justice policy and lawmaking, and the governance of historically marginalized groups.

  • Tiffani D. Hurst is a full-time Assistant Teaching Professor at the Kline School of Law where she teaches a variety of classes including Wrongful Convictions and runs an Innocence Practicum/Internship. She is a habeas defense attorney who recently earned her PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy from Drexel University’s School of Education. Her dissertation focuses on the educational needs of exonerees, with a particular emphasis on statutory equity and reentry support. Professor Hurst has dedicated most of her legal career to capital habeas defense, serving in the Federal Public Defender’s Offices in both Delaware and Nevada. She has also practiced criminal defense, employment law, and immigration law in Massachusetts. Dr. Hurst holds a B.A. in Political Science and Black Studies from Wellesley College, a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, an M.S. in Special Education from Drexel University, and an M.Ed. from Springfield College. She has served as an adjunct professor at both Springfield College and Elms College.

  • Assistant Professor of Law Brooke Girley is a seasoned civil rights attorney and media executive who brings a wealth of experience to Delaware Law School. She served both as an associate and of counsel at the Girley Law Firm, securing significant victories in civil rights, church law, and employment discrimination. Girley’s media career includes roles such as Interim Media Director for the Christian Cultural Center and VP of Media and Content for ARB Media. She holds a J.D. from Duke Law School, an M.A.R.S. from Yale Divinity School in Religious Studies, with a concentration in Black Religion in the African Diaspora and a B.A. from New York University in Religious Studies and Africana Studies. Professor Girley was a Teaching Fellow at Widener Delaware Law in 2023-24 and has also taught undergraduates.  She enriches Delaware Law with her expertise in Criminal Law, Civil Rights, and Employment Discrimination, Evidence, and Legal Methods. She was named a Research Fellow at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution in 2024-2026. Her scholarship explores the intersection of race, religion, and the law, including the history of civil rights in America and how that history impacts and informs the present.

How to Help?

Delaware is a small state with a big wrongful conviction problem. Innocence Project Delaware is looking to change that.

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