Our Team
Our team is made up of Utah criminal defense attorneys with specializations covering a wide spectrum of issues. All of our attorneys have been involved in the legislative process for years, and have significant experience working on policy issues.
Steven K. Burton | Director, Defense Attorney
Email: steve@utahdefenseattorneys.org Phone: (801) 897-9789
Steve Burton is the current Director of the nonprofit Defense Attorneys for Balanced Criminal Justice and former Executive Director and President of Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (UACDL). He also served on UACDL’s Legislative Committee from 2010 to 2014 and as Legislative Committee Chair from 2014 to 2019. Steve is the current defense attorney representative in the Legislature’s Criminal Code Evaluation Task Force, multiple protective order & stalking injunction working groups, and the 2016 Utah State Bar’s Governmental Relations Committee. He was a co-author for two articles published in the Utah Journal of Criminal Law in 2015 and 2018 discussing the most significant legislative changes from those years. He presents multiple continuing education trainings each year to practicing defense attorneys regarding new and developing criminal justice legislation and policy changes. Currently, Steve is the defense attorney representative on the interim Protective Order Modification Workgroup, the Bail Reform Working Group, and the Criminal Code Evaluation Task Force and he is the UACDL representative in the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers State Legislative Advocacy Coalition.
As a criminal law practitioner, Steve was a city prosecutor from 2008 to 2010 and has been a private criminal defense attorney from 2010 until now. He is a founding partner at Intermountain Legal which is one of the largest private defense firms in Utah. Steve also served as the judge pro temp for the cities of North Salt Lake and Centerville from 2014 to 2018. Additionally, during his undergraduate and postgraduate education, Steve worked in the Governor’s Office under Governor Huntsman, in the Office of Congressman Chris Cannon, and in the Litigation Division of the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
Mark R. Moffat | Defense Attorney
Email: mark@utahdefenseattorneys.org Phone: (801) 532-4523
Mark Moffat has been a practicing defense attorney for over 35 years. Mark began his career at the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association where he practiced as a trial attorney for 10 years. Following passage of Utah’s Serious Youth Offender law, Mark became the head of LDA’s Serious Youth Offender Division. Upon leaving LDA Mark was a founding member of Brown Bradshaw and Moffat, a law firm that specializes in all phases of criminal defense. Mark practices in state and federal court and represents adult and juvenile clients. Mark has handled numerous murder and death penalty cases in the course of his career.
Mark is a member of CCJJ and has participated in several legislative subcommittees and working groups that have addressed a number of significant policy issues including the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), violent crime, grand juries, preliminary hearings, bail, restitution, and guilty and mentally ill reform. He was a member of the Utah Sentencing Commission from 2010-2014. He is a former president of the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, past chairman of the Criminal Law section of the Utah State Bar, current member of the Utah State Bar’s Governmental Relations Committee, founding member of LDA’s Legislative Oversight Committee, and current member of the Board of Directors for the Legal Defenders Association.
Pam Vickrey | Youth Defender Attorney
Email: pam@utahdefenseattorneys.org Phone: (801) 403-8624
Pamela Vickrey is the Executive Director of the Utah Juvenile Defender Attorneys. Ms. Vickrey also serves as chair to the Utah Sentencing Commission; chair of the Juvenile Subcommittee for the Utah Sentencing Commission; a member of the Indigent Defense Commission; a member of Salt Lake County’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council, and the juvenile defense representative on the Juvenile Justice Implementation Committee under Utah’s Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.
Ms. Vickrey has been instrumental in numerous sweeping reforms in Utah, including: the creation of Utah’s first juvenile mental health court; the development and implementation of Utah’s juvenile competency statute; ending the indiscriminate shackling of youth; the elimination of juvenile life without parole sentences; legislative amendments to Utah’s laws regarding the transfer of youth to the adult criminal justice system; automatic appointment of counsel for all children at all juvenile court proceedings. Ms. Vickrey also helped develop and pass an omnibus juvenile justice reform bill that identified and addressed racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system; removed truancy from the court system; diverted low-risk youth from formal court proceedings; limited the imposition of fines and fees, driver’s license suspensions, and compensatory service; shifted dollars from costly out-of-home placements for children to community-based services; and restricted the use of detention. As the first certified Juvenile Training Immersion Program trainer in Utah, Pam coordinates and provides specialized training to juvenile defense attorneys in the state and around the country.
Staci Visser | Research Attorney
Email: staci@utahdefenseattorneys.org Phone: (801) 532-5297
Staci has been practicing criminal defense since she graduated from the S.J. Quinney College of Law in 2012. Her passion for defense advocacy first developed clerking for the appellate law division of the Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association during law school. Currently, she practices both trial and appellate defense for criminal defense firm Brown, Bradshaw & Moffat in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Savannah Pike | Assistant Executive Director
Email: savannah@utahdefenseattorneys.org Phone: (801) 824-7775
Savannah Pike has been with the Utah Defense Attorney Association since 2020. Her main role in this organization, apart from administrative oversight, is as a researcher and policy analyst with a particular focus on policy trends in recent years. Her current projects include the analysis of policymaking in Utah since the implementation of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), as well as looking at overcriminalization more broadly.
Ms. Pike graduated with an MS in Environmental Science and Policy from Johns Hopkins University in December of 2023 and has plans to pursue a juris doctorate.