David Keenan is of counsel to the firm. He was formerly an Assistant Federal Defender and the Appeals & Habeas Attorney for the Federal Defender of Connecticut where he represented clients in criminal, appellate, and postconviction proceedings. In 2018, his reinvestigation of a 1999 New Haven homicide led to the exoneration of two wrongly convicted New Haven men who had collectively served 36 years in prison. Following that experience, David left the Federal Defender Office to devote his practice to representing the victims of police and prosecutorial misconduct in criminal, postconviction, and civil matters.

Before becoming an Assistant Federal Defender, David clerked for the Honorable Paul G. Gardephe, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York. His writing has been published in the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Journal on Legislation, the Hastings Law Journal, the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, and Judicature. David received his B.A. from the University of Southern California and his J.D. from Yale Law School. At Yale, he was Student Director of the Criminal Justice Clinic, Comments Editor of the Yale Law Journal, and winner of the C. LaRue Munson prize for excellence in a clinical program and the Michael Egger prize for the best Yale Law Journal student note on current social problems.

Publications

Book Review, The Science of Injustice, 101 Judicature 41 (2017) (with Terence S. Ward)

Discretionary Justice: The Right to Petition and the Making of Federal Private Legislation, 53 Harv. J. on Legis. 563 (2016)

Miranda Overseas: The Law of Coerced Confessions Abroad, 67 Hastings L.J. 1695 (2016)

Note, An Offense Severity Model for Terry Stops, 123 Yale L.J. 1448 (2014) (with Tina Thomas)

Taking the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality Seriously in Criminal Cases after Morrison and Kiobel, 45 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 101 (2013) (with Sabrina P. Shroff)

Note, The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson: Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Protect Against Prosecutorial Misconduct, 121 Yale L.J. Online 203 (2011) (with Jane Cooper, David Lebowitz, and Tamar Lerer)