2023 ICRA Annual Convention

2023 ICRA Annual Convention

June 20-22, 2023

Hilton Garden Inn

328 S. Clinton Street

Iowa City, IA

(319) 248-6100

1.35 CEUs (Pending NCRA Approval)

Call Worth Business Equipment directly at (773) 777-1474 to set up a machine cleaning. 

SPEAKER SCHEDULE

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

 Thursday June 22, 2023

SPEAKER BIOS

Session 1

Phil Decker-The diagnosis of Stage 4 Cancer and how it led to one of his best years ever in life and the great lessons learned along the way.  Phil has been a sales leader for over 20 years.  He’s led teams from 3 to 600 in various roles throughout his career.  He is currently the Director of Sales at Midwest Janitorial Service and serves on the executive team.  In 2022 he was forced to put his years of training into place personally when faced with the biggest fight of his life.  He will explain diagnosis and treatment with commonly heard medical terminology.  Phil’s goal in speaking with any group is to, Number One, save someone’s life or a friend’s life in the room.  And Number Two, inspire those with concrete examples of he uses his foundational principles of Get Smarter, Get Fitter, and Get Better every day to battle cancer and live his best life. 

Session 2

Donna Humpal, Clerk of  Iowa Supreme Court -Donna is a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law.  She was a law clerk in the Seventh Judicial District of Iowa and then engaged in the private practice of law in Davenport.  Her practice included criminal, postconviction, juvenile, and domestic relations cases as well as appeals.  She was also a magistrate for Scott County and then worked as a staff attorney for the supreme court for 10 years before becoming the clerk of the appellate courts in 2009.  Donna has been a member of various EDMS committees since about 2006, as 23ll as a member of the ore recent Records Retention Committee and Appellate Rules Committee.

Session 3

Laura Fulton, CSR, RPR, CRR, is on the Veterans History Project.  She is an Official Court Reporter in the 2^nd Judicial District.  She has been a volunteer on the Veterans History Project since 2012.

Kelli Mulcahy, CSR, RMR, CRR, RDR, is a Federal Official Court Reporter - U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa, 2012-Present.  She is currently a volunteer and member of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Court Reporter Advisory Group, United States Court Reporters Association Executive Committee, Iowa Court Reporters Association Veterans History Project Committee, United States Court Reporters Association Reporter Testing Committee, and the United State Court Reporters Association Constitution & Bylaws Committee.

Session 4

Alison Guernsey, Clinical Professor of Law-Professor Guernsey teaches in and directs the law school’s Federal Criminal Defense Clinic. Before joining the faculty, Professor Guernsey was the Supervising Attorney for the Federal Defenders of Eastern Washington and Idaho, where she provided direct representation to indigent individuals charged with federal crimes at every stage of the criminal process.  Her case types included drug trafficking and manufacture, firearms, fraud, child exploitation, serious violent/sexual crime under the Major Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 1153) and the Assimilative Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 13), and the habeas corpus petitions (28 U.S.C. 2254 and 2255), among others.  Prior to her employment with the Federal Defenders, Professor Guernsey clerked for the Honorable Michael J. Melloy. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Session 5

Cathy Penniston, RPR, CRI, is a teacher and independent broadcast captioner from Waukee, Iowa.  She had spent 30 years working as an official court reporter for the State of Iowa before transitioning into her broadcast captioning career.  She has also worked as a freelancer and a CART provider.  Cathy currently teaches stenographic reporting at the Des Moines Area Community College in Newton, Iowa.  She holds a Master of Arts degree in Education and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration.  She obtained her Associate’s degree in court reporting from the American Institute of Business.  At the national level, she has served on numerous NCRA committees and enjoys leading the NCRA A to Z Intro to Steno Machine Shorthand sessions.  She has served as a member of the NCRA Board of Directors since 2018.

Session 6

Monica Slaughter, First Assistant Linn County Attorney-Monica C. Slaughter is a graduate of Drake University with degrees in Political Science and Law Politics and Society with a Pre-law concentration and Drake Law School where she earned her Juris Doctorate.  Monica started her career as a prosecutor in the Washington County Attorney’s Office but has been working as an Assistant Linn County Attorney since 2014 where she prosecutes felony level crimes with a primary focus on violent crimes.  In January 2022, Monica was appointed as the First Assistant Linn County Attorney.  She is a certified instructor for the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy and regularly teaches classes on OWIs, Domestic Abuse, Testifying in Court and Search and Seizure at the Cedar Rapids Regional Academy and to local law enforcement agencies.  She is dedicated to crime prevention and community engagement at the grassroots level.  Monica serves on the Board of Directors for Thrive Together (formerly Deaf Iowan’s Against Abuse), Go the Distance for Crime Victims and is a member of the multi-disciplinary teams for St. Luke’s Child Protection Center and GVI Law Enforcement Intervention.  Monica is originally from Des Moines, but lives in Cedar Rapids with her husband, Milo and their son, Milo Jr.  Monica serves as lead counsel in many of high-profile trials in Cedar Rapids.  Most recently, State vs. Alexander Jackson, a triple homicide.

Tyler Johnston, Retired Assistant Public Defender-Tyler Johnston graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law and started practicing law with his father, Joe Johnston, in 1985 in Iowa City.  He moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1990 and spent four years in the Federal Public Defender’s Office.  He then returned to Iowa in 1994 and was a public defender for the past 28 years.  Tyler retired on April 6, 2023, and will be missed by the reporting community.  One of his last cases defending Alexander Jackson, sentenced to three life sentences for killing his father, mother, and sister inside their home.

Session 8

Matthew G. Novak, Esquire, Pickens, Barnes & Abernathy-Matt Novak has been practicing law in the state of Iowa for over 40 years.  He received his juris doctorate degree in 1982 from the St. Louis University.  In 1982 he was admitted to the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Iowa; U.S. Southern District; U.S. Court of Appeal, Eighth Circuit; and in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court.  He most recently was inducted into the American College of Trial Lawyers in Rome, Italy.  In April of this year, he provided a seminar of “Making the Record” for the Inns of Court in North Liberty, Iowa, along with a few court reporters.  Matt has the utmost respect for the record and for court reporters.

Session 9

Ben Lord, Tiffany Lord, Todd Cheney, Bruce Sexton, Hanna Dvorak-The J-FACT team is known as the “Nerd Herd.”  They deal with anything with technology and come to the courthouse frequently for warrants.  Background of the team, background on ICAC generally (Internet Crimes Against Children), case studies, and information on computer evidence and terminology.  Computer forensics is a relatively new field in law enforcement, but it is quickly becoming one of the most necessary, according to the investigators in the J-FACT team, Joint Forensic Analysis Cyber Team.  The team was originally formed by the Johnson County Sheriff’s office, Iowa City Police Department, and the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety in July of 2021. 

Ben Lord, a Johnson County Deputy, is on the team along with his wife Tiffany Lord, who is with DPS for the University of Iowa, Hanna Dvorak with the Coralville Police Department, and Todd Cheney with the Iowa City Police Department, and Bruce Sexton, North Liberty Police Department.

Session 10

Emily Hughes-Professor Hughes joined the faculty at the University of Iowa college of Law in 2011 and became an Associate Dean in 2015. She teaches a variety of criminal law and procedure cases as well as Professional Responsibility. Before joining Iowa Law, she was a professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and prior to that, she was the Associate Director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases at DePaul University College of Law, where she worked in the legal clinic representing indigent clients on capital cases.  Professor Hughes’s other experience includes working as a public defender for the Office of the Iowa State Public Defender in Iowa City, working as a Sacks Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute, and clerking for the Honorable Michael J. Melloy.

In this presentation, Professor Hughes will discuss findings from a study examining 70 criminal trial transcripts and what analysis of those trial transcripts reveals about defendants’ testimony, prior convictions, objections, and the use of forensic evidence.