Parisa Dehghani-Tafti

Associate Professor of Law

Parisa Dehghani-Tafti joined the NYLS faculty in fall 2011 to teach Legal Practice. Her scholarly interests include the effects of parole on the over-incarceration of racial minorities, and the effects of the FBI’s CODIS regulations on post-conviction DNA testing. Previously, she was a staff attorney in the Special Litigation and Parole divisions at the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia, where she litigated issues of constitutional and systemic magnitude, including false and coerced confessions, competency to stand trial and understand Miranda warnings, the right to confront witnesses, and the right to post-conviction DNA testing. While at PDS, she won the first post-conviction DNA exoneration in D.C. when a D.C. Superior Court vacated Donald Gates’ conviction for the rape and murder of a young college student and released him from prison after serving 28 years of what was essentially a life sentence. Prior to PDS, Professor Tafti was a Chesterfield Smith Fellow at Holland & Knight, where she represented clients on a pro bono basis. In one such representation, her team won the release of Wilbert Rideau after he had spent more than 40 years in Louisiana prisons due to racial animus that existed when Mr. Rideau was first tried in 1961.