Defend(H)ers

JoEllyn L. Jones grew up in Gouldtown, New Jersey, a South Jersey community she describes as one of the first free Black communities in the country. In this conversation with Molly Parmer, she talks about the neighbors and teachers who raised her there, a school curriculum centered on African American history, and the second-grade T-shirt that said she wanted to be a lawyer.

On December 29, 1998, her brother, Robert "RJ" Jones, was shot and killed, six months before she graduated from high school. JoEllyn describes sitting through arraignments and hearings as a family member, the anger she carried through the case, and what she needed that the process did not give her. She tells Molly why she first decided against becoming a lawyer, how she applied to Widener while raising her daughter as a single mother, and what happened in her first years of practice, including a cancer diagnosis when her daughter was nine. She went on to contract work for the public defender's office and then six years on staff there.

Years after her brother's death, JoEllyn walked up to Ryan Young, the man who killed him, in a restaurant and told him she thought they should work together. She describes the diner meeting with her mother that followed, the questions she was finally able to ask, and how the two of them now speak together about gun violence and restorative justice. She also talks about what audiences ask her about forgiveness.

JoEllyn and Molly also cover her mentors, including Terry Stomel, Heather Pinckney, Brandi Harden, and Lisa Wayne, and the group texts she keeps with defense lawyers around the country. She talks about serving on New Jersey's Clemency Advisory Board, which began in 2024 and reviewed close to 1,500 applications, and what that work changed in her thinking about consecutive sentences, life sentences, and the difference between punishment and accountability. Her advice to young women entering criminal defense: find your circle before you need it, set boundaries, and make donuts.

Teny Geragos has had a run that would be difficult to make up. She delivered the opening statement in the Sean Combs trial, cross-examined the complainant in Harvey Weinstein's retrial, represented the Alexander brothers, and gave birth to her second child along the way. She heard every verdict a jury can return — acquittal, conviction, mistrial.

In this conversation with Melinda Sarafa, Teny goes back to the beginning: watching her father defend Scott Peterson when she was 14, and how the pretrial media crush convinced her she wanted to fix the narrative problem — from inside a newsroom, not a courtroom. She went to NYU for media and communications, interned at network shows, and then went to law school anyway. The background didn't go to waste.

They cover the Combs case in depth — the Cassie Ventura video, how the defense discovered CNN had sped the footage up by 30%, the TikTok strategy, and what it takes to separate a domestic violence charge from a sex trafficking charge when the public has already merged the two. Plus: her approach to cross-examination, why being a woman in that chair mattered, and her one piece of advice for young women considering criminal defense.