Public Defender Spotlight

June 27, 2025 – Our Public Defender Spotlights shout out and celebrate the achievements of individual members of the PDAP community, whether past or recent. If you’d like to nominate a fellow Public Defender (attorney, social service advocate, investigator, mitigator, or support staff member) for a feature, reach out to Anna@PAPublicDefenders.com.

On February 24, 2025, the Supreme Court heard Gutierrez v. Saenz, a Texas case concerning the client’s right to bring a federal rights claim challenging the constitutionality of state laws controlling post-conviction DNA testing. Annie Fisher, an Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Community Defender for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania’s Capital Habeas Corpus Unit (CHU), argued on Gutierrez’s behalf. On June 26, the Supreme Court ruled in Gutierrez’s favor.

To celebrate this monumental win, PDAP is proud to share an interview with Annie, along with Investigator Rachel Primo, that we conducted this spring. Annie and Rachel had worked closely on this case for six years as part of their work in the CHU. We spoke with them to learn more about the process of preparing, investigating, and ultimately arguing it in front of the Supreme Court. 

Each case handled by a Public Defender involves its own unique set of challenges, and Gutierrez v. Saenz was no different. During the interview, both Annie and Rachel expressed that they had to think outside the box to build a strong argument in the client’s favor. 

“The hardest part for me was becoming an expert in a few short months on a topic that never in my 20-year legal career had I dealt with before,” Annie said, referring to Article III standing, which governs whether or not federal courts can hear a plaintiff’s claim. 

Mastering her knowledge of Article III standing involved “reading a lot of case law, talking to a lot of people… trying to learn an area of law that I was fairly unfamiliar with… well enough to answer questions in front of the Supreme Court.” Ultimately, she said, this preparation paid off, and she felt confident in her final argument.

When asked what advice she had for other lawyers arguing similar cases, Annie encouraged them to think creatively. 

“It was pretty cool to see how I could stretch my skills as a lawyer when the opportunity arose and when the situation required it,” she said. “We got a case that was under warrant; [our client] was scheduled to be executed in a matter of weeks, and here we are, six years later, still fighting. And that’s due to the creativity and the dedication of his legal team.”

On the investigative side of this process, Rachel spoke about the challenges of tracking down potential witnesses to obtain information on a decades-old case. She described how she ran into obstacles when a key witness was found to have passed away years ago, and said that tracking down people close to that individual still proved to be useful in the end.

“A declaration I had signed with the witness got filed and ultimately mentioned during Annie’s Supreme Court argument, which was a very cool moment,” she said. “[Just because] you find out that a very important witness in your case has passed away, it doesn’t mean that your case ends there. It seems difficult at first, but if you just dig your heels in a bit and track down the people who are around, who might know something, it can end up being very useful.”

Rachel’s advice for Public Defender investigators was to “do everything… anything and everything, no matter how minor it might seem. You might feel like you have a mountain on your shoulders, but you just get out there and start chipping away. And you never know what you’re going to learn.”

Watch our full interview with Annie Fisher and Rachel Primo below. For more updates on this case, check out the SCOTUS blog.