Stand Up for what’s Right and Just (SURJ), a statewide grassroots organization focused on reforming the criminal justice system and attacking the causes of crime, announces its 2003-2004 board of directors and newly elected officers.  Dale E. Wolf, former lieutenant governor and governor of Delaware who chaired the state’s first Drug and Alcohol Abuse Coordinating Council was elected board chair. Vice chair is The Rev. Canon Lloyd S. Casson, rector of the Episcopal Church of Saints Andrew and Matthew, and Secretary/Treasurer is Victor F. Battaglia, Esq., former co-chair for the Combined Campaign for Justice and currently an associate with Biggs & Battaglia, a Wilmington-based law firm. 

Two honorary chairs were named: Russell W. Peterson, former governor of Delaware who chaired the National Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, and Janet Leban executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice and SURJ’s outgoing chair.

Board members are:  Timothy Brandau, executive director, YMCA Resource Center;   Edmund N. “Ned” Carpenter II, Esq., retired, former deputy attorney general; William DeLauder, president, Delaware State University;  Joseph M. Dell'Olio, executive vice president, Child Inc.; Thomas A. Foley, Esq., criminal defense attorney in private practice; Kurt Landgraf, president and CEO of Educational Testing Service who chairs the board of the Delaware Public Policy Institute;  Sam Latham, administrator, United Auto Workers (UAW)-Daimler-Chrysler Region 8 Family Training Center and UAW international representative; Marlene Lichtenstadter , former chair of the Board of Parole; Judy Mellen, former executive director of the Delaware American Civil Liberties Union;  Carl Schnee, Esq., of counsel in the Wilmington law office of Bifferato, Bifferato & Gentilotti and former U. S. Attorney for Delaware; Shirley Seibert, director of Lutheran Public Policy Delaware and board president of the American Association of University Women Delaware. Samuel L. Shipley, founder and owner of Shipley Associates Inc., a Wilmington advertising and public relations firm; and Rodman Ward, Esq., former president of the Delaware State Bar Association currently practicing at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom, LLP in Wilmington.  

SURJ enters its third year with more than 1,850 members striving to achieve the goal of making 2003 a year of reform of Delaware’s criminal justice system to assure public safety without expanding an already large prison system.