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.
We are making available on our website the litigation materials from Fraser v. City of New York et al., No. 20-cv-04926 (S.D.N.Y.)—including previously confidential NYPD training materials, the trial transcript, and other exhibits and depositions. As discussed in previous postings here, and in coverage by Law360 (gated) and ProPublica, in Fraser, our firm won a $1,925,000 jury verdict against the City of New York and three NYPD detectives who caused the wrongful conviction of firm client Jawaun Fraser. The constitutional violations found by the jury included evidence fabrication, suppression of exculpatory and impeaching material in violation of Brady v. Maryland, and the City’s unlawful disclosure policy and failure to train officers. The materials from the Fraser case can be viewed and downloaded here.
The New York Daily News reports that Mayor Eric Adams has appointed Jabbar Collins, a former client and employee of our law firm, to sit on the New York City Commission to Combat Police Corruption, which oversees the NYPD.
A noted “jailhouse lawyer,” Jabbar was in prison for murder when he uncovered evidence that proved that prosecutors had illegally coerced witnesses into testifying falsely against him. Joel took on Jabbar as a client and obtained a rare grant of federal habeas corpus relief. Jabbar was released after 16 years in prison.
Joel then represented Jabbar in a lawsuit that exposed systemic misconduct at the Brooklyn D.A.’s Office. The lawsuit helped lead to the 2013 defeat of Brooklyn D.A. Charles J. Hynes after 24 years in office, the election of reform candidate Ken Thompson, and the formation of Brooklyn’s Conviction Review Unit. After getting Hynes to confess misconduct and Jabbar’s innocence during a videotaped deposition, Joel recovered $13 million for Jabbar in state and federal lawsuits.
After his exoneration, Jabbar worked at our firm as a paralegal before going on to found his own consulting agency. In that role he has helped several other wrongfully convicted men gain their freedom and win damages for their ordeals. The Daily News article quotes Joel calling Jabbar’s selection to the commission a “brilliant appointment.” Read it here.
Using firm client Jawaun Fraser’s recent trial victory as a case study, ProPublica published an article today exposing how the New York City Law Department’s aggressive approach to litigating civil rights cases prevents police reform, costs New York taxpayers millions of dollars, and delays justice for victims of police misconduct. Mr. Fraser recovered $1.5 million in compensatory damages for his 1 ½ years in state prison and $425,000 in punitive damages. A federal jury in Manhattan found, after a seven-day trial before Senior District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, that undercover NYPD narcotics detectives had fabricated the case and also withheld evidence from the defense that was favorable to Mr. Fraser: their own history of being sued for misconduct. The jury further found that their misconduct resulted from the unlawful policies and training practices of the NYPD, exposing NYC to liability in other cases. You can view the article here.