Faculty Profile: Justyna Garbaczewska Scalpone

Justyna Garbaczewska Scalpone is the Tennessee Post-Conviction Defender.  She obtained her law degree in 2002 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Following graduation, Justyna worked for approximately ten years at the Office of the State Appellate Defender in Chicago, first representing non-capital indigent defendants on direct appeal and then death row inmates in post-conviction proceedings.  In addition to providing direct representation to clients, Justyna served as the supervisor to mitigation specialists and investigators at the post-conviction unit.  In the spring of 2011, Illinois abolished the death penalty and Governor Quinn commuted sentences of all the death row inmates to life in prison.  A year later, the Appellate Defender Office's capital post-conviction unit closed its doors.  In June 2012, Justyna left Chicago to continue to represent capital clients at the Tennessee Office of the Post-Conviction Defender in Nashville.  She has been serving as the director of the office since March 2013.