Emily Prokesch

Emily Prokesch is currently a Trial Attorney at the Office of the Capital Defender in Atlanta, GA.  She represents clients at the trial level in capital cases, where they face the death penalty.  Prior to being a Capital Defender, Emily was the Forensic Practice Director and member of the Homicide Practice Group at The Bronx Defenders, where she represented indigent clients facing criminal charges, supervised the Forensic Practice Group, and oversaw forensic litigation and training.  Emily is faculty for the National Forensic College, trains nationally on forensic issues, and collaborates on policy and other efforts to prevent the misuse of science and technology in the criminal legal system.  Emily was lead counsel in the Frye litigation People v. Ross/A.M., which was the first admissibility hearing held in New York State courts on firearms and toolmark comparison and resulted in an exclusion of all evidence other than a comparison of class characteristics as not generally accepted as reliable by the relevant scientific community. 

Emily holds a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she graduated Cum Laude and received the Archie A. Gorfinkel Award for her work in criminal law.  She earned her B.A. from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she studied Race and Class in U.S. History and held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention.