Today our firm, as co-counsel with Bloch & White, reached an early settlement for $3,262,500 with the New York City Comptroller’s Office for a client who was wrongfully convicted in the Bronx on sexual assault charges and spent 7 ½ years in prison. The settlement is believed to be the largest ever reached with the Comptroller’s Office as part of its early settlement program on a per-year-in-prison basis: $435,000 for each year in prison. To protect the client’s identity, the client’s name is being withheld.
Our firm today filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit on behalf of Reginald Cameron, seeking a total of at least $37 million in compensatory and punitive damages against individual police detectives who caused Mr. Cameron to be falsely prosecuted in 1994–96 for a Queens homicide he didn’t commit. You can read the lawsuit here. Mr. Cameron’s conviction was vacated in August 2023, following a joint motion filed on his behalf by the Legal Aid Society and the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Queens District Attorney’s Office. This case, in which four persons including Mr. Cameron were coerced into giving false statements by police, was headed up by NYPD detective Carlos Gonzalez, who in years prior obtained false statements in the high-profile Central Park jogger and Brian Watkins “Utah Tourist” cases. Mr. Cameron was released from prison on parole in 2003, after having spent nine years wrongfully incarcerated. The Cameron lawsuit also seeks to hold the City of New York liable for its unlawful policies that brought about his wrongful conviction. Our firm has recovered more than $60 million over the last five years for seven clients who were wrongfully convicted in Queens.
Today Governor Hochul is commuting the sentence of our firm’s pro bono client Jermaine Swaby. Jermaine has served 22 1/2 years in prison for his 2002 Kings County murder conviction. He will now be eligible for release to parole supervision this November, two years earlier than he would have been eligible under his original sentence of 25 years to life.
The Governor’s decision reflects the remarkable and tangible transformation Jermaine, who was 19 at the time of the crime, has achieved during his many years in prison. During his incarceration at Green Haven Correctional Facility, Jermaine demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to education, leadership, and service to others.
We commend Governor Hochul and her office for their extraordinarily thorough review of Jermaine’s application and for their compassion.
The clemency application was prepared by the firm’s talented paralegal, Thelo Coleman, who obtained 30 supporting letters, including from the family of the victim, and prepared a beautifully written, comprehensive memorandum making a compelling case for clemency.
A check awarding law firm client Leroy Harris $7.5 million for unjust imprisonment in Connecticut was received today. This was one of the largest awards ever by the Connecticut Claims Commissioner, approved by the Connecticut State Legislature under that state’s unjust conviction statute, which caps awards to wrongfully convicted claimants. Mr. Harris served 30 years in prison for rape, robbery, and escape convictions before he was released in 2017, thanks to the work of the Innocence Project, following a “no-contest” plea to resolve his case. Due to the brilliant work of Law Firm Counsel David Keenan, he then obtained a full pardon on all his convictions from the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles, which allowed him to seek compensation. Our Firm, led by David Keenan, worked with international law firm Arnold & Porter in winning the compensation award.
Law firm principal Joel B. Rudin is vice chair of the amicus committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (“NACDL”). Today, Mr. Rudin filed an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief, on behalf of the NACDL and numerous other defense lawyer organizations, to be considered by the full, or en banc, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The issue is an important one: whether a criminal defense attorney is required to warn a client of the possibility he may be stripped of his citizenship and deported if he pleads guilty to an offense for which such denaturalization is authorized. Despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that a defense lawyer must warn their client of the “immigration consequences” of a criminal conviction such as deportation, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit, by 2-1 vote, held that this rule did not include the possibility of denaturalization even though it usually leads to deportation. The amicus brief was authored by Matthew A. Wasserman, a former associate with the firm now employed by the Innocence Project, and edited by Mr. Rudin. The appeal is scheduled to be heard by the full complement of 13 judges comprising the Second Circuit on May 22, 2024. The amicus brief can be accessed here.
A State Supreme Court Justice today ordered a hearing into allegations that our firm made in a post-judgment or “440” motion to vacate our client’s murder conviction because of an inappropriate, secret meeting between another judge’s law clerk and “local” counsel for our client, Gregory Thayer, in Ulster County, New York. During the meeting, our court papers allege, the law clerk revealed to the lawyer that Mr. Thayer would be better off not waiving a jury trial and having his case decided just by the judge, essentially because the judge was not receptive to Mr. Thayer’s temporary insanity defense. However, the law clerk swore the local counsel to secrecy and counsel did not inform Mr. Thayer or his principal attorney, Robert C. Gottlieb, of the conversation until after the trial, at which the judge convicted Mr. Thayer of manslaughter. The hearing will be held May 7, 2024, in Kingston, NY. News articles about the court’s ruling appeared in the New York Law Journal, here, and Law360, here.
Law360 reports on our firm’s motion seeking a new trial for our client Gregory Thayer. Mr. Thayer was convicted of manslaughter earlier this year at a bench trial in Ulster County, New York. After the conviction, his principal defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, discovered that an improper, secret communication had occurred between the judge’s law clerk and Mr. Thayer’s local counsel, but local counsel had not told Mr. Gottlieb about it because the law clerk had improperly sworn him to secrecy. The communication revealed that the judge was biased against Mr. Thayer’s defense. The judge and law clerk also did not reveal to Mr. Thayer that the law clerk, for seven months while Mr. Thayer’s high-profile case was underway, was employed in a high position by the Ulster County D.A.’s Office, the same office that was prosecuting Mr. Thayer. Mr. Gottlieb retained our firm to file a motion to overturn the conviction, which will be heard after Mr. Thayer is sentenced later this month. Our motion papers, which can be read here, were drafted by firm senior associate Jacob Loup.
Our firm today filed a unjust conviction lawsuit on behalf of Donnell Perkins, seeking a total of at least $40 million in compensatory damages from the State of New York. You can read the lawsuit here. Mr. Perkins was convicted of a Brooklyn murder he did not commit in 2001. 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. Mr. Perkins’ lawsuit seeks compensation from the State under a statute, the Unjust Conviction Act, that provides a remedy to innocent individuals like him.
Firm principal Joel Rudin is quoted in a lengthy New York Times article reporting on how New York has become “a national hotbed of exoneration” of wrongfully convicted men. Commenting on the remarkable City Council primary victory by Yusef Salaam, one of the members of the wrongfully convicted Central Park Five, Mr. Rudin notes that “there’s a change in the public consciousness” about the criminal justice system and that rules have been adopted to reduce unreliable confessions and identifications. Read the whole article here.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Dena Douglas has dismissed a decades-old murder charge against our client Donnell Perkins. As we noted in a previous post, in January, Justice Douglas overturned Donnell’s 22-year-old murder conviction after the firm’s seven-year battle for justice for Donnell culminated in a 440 hearing at which we established that the single eyewitness in the case had misled the jury about his eyesight and that his identification of Donnell could not be trusted. Justice Douglas dismissed the charges after the D.A.’s Office declined to reprosecute Donnell and his codefendant, Kareem Mayo.