The District’s Public Defender Service has selected a veteran D.C. defense attorney and former member of the office as its new director.
Heather Pinckney, 45, succeeds Avis E. Buchanan, who announced last fall that she would be retiring as director after 18 years.
Pinckney, who for eight years was trial lawyer in the office, handled various felony cases, including homicides, sexual assaults, and gun and drug possession offenses. In 2008, Pinckney left the office and started her own firm, Pinckney & Harden, where she represented defendants in both D.C. Superior Court and U.S. District Court. In assuming her new role, Pinckney will also step down as executive director of the national Black Public Defender Association, a position to which she was recently named.
