Amy Sings In The Timber, Executive Director
Amy Sings In The Timber came to the Montana Innocence Project with over a dozen years of non-profit leadership experience and more than 20 years of professional commitment to advancing social and racial justice and human rights issues.
As a practicing attorney, Sings In The Timber directly represented formerly incarcerated, trafficked women to reunite them with their children. Over the past two decades, she has developed and supported access to justice and legal aid programs designed to address disparities in our justice system and promote the rule of law, worked with communities to break down barriers and identify and develop solutions to complex societal and institutional challenges and advocated for a trauma-informed continuum of care, sustainable stable housing models, and economic and educational advancement opportunities for marginalized and disenfranchised peoples.
Before joining the MTIP, Sings In The Timber served as the Executive Director of the Montana Justice Foundation, and in senior leadership roles with The Chicago Bar Foundation and Covenant House Illinois.
Sings In The Timber received her law degree from the University of Montana School of Law (now Alexander Blewett III School of Law).
Caiti Carpenter, Legal Director
Caiti Carpenter brings experience as a solo practitioner in private practice to the Montana Innocence Project. As a criminal defense attorney, she represented clients in post-conviction relief cases, misdemeanor and felony criminal matters, as well as dependency neglect, contract disputes, and other civil matters.
She graduated with a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Colorado in Boulder before earning her law degree from Catholic University, Columbus School of Law in Washington D.C. Carpenter is overjoyed to return to the work that first struck her passion for practicing law. She is excited to represent MTIP’s clients as well as engage with students, volunteers, donors, and staff in furtherance of this organization’s righteous mission: to exonerate the innocent.
Rich Buley, Investigator
Rich Buley has been practicing law in Montana for 35 years at the firm Tipp and Buley. His legal career involved a wide range of cases, but he concentrated primarily in the areas of representing plaintiffs in personal injuries and worker’s compensation and representing defendants in criminal cases. He was one of the founding members of the Montana Criminal Defense Lawyers Association in 1997 and is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Buley was licensed by the State of Montana as a Private Investigator in 2014 and has engaged in that business since he retired from the active practice of law in 2015.
Bill Baldassin, Volunteer Coordinator
An MTIP volunteer himself, Bill Baldassin has served as MTIP’s Volunteer Coordinator since 2017. Baldassin is responsible for client intake, case review, and coordination and correspondence with MTIP pro bono attorneys and other volunteers.
Baldassin is both a University of Montana graduate (1969) and a University of Montana School of Law alum (1973). He worked in private practice for the firm he interned with while in law school until he launched his own firm in 1995. In 2004, Baldassin retired from the practice of law; however, he continued to pursue information and education in the area of criminal justice, including taking a class from former MTIP Legal Director Larry Mansch—and the rest is history!
“It’s a terrible thing that our work is needed in the first place,” Baldassin said. “But for as long as it is, we need to do the best we can to free those who’ve been wrongfully convicted and keep it from happening again.”
Baldassin lives in Missoula with his wife and two dogs. Outside of volunteering with MTIP, he enjoys spending as much time as possible with his grandchildren.
Randi Mattox, Development and Communications Associate
Randi Mattox is a journalist with a passion for criminal justice reform. She graduated from Colorado State University in 2019 where she studied journalism, legal studies, and criminology. She is currently working towards her Master’s of Science in Criminal Justice (online) at the University of Southern California.
As a former MTIP volunteer, Mattox values innocence work and aims to support MTIP’s legal and policy efforts through multimedia storytelling and community engagement.