Samantha K. Drake is an Assistant Federal Defender in the Appeals Unit of Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She started as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in 2016 in the District of Puerto Rico, where she tried several cases to verdict, argued before the First Circuit Court of Appeals, and served on the team of a death penalty authorized case. Ms. Drake previously served as a federal judicial law clerk to the Honorable Judge Gustavo A. Gelpi in the District of Puerto Rico. She also clerked in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for the Honorable Judge Thomas N. O'Neill, and then for the Honorable Judge Timothy J. Savage. Ms. Drake has also worked at the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, representing indigent defendants with actual innocence claims. She has published papers on extradition, international criminal law, and post-conviction DNA testing. Ms. Drake graduated from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She obtained her J.D. cum laude from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts. Ms. Drake is admitted to the Bars of New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.