Who we are

Sandra Babcock is a Clinical Professor at Cornell Law School, where she is the Faculty Director and founder of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide (CCDPW). Over the last thirty years she has helped defend hundreds of men and women facing execution around the world. She began her career as a staff attorney at the Texas Resource Center, where she defended persons facing execution in post-conviction proceedings for four years. Following a five-year stint as a public defender in Minneapolis, she served for six years as the founding director of the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, a project funded by the Government of Mexico to defend Mexican nationals facing the death penalty in the U.S. In that capacity she provided litigation support to attorneys around the country, defended Mexican nationals facing execution, and represented Mexico before the International Court of Justice in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals. In 2006, she became a Clinical Professor at Northwestern Law School, where she spearheaded a ten-year project in Malawi that ultimately resulted in the release of over 250 prisoners, 150 of whom were formerly sentenced to death. She moved to Cornell Law in 2014, where she founded the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. In 2018, together with her colleagues at CDPW, she launched the Alice Project, a global movement to end extreme sentencing of women and gender non-conforming individuals. Her clinic currently represents women facing the death penalty in the United States, Malawi, and Tanzania. She has authored numerous articles, book chapters and reports on the application of the death penalty under international law. She teaches classes in international human rights, gender rights, and the death penalty. In September 2021, she received the American Bar Association’s John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award, given to one capital defender every two years whose work has improved the legal representation of persons facing the death penalty and contributed to systemic reform.

Chelsea L. Halstead is the Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, where she oversees the center’s operations, communications, strategy, advocacy, and fundraising efforts. Prior to her appointment at CCDPW, Chelsea co-founded the Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Tucson, Arizona. In 2023, Chelsea co-founded the Center on Gender and Extreme Sentencing (CGES). Chelsea holds a B.A. in Geography from the University of Arizona and an M.P.A. from Cornell University.

Bahar Mirhosseni is a criminal defense & human rights attorney and Director of Legal Advocacy at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. At The International Legal Foundation, she directed global public defense programs and collaborated with indigent defense teams in the MENA region on access to justice, human rights, and high-quality public defense. She previously taught the Pretrial Justice Clinic at UCLA in partnership with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office. She has mentored, trained, and presented to hundreds of students, human right advocates, and lawyers in the United States and globally. She received her B.A. with Honors from the University of California at Berkeley and in 2007, earned her J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law as a Haywood Burns Fellow in Civil and Human Rights. She is an alum of the Ella Baker Program at the Center for Constitutional Rights where she received the Millspaugh-Catlin International Human Rights Fellowship. Hedgebrook Writing Residency Awarded her a Woman Authoring Change Fellowship in honor of slain Libyan human rights advocate Salwa Bughaighis. She has spent over 19 years in indigent defense and human rights, in New York, California, and beyond — first through The Legal Aid Society of New York, as a public defender in Brooklyn and as a Criminal-Immigration Staff Attorney representing non-citizens, conducting select post-conviction advocacy, and advising criminal defense attorneys across New York City. She has collaborated with organizations including the American Bar Association, Southern Africa Litigation Centre, the Georgia Capital Defender Office, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and the National Association for Public Defense. She is Chair of the Gender Working Group of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Zoie Valencia is a legal fellow at the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. She received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 2026 and was awarded the N. Neal Pike Disability Rights Fellowship. During law school, she interned with CCDPW and The Signals Network, where she supported their Whistleblower Protection Program. In her second year at BU Law, she participated in the Antiracism and Community Lawyering Practicum, where she contributed to an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of a Boulder, Colorado ordinance that criminalizes sleeping outside with a blanket or tent. In the fall of her third year, she supported individuals in the criminal record sealing process as a student practitioner with Greater Boston Legal Services CORI & Re-entry Project. In the spring, she co-led lessons in criminal procedure and legal research at Boston’s Nashua Street Jail with BU Law’s Prison Education Practicum. She graduated with Honors from the University of California, San Diego in 2022 with a B.A. in Sociology-Law & Society and minors in Cognitive Science and Literature/Writing.