Anton Robinson

Associate Professor of Law,
Director of the Caritas Clemency Clinic

Anton Robinson is an expert on criminal defense, specializing in post-conviction litigation. He has dedicated his career to exposing and eradicating racism and other forms of bias  within the criminal legal system. He joined the Villanova Law faculty in 2024, and under his supervision, the Caritas Clemency Clinic represents individuals seeking release from prison through compassionate release. The clinic employs multifaceted strategies, including individual client representation, appellate advocacy, movement lawyering, policy reform, and community engagement, to challenge the racist and capitalist foundations of the criminal legal system.

Robinson has dedicated most of his legal career to indigent defense, litigating complex criminal matters with public defense offices in Orlando, Florida; New York, New York; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also served as a senior planner at the Vera Institute of Justice, advancing research and policy initiatives to reduce mass incarceration. This included launching and supervising the Bail Assessment Project, which contributed to the critical harm-reductive components of New York's April 2019 laws eliminating the use of money bail and jail for most misdemeanor and lower-level felony cases.

Prior to joining Villanova, Robinson served as senior staff attorney in the Strategic Litigation Unit at the Innocence Project. He implemented national pre-trial and appellate litigation strategies to improve judicial evaluations of eyewitness identification evidence. His work contributed to the Washington Supreme Court adopting an amended framework for analyzing eyewitness identification testimony, addressing the fallibility of memory and the specific risks of cross-racial identifications (see State v. Derri, 199 Wash.2d 658 (2022)). Additionally, he collaborated with a small group of practitioners and experts to secure a favorable ruling from the New Jersey Superior Court in New Jersey v. Arteaga, affirming the right of accused individuals to detailed information on the use of facial recognition technology to identify them as suspects.

Robinson previously developed and led a seminar titled “Race, Crimes, and Restorative Justice” at Vermont College of Law, where he taught restorative justice principles and strategies to address racial disparities in the criminal legal system. He also taught a course on wrongful convictions at American University Washington College of Law.

He is a graduate of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Florida State University.
 

Teaching and Practice Experience

• Assistant Public Defender, Defender Association of Philadelphia
• Teaching Practitioner, Washington College of Law
• Senior Staff Attorney, Innocence Project
• Course Developer & Adjunct Faculty, Vermont Law School
• Senior Planner, The Vera Institute of Justice
• Staff Attorney, New York County Defenders Services
• Senior Court Advocate & Attorney, The Fortune Society
• Assistant Public Defender, Office of the Public Defender, Orlando, FL
• Associate Attorney, Langston, Hess, et al., P.A.