Peter R. Mitchell is a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Director of Training of the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society of New York (LAS), the largest public defender organization in the United States. A career public defender, he has worked on hundreds of cases at both the trial and appellate levels, and he has taught courses for police, judges, public defenders and prosecutors in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and the U.S.
At LAS, his responsibilities include advising and developing training materials for more than 700 attorneys, and he has taught courses about the ethics of investigation, statutory interpretation, the needs of LGBTQ clients, race, jury selection and Batson, and many other topics. He was deeply involved in developing and advocating for the watershed New York criminal procedure reforms of 2019, and he received the New York State Defender Association’s 2019 Service of Justice Award in recognition of those efforts. He has lectured for a wide range of organizations, including the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, Justice in Mexico and Acceso Capacitación. He previously taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City and at Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in Lima, Peru. Mitchell is co-editor of the 2002 volume Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. He received an LL.M. and J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A. from Harvard College.
