Public Defender Spotlight – The Nominees, Finalists, & Winners of the 2025 PDAP Awards

Public Defender Spotlight: The Nominees, Finalists, and Winners of the 2025 PDAP Awards

January 13, 2026 – 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.

This year continued to be challenging for Pennsylvania’s Defenders and for our clients, but again and again the people in our community rose to fight injustices around them.

PDAP’s annual awards give members of our community a chance to nominate colleagues who they think have encapsulated what it means to be an exemplary Public Defender, whether that be through an individual accomplishment or the overall role they play in their office. With the 2025 awards behind us, keep reading to learn more about this past year’s nominees, finalists, and winners.

The Fred Goodman Award (the Rico)

The Rico award is named after attorney Fred Goodman, a longtime PD with the Defender Association of Philadelphia. It is meant for any Public Defender attorney with less than 3 years of experience as a PD.

This year we had ten nominees from eight counties for the Rico award. Our nominees included Anne Bates (Dauphin), Ryan Lebo (Philadelphia), Shannon Haupt (Allegheny), Seth Boos (Erie), and Jennifer Buono (Montgomery).

Winner: Tim Deyrup (Chester County), nominated by four different people from his office, including his Chief. They write that Tim “transitioned from preliminary hearings to the Court of Common Pleas [that year], where he has excelled. Within the past month alone, he secured two complete acquittals. Immediately following those victories, Tim served as second chair on a serious, week-long sexual assault trial involving child victims – an emotionally and logistically demanding case in which he performed with professionalism and poise. Across the year, Tim has continued to deliver results… He works well with the other attorneys and staff and is friendly and genial. There are those young attorneys who perform well as PDs but with an eye toward private practice. Tim embraces our mission as Public Defenders and aspires to a long career as an exceptional Public Defender.”

Finalist: Jason Price (Delaware County). “Jay has really become a leader among our many new attorneys in litigation. He does not shy away from filing and litigating motions. Discovery, suppression, motions in limine – you name it, he is filing it. He is a lead by example, and it shows. I have a whiteboard outside my office where I put up wins people have each week. I feel like every other week I am putting a 600 dismissal or a suppression win from Jay on the board and that encourages his fellow lawyers to do the same.”

Finalist: Ellen Connally (Washington County). “Ellen has only been practicing in the public defender’s office for a year and a half, but her passion for justice and her willingness to continue learning, growing, and honing her craft are inspiring to all of the other “baby” PDs in the office. Some people are just meant to be Public Defenders, and Ell is one of those people. Ell won a DUI suppression hearing this year which forced the District Attorney’s Office to re-evaluate the way that DUIs are being handled and will serve as an important precedent in our county in defending other suspected DUI clients.”

Finalist: Chris Moore (Philadelphia). “Chris was one of the trial team coaches for Temple Law’s Rosner National Trial Team, which won the 2025 Premiere Mock Trial Competition. He is committed to mentorship in the office – he was routinely given praise by our summer interns for his willingness to have them involved in case prep and ensure they had a meaningful experience – he’d take them to court and have them review discovery with him to get their take on the case.”

Finalist: Amirah Brew-Syders (Philadelphia). “Both [fellow finalist Chris Moore] and Amirah are committed to bringing forth a new generation of talented, and committed attorneys. We all went down to Howard together to interview prospective attorneys, and she continually volunteers to participate in recruitment events because she knows how important it is for us to have well qualified and skilled advocates. Amirah led by example – allowing us to shadow her in court and setting a gold standard for advocacy, while volunteering and leading sessions during new class trainings about various topics.”

The David R. Crowley Award

The Crowley award is named after Dave Crowley, the longstanding Chief Defender of Centre County. The Crowley award is for a Public Defender attorney with 3-10 years of experience as a PD.

We had eleven nominees from nine counties for this award this year, including: Ian Pulz (Delco), Alison Smeallie (Philadelphia), Whitney Viets (Philadelphia), Kent Lloyd (Lehigh), Ben Jackson (Allegheny), Amber Moll (Berks), and Eric Donato (Montgomery).

Winner: Paige Benedetto (Delaware County), nominated by three different people from her office, including Chief Defender Christopher Welsh. “Paige recently had several clients with serious charges and even more serious medical issues. She filed bail motion after bail motion, often in the same cases, to force the courts to see how dire the situations really were. She successfully convinced the court to release a very young client with advanced stage 3 cancer. She then cooked him and his family Thanksgiving dinner, and dropped it off to him on Thanksgiving. Her work didn’t stop when he was released from jail.”

Finalist: Billy Dombroski (Lancaster County). “I’ve worked with Billy for about a year and a half. He’s actually a major player in why I came to the office in the first place because he agreed to meet with me prior to me deciding to take this job to answer my questions. Every time I go to him for help, he always gives me a perspective that I hadn’t thought of. I often see other attorneys going around to his office to ask him questions as well.”

Finalist: Kelli Long (Chester County). “This year Kelli had several trials including a homicide with a hung jury that had to be tried twice, another aggravated indecent assault trial, and she got ADA to nol pros EWOC charges on morning of trial for very sympathetic client who was charged with M1 EWOC because his spouse left 2 kids home for 10 minutes while our client was on his way home. In that case, Kelli also set up childcare during court. Our client had potential immigration consequences and was extremely grateful when she got charges withdrawn.”

Finalist: Taylor Paulhamus (Lycoming County). “Attorney Paulhamus was able to gain the trust of a very reluctant Defendant who was in prison for almost a year prior to the trial on a very short notice. Additionally, after being successful at the Court of Common Pleas level and winning a suppression, Attorney Paulhamus was also successful in winning the appeal at the Superior Court level in which was a published decision (2025 PA Super 190). She is the definition of a zealous advocate and has gained much experience in a short amount of time.”

The Life Preserver Award

The Life Preserver Award honors our non-attorney community, and is an award for any PD Social Worker, social service advocate, investigator, mitigator, paralegal, or other member of Defender support staff. Like last year, so many people nominated their fellow Public Defenders for this award that we split our nominees into three categories!

For the core staff category of the Life Preserver award, we had seven nominees from six counties, including Hannah Semon (Allegheny), Joseph Guest (Lancaster), and Kiyah Hill (Delaware).

Winner: Alena Chulick (Allegheny County), nominated by two people from her office, including Acting Chief Andy Howard. “Alena is the co-founder and Project Manager of Project Rehabilitate: an initiative that is the first of its kind in the nation. Project Rehabilitate supports individuals suffering from substance abuse disorder or in recovery by conducting visits in rehabilitation centers, consulting clients, helping clear court costs and fees, and clearing warrants– efforts that mitigate criminal legal burdens on clients and allow them to prioritize recovery. The project is completely dependent on Alena’s diligence, record keeping, and tenacity.”

Finalist: Melissa Amos (Washington County). “She goes out of her way to communicate to make things easy for all of the attorneys in the office. Melissa treats all of our clients with compassion and doesn’t judge anyone, she makes them feel respected and lets them know that just because we are a PD office, their cases matter. Melissa also has incredible research skills, and uses her skills in social media to obtain information that has been helpful in our cases.”

Finalist: Sarah Childers (Chester County). “Sarah is the paralegal assigned to our juvenile division. She does everything from intake to closing files for our juvenile clients. Sarah has been with Chester County for 24 years. She pretty much runs the juvenile division, she knows all the clients, and their siblings, and possibly their parents too. She trains new attorneys assigned to juvenile court. We would be lost without her.”

Finalist: Marissa Gahagan (Mifflin County). “When I took on this position, she joined our office two months in. At that time, I was the Chief of myself, as the only attorney, and she was our only support staff, initially on a part-time basis. We continued to grow together for over three years until the Indigent Defense Grant afforded us the opportunity to bring on additional staff. Without Marissa, our office would not be where it is at. We are better because of her.”

Three people from three different counties were nominated for the investigator category this year:

Winner: Melissa Ream (Cambria County), nominated by Chief Kimberly Feist. “Melissa assisted in a big sexual assault jury trial for one of our clients in May of 2025. She spent hours tracking down witnesses that were out of state and interviewing them. She went to the scene of the alleged crime and was able to get photographs. None of this work was done by the State Police/Commonwealth. Our client was charged with 15 total charges and we were able to secure of verdict of Not Guilty on all 13 sexual assault related charges. Melissa truly helps our office provide the best defense for our clients.”

Finalist: Martin Aronson (Allegheny County). “[He is nominated] for excellent work in interviewing potentially hostile government witnesses. On at least two occasions, he managed to secure interviews with evasive and hostile government witnesses which completely saved the case, either by providing crucial exculpatory information or by showing that the government’s case was stronger than initially believed.”

Honorable mention: Alyssa Biederman (Delco) won this award last year and was once again nominated this year, which speaks to how much her co-workers think of her work.

Last but certainly not least, we received eight nominations from five different counties for the SSA/mitigator category of the Life Preserver this year. Our nominees included Alexa Harbison (Montgomery), Hannah Roop (Philadelphia), Anna Birman (Philadelphia), and Alicia Large (Montgomery).

Winner: Robert Jackson (Dauphin County). “He was able to use the rapport he created with the client to talk to him and have the client trust him when he told him that I was there to help him and that I could also be trusted. Following court, Robert then drove the client home and then proceeded with his day as if driving clients to court was just another normal day at the office when, as far as I am concerned, such behavior is anything but. There is not a task too big or too small that he is unwilling to tackle if it means it lightens our load as attorneys and helps advocate for clients.”

Winner: Erica Berson (Philadelphia). “As Defender Association of Philadelphia’s Adult Social Services Supervisor, Erica always has led with compassion and integrity, continuing to work with clients on the ground as she guided and nurtured us, the consummate mother hen to our about 15-person team. It has been a difficult year, filled with a changing environment… Erica has deftly juggled these demands to help try and develop better working relationships between these units.”

Finalist: Victoria Marchei (Delaware County), nominated by four people from her office. “She is the only social worker in our office – we could not function without her. Victoria wrote a mitigation report for a client who was looking at several years in jail. The initial offer was for 5.5 to 11 years in jail, and based on her report, the offer was lowered to a county sentence of 11.5 to 23 months. She leaves no stone unturned when it comes to helping her clients and exhausting resources.”

Finalist: Brandi Gladfelter (Lebanon County). “Brandi will gather medical records and investigate cases for the attorneys. She will call and interview witnesses and help with competency evaluations. Since coming to the PD’s office, she has been an invaluable asset. She has taken the load off of the attorneys in trying to obtain medical records instead of working on cases. She gets the medical records promptly.”

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Congratulations to everyone who was nominated, and a special shout out to Berks, Cambria, Mifflin, and Washington counties for nominating folks for the first time. This was the first year we had a nomination come in from a judge (still not sure how that happened, but whatever) and from a person nominating someone who once represented them. To everyone nominated here: thank you for all you have accomplished in 2025. You are our light, and PDAP is just as proud of you as your co-workers are.

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