• Filed under , Civil Rights , Police Misconduct , Prosecutorial Misconduct , Wrongful Conviction

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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.