The Appellate Division, Second Department, today granted our firm’s appeal of the dismissal of our client Julio Negron’s Unjust Conviction or Section 8-b claim seeking damages for his 10 years’ imprisonment for an attempted murder he did not commit. We previously won Mr. Negron a $6.25 settlement of his claims against the City of New York brought in federal court. We will now seek a date for trial of Mr. Negron’s claim.
The Appellate Division’s decision today is an important precedent preventing the dismissal of cases like Mr. Negron’s on a mere technicality. The State Attorney General’s office has obtained dismissals of claims such as Mr. Negron’s where the court that overturned the claimant’s original criminal conviction did not make clear the section of the Criminal Procedure Law it was acting under. Here, in Mr. Negron’s case, the New York Court of Appeals discussed how the trial prosecutor engaged in fraudulent behavior in persuading the trial judge not to allow a defense that a third party committed the crime while concealing evidence that tended to prove the guilt of the third party. The State Court of Claims judge dismissed the case because the Court of Appeals, in its decision, did not specify that it was relying on a subsection of Criminal Procedure Law 440.10 dealing with fraud by a prosecutor. The Appellate Division, in its decision today, held that such a case cannot be dismissed where the claimant alleges that a prosecutor’s fraud was the basis for the previous court’s decision. That the court that overturned the conviction did not explicitly state on what ground it was overturning the conviction cannot be a bar to the lawsuit.
Senior Associate David Rudin successfully argued the appeal. Jacob Loup, Of Counsel to the firm, wrote the firm’s opening and reply briefs. Read the decision here, our opening brief here, and our reply brief here.
A jury in Rochester, N.Y., returned a verdict of $80 Million against Erie County, N.Y. – the largest wrongful conviction civil damage award in U.S. history – on behalf of our firm’s client, Estate of Darryl Boyd, following a 2 ½ week trial. Darryl Boyd and his original codefendant, John Walker, were convicted in 1977 in Buffalo, N.Y., for a murder they did not commit. Darryl spent a total of 28 years in prison for this crime; John spent 21 years. Following the overturning of their convictions in 2021, Darryl and John retained our firm to bring a damages action on their behalf; we brought in the international law firm, WilmerHale, together with a Buffalo law firm, Hoover & Durland, and together we won this victory as well as a prior civil trial for John Walker in April, recovering $28 million for John. The $28 million verdict already was the largest verdict ever against a municipality in this country for misconduct by a prosecutor. See coverage of our historic victory in The New York Times here, the New York Law Journal here, Law360 here, and the Buffalo News here. The Law360 article credits our law firm with developing the entire area of law of municipal liability for prosecutorial misconduct that allowed this verdict to be achieved.
The American Lawyer magazine today announced our law firm’s nomination, together with the international law firm WilmerHale and Buffalo’s Hoover & Durland, for its annual “Best Provider Collaboration” award for our work together earlier this year in achieving a $28 million verdict for our client John Walker. The record-setting verdict was handed down by a federal jury in Rochester, NY, to compensate Mr. Walker for his 21 years in prison on a wrongful 1977 conviction in Buffalo for a murder he did not commit. To obtain this verdict, our team had to uncover and present evidence that misconduct by Erie County prosecutors had resulted from unlawful policies and practices of the Erie County District Attorney. We could not recover from the prosecutors themselves because all prosecutors are protected from civil liability by the doctrine of absolute immunity. This is believed to be the largest jury award ever against a municipality based upon misconduct by a prosecutor.
Today, The AmLaw Litigation Daily recognized Joel Rudin and co-counsel Ryanne Perio of WilmerHale and Spencer Durland of Hoover & Durland as its “Litigators of the Week” for their work in obtaining a $28 million verdict for John Walker, a 65-year-old man who was wrongfully convicted in 1977 of a murder he did not commit in Buffalo, New York, when he was just 17. The Litigation Daily’s coverage contains extensive discussion by Mr. Rudin, Ms. Perio, and Mr. Durland of the extraordinary collaboration between their firms in litigating this case from inception through trial over a period of more than three years, and the strategies they used to obtain just compensation for Mr. Walker. You can read the coverage here and read more about the Walker case here.
A federal jury today awarded $28 million in compensatory damages to our client, John Walker, for his unlawful murder conviction and 21 years of imprisonment, following a three-week trial in federal court in Rochester, New York. The damage award is believed to be the largest ever in this country for misconduct by a District Attorney’s Office.
The victory was earned by a team of lawyers led by Joel Rudin, the principal in our law firm, Ross Firsenbaum, a partner at WilmerHale in New York, and Spencer Durland, a partner at Hoover & Durland in Buffalo. Lending invaluable assistance were numerous associates and paralegals, including associates David Rudin and Partha Sharma and paralegal Amariah Thurston of our firm.
Mr. Walker, now 65 years old, was convicted in 1977 in Buffalo, New York, and spent 22 years in prison, despite being innocent of the murder. He and his friend, Darryl Boyd, who served 28 years, were members of a group of five teenagers who were falsely accused by Buffalo police of the January 1976 crime. Police coerced one of the young men to falsely admit guilt and falsely accuse the others, and the Erie County District Attorney’s Office then covered up evidence of this police misconduct as well as evidence that showed Mr. Walker and Mr. Boyd were innocent.
After spending decades trying to gain attention to the case of the “Buffalo 5,” Mr. Walker and Mr. Boyd, in 2021, with the pro bono assistance of a Buffalo attorney named Paul Cambria, succeeded in overturning their convictions. They then retained our firm and we in turn brought in the other two firms to join us in the massive amount of work that was necessary to prove our case.
Firm principal Joel Rudin took most of the depositions in the case, including of the main trial prosecutors and the police officer deponents. Through these depositions, he developed strong evidence that misconduct occurred and that such misconduct resulted from the policies and practices of the City of Buffalo Police Department and the Erie County District Attorney’s Office.
Last year, Messrs. Boyd and Walker settled their claims against the City of Buffalo and the individual police officers for a total of $8.7 million—$4.35 million per plaintiff.
Mr. Walker’s case then proceeded to trial against the County and we prevailed. Mr. Boyd sadly died earlier this year, but a trial on behalf of his estate is scheduled to occur later this year, also in Rochester before the same federal judge, the Honorable Meredith Vacca.
The verdict has received coverage in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, which you can read here, and the Buffalo News, which you can read here, and our client was interviewed on local news station WIVB, which you can watch here.
The Appellate Division, First Department, has vacated the murder conviction of our client, Fabian Coke, and dismissed the indictment, agreeing with our argument that the evidence was legally insufficient to support the conviction. Importantly, the Appellate Division then went even further, taking the rare step of finding that the jury’s guilty verdict was against the weight of the evidence. This holding was based on the Appellate Division’s unique discretion to make such findings, meaning that the Bronx District Attorney’s Office cannot appeal the holding to a higher court. In other words, Mr. Coke won a complete victory and cannot be tried again for the murder. He walks free after wrongfully serving more than 10 years in prison.
Firm principal Joel Rudin successfully argued the appeal. Firm associate Jacob Loup co-wrote the briefs with attorney Norman Reimer. Read the decision here. Read our opening brief here, the prosecution’s brief here, and our reply brief here.
Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a rare en banc ruling, decided that criminal defense lawyers are required by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to advise a client who is a naturalized citizen and wishes to plead guilty of the risk of denaturalization and then deportation. Firm principal Joel Rudin submitted a “friend-of-the-court” or amicus brief in favor of the criminal defendant on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (“NACDL”). The brief was drafted by Matthew Wasserman, a former associate with the firm who is presently a lawyer for the Innocence Project. Previously a three-judge panel of the same court ruled the other way: that lawyers are not required to so warn their clients. All 13 judges of the Second Circuit sit en banc to hear an appeal only once every two or three years. The case is Farhane v. United States. One of the last en banc cases the Court heard was Poventud v. City of New York, an appeal that was also handled by Mr. Rudin, in 2015. In Poventud, the Court adopted Mr. Rudin’s position and held that a former criminal defendant may sue police officers for money damages for withholding favorable evidence even though, after the original conviction has been overturned, the defendant pleads guilty to a less serious offense. Following this successful appeal, Mr. Poventud, represented by Mr. Rudin and attorney Julia Kuan, settled his case for $2.75 million.
A New York judge has reversed the 2023 manslaughter conviction of our client, Gregory Thayer. (See previous posts on this case here and here.) As we alleged in our motion papers, Mr. Thayer’s local attorney never told Mr. Thayer or his lead attorney, Robert Gottlieb, that he had improperly met privately with the trial judge’s law clerk, who made statements suggesting that the clerk and the judge were biased against the defense. Ignorant of this crucial information, Mr. Thayer waived his right to a jury in favor of a bench trial before the same judge, who convicted Mr. Thayer of manslaughter.
After Mr. Gottlieb discovered the local lawyer’s error, he brought in our law firm to handle a motion to vacate the conviction. A different judge then held an evidentiary hearing, conducted for our client by Joel Rudin. Crediting our witnesses, the judge held that the conviction could not stand. He reasoned that the local attorney’s “lack of singleminded devotion to his client” had caused Mr. Thayer to waive a jury without knowing about the law clerk’s troubling statements.
Our motion papers are here. The court’s order vacating the conviction is here. News coverage of the decision has appeared in Law360, the Daily Freeman, and the Times-Union.
Today our firm reached an early settlement for $90,000 with the New York City Comptroller’s Office for client Daryus Bryant to settle his claim against the City for excessive force and false arrest. On the evening of August 2, 2023, police officers drove into a pedestrian area in front of the Sumner Houses in Brooklyn, and, without warning, tased Mr. Bryant in the back of the head for no apparent reason and while he posed no danger. The tasing caused Mr. Bryant wounds to his elbow, shoulder, face, and hands when, suddenly paralyzed from the tasing, he collapsed onto the pavement. A video showed officers then inhumanely dragging the unconscious Mr. Bryant along the sidewalk. Mr. Bryant spent 24 hours in custody in pain and then was falsely charged with loitering. The false charge was ultimately dismissed. David Rudin represented Mr. Bryant and negotiated the settlement
Our firm today filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit on behalf of Donnell Perkins, seeking a total of at least $80 million in compensatory and punitive damages against individual police officers who caused Mr. Perkins to be falsely prosecuted in 2000–01 for a Brooklyn homicide he didn’t commit. You can read the lawsuit here. In 2015, firm principal Joel Rudin, troubled by the weakness of the evidence against Mr. Perkins in his criminal case, agreed to represent him pro bono. He and associate Jacob Loup filed a 440 motion on Mr. Perkins’ behalf. Following a 22-day-long evidentiary hearing, Mr. Perkins’ conviction was vacated in January 2023, along with the conviction of his co-defendant Kareem Mayo. Mr. Perkins served 21.5 years in jail and prison because of his wrongful prosecution and conviction. The Perkins lawsuit also seeks to hold the City of New York liable for its unlawful policies that brought about his wrongful conviction. In August 2023, the firm filed another lawsuit on Mr. Perkins’ behalf in the New York Court of Claims, seeking damages for him under the state’s Unjust Conviction Act, which is pending.