ELIZABETH A. HENNEKE, J.D.

Elizabeth A. Henneke is the third generation in her family to demonstrate a commitment to Texas criminal justice issues; she follows in the footsteps of her grandfather and father, both of whom retired from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and her grandmother who was a Walker County Sheriff’s Deputy. Elizabeth graduated from Yale University where she earned a B.A. in History with a concentration on race relations in the South. After completing a Fulbright Fellowship in South Korea and a year as a paralegal for Mayer Brown, where she helped prepare several death penalty appeals, she returned to the University of Texas School of Law. During law school, Elizabeth worked with Texas Defender Services, investigating and preparing federal habeas petitions for individuals on Texas’ death row. Elizabeth graduated from UT Law with honors and received the University Co-op Public Interest Award honoring her commitment to public service. She then represented Guantanamo detainees as a clinical instructor for the University of Texas’ National Security and Human Rights Clinic. She received the 2007 Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award for her work there. Elizabeth also worked as a law clerk for the South Africa Constitutional Court and for Judge Edward C. Prado on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, and she was a litigation associate at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C. Most recently, Elizabeth was the inaugural Audrey Irmas Clinical Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. There, Elizabeth supervised students in the Post-Conviction Justice Project, the Immigration Clinic, and the International Human Rights Clinic, successfully receiving legal status for over 35 individuals and obtaining new sentencing hearings for three (and counting) individuals facing life without parole sentences for crimes they committed while juveniles. She also taught first-year criminal law and a seminar on the death penalty. Elizabeth currently serves as a Policy Attorney with TCJC’s Solutions for Youth Justice project, where she bolsters the organization’s efforts to create a more humane, safe, and transparent juvenile justice system in Texas.