Katherine Burnett

Ms. Burnett is a Senior Assistant Attorney General with the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia and has served as the Director of the office’s Capital Litigation Unit for twelve years, supervising the litigation in all death penalty direct appeals, and in all post-conviction/habeas corpus actions involving death-row inmates.  She has broad appellate and post-conviction/habeas corpus experience in the Commonwealth’s lower and appellate courts, the United States District Courts, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  She has argued five death penalty cases in the Supreme Court of the United States.  She is a past President of the national Association of Government Attorneys in Capital Litigation, and has served on its board for several years.  She regularly speaks at seminars on death penalty issues.  She joined the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia in 1985 after receiving her law degree from the University of Richmond T.C. Williams School of Law.  As an undergraduate student, she attended the University of South Carolina and Mary Baldwin College and received her Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, in 1982 from Virginia Commonwealth University.