Our Board

Chair

Stephen works as a barrister from chambers in Brisbane and Hobart.

Stephen’s commitment to advocating for the abolition of the death penalty and to promoting and protecting human rights more generally was recently recognised when he was awarded the 2020 President’s Award by the Law Council of Australia. Stephen was also awarded the 2009 Human Rights Medal by the Australian Human Rights Commission for his bold and challenging work on Dr Mohamed Haneef’s case.

From his childhood growing up with nine siblings and parents who cared about the less fortunate, Stephen has always had an abomination for the death penalty and a love of progressive causes.

This is also reflected in Stephen’s patronage of two Brisbane anti-death penalty organisations, Australians Against Capital Punishment and the Julian Wagner Memorial Fund; and in his active involvement as a member of the Criminal Law Committee of the Bar Association of Queensland and the Human Rights Committee of the Law Council of Australia.

Stephen has previously been President of the Legal Aid Commission of Queensland and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights. Stephen was active in, and for a time, President of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties where he was privileged to work with Derek Fielding, Terry O’Gorman, Beryl and John Holmes, Matthew Foley and Janet Irwin.

Vice President

Sara is Vice-President of the Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP), an NGO focused on the abolition of the death penalty. She is also Deputy Director (Practice) at Eleos Justice, Monash University. She has practised exclusively in criminal law since 2003 and has extensive experience in defending complex prosecutions.

In 2018, Sara was appointed to establish the Eleos Anti-Death Penalty Clinic at Monash University. Eleos Justice is a collaboration between CPJP and Monash University, which aims to be the region's leading academic hub for evidence-based research, policy and clinical casework devoted to restricting and abolishing the death penalty. The Clinic trains law students in capital defence casework, advocacy and policy across the Asia-Pacific region.

In November 2019, Sara joined the Executive of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN). She also sits on three country-specific working groups of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Public Officer

Kevin is a Melbourne-based commercial barrister with accounting qualifications and deep experience in taxation. Kevin was appointed to the position of Treasurer of CPJP in May 2018, and is now the Public Officer of the company limited by guarantee.

Secretary

Jacinta Smith is a Special Counsel at law firm MinterEllison, and has principally worked in medical negligence, acting on behalf of clients in both private health and public health settings. In this capacity, she has experience in complex coronial inquests representing the interests of individual medical practitioners, local health districts, as well as multiple government agencies.

Matthew is a member of the Victorian Bar. He was a co-founder of the Mercy Campaign, a movement to support the clemency applications made by Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Matthew was the President of CPJP (then Reprieve Australia) from 2011 until 2015 and is currently the President of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Sally is a lawyer at Justice Connect Homeless Law where she is the in-house lawyer for the Women’s Homelessness Prevention Project, an outreach clinic combining legal representation and social work for support for women who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. In 2013, she represented CPJP as a volunteer at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Centre in New Orleans, providing litigation support to lawyers representing clients facing the death penalty. She has remained involved with CPJP since that time and in 2016 became the coordinator of the Volunteer Program.

John Riordan is a barrister and member of the Victorian Bar with over 10 years’ experience. He was a co-founder of the Mercy Campaign, a movement to support the clemency applications made by Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Before joining the current CPJP board, John was a committee member of Reprieve Australia (now CPJP) from 2010 to 2014. In 2015 he completed a Master's of Public International Law at Leiden University, and worked at both the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Julia is a marketing and brand specialist, with over 20 years experience as a designer, marketer and strategist, both agency and client-side. She established Amadeus Brand, a branding studio in Sydney, in 2013 to deliver effective, results-focused brand strategy, design and communications for businesses of all sizes, including not-for-profit and charity organisations.

Stephanie McLennan is a criminal defence lawyer at Chris McLennan & Co, an accredited criminal law specialist firm in Melbourne. Prior to this role, Stephanie was a Senior Manager at Human Rights Watch. She also previously worked as a corporate lawyer at a national Australian law firm, Maddocks. Stephanie has also worked with Her Honour Judge Davis in the County Court of Victoria predominantly in civil and criminal law and has volunteered as a lawyer with Refugee Legal and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Stephanie holds dual degrees in Law and Arts, with a double major in Literature and International Studies. During her undergraduate degree, Stephanie studied genocide history and focused on post-war and post-trauma societies. This interest led her to travel to Rwanda to study genocide and to South Africa to study apartheid.