© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Brooks Igo – (September 4) – The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service recently announced the winners of its 2014 Pro Bono Publico Awards in Boston.
Norton Rose Fulbright was one of two firms to win the Pro Bono Publico Award. Additionally, the ABA’s Family Law Section gave its annual Pro Bono award to Houston partner Stewart Gagnon, who chairs the firm’s U.S. Pro Bono Committee. He was one of four individual winners.
Overall, the firm’s U.S. operations put in 76,571 of pro bono hours in 2013, averaging 111 hours per lawyer. Worldwide, Norton Rose Fulbright logged more than 100,000 pro bono hours.
Texas lawyers from the firm have played an integral role in three of its biggest recent pro bono cases.
In August 2012, Norton Rose Fulbright was asked by a federal judge to represent a Texas death row litigant who was convicted by a jury in 1999 of murdering two women and a girl in Austin.
A team led by D.C. partner Jonathan Franklin and senior associate Mark Emery entered the case after Perez’s prior federal habeas counsel missed the deadline for filing a notice of appeal from the denial of his federal habeas petition and the district court denied a motion to reinstate the appeal.
Within two weeks, the Norton Rose Fulbright lawyers filed a motion to re-enter the district court judgment for purposes of extending the time to appeal. They succeeded in persuading the court to re-enter judgment on the grounds that their client had been abandoned by prior habeas counsel, preventing him from filing a timely appeal. As a result, Perez was able to successfully file a notice of appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
At the Fifth Circuit, the State of Texas moved to dismiss the appeal on grounds that the district erred in re-entering the judgment and, therefore, the court of appeals lacked jurisdiction. Emery presented oral arguments on the issues and the firm is awaiting a ruling. Director of Media Relations Dan McKenna said the firm plans to seek further review in the U.S. Supreme Court should Perez not prevail.
Throughout the litigation, Perez has maintained that he did not commit the murders. In addition to the work on the appeal, Norton Rose Fulbright assembled a team to pursue relief in Texas state court that may enable him to prove his innocence. To date, the firm’s lawyers have obtained orders permitting retesting of DNA evidence.
Norton Rose Fulbright donated 1,250 hours to the case during 2013. Texas lawyers involved in the case include Dallas associates James Leito and Rachel Williams; Austin senior associates Jamie Whitney and Tara Tune; Austin associate Zach Smith; and Dallas counsel Cecil Kuhne.
Also in 2012, a Norton Rose Fulbright team led by Houston partner Layne Kruse helped overturn death sentences for two men with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The firm spent 11 years representing Virgilio Maldonado, arguing that because of his disability he could not be executed due to a 2002 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the second case, the firm obtained a sentence reversal for Eric DeWayne Cathey based on his disability and simultaneously helped establish precedent on IQ testing methodology.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed the district court’s ruling in Maldonado’s case in 2013 and affirmed it in May. He was moved off of Texas death row. Cathey’s case is still pending before the CCA.
A number of Houston lawyers, in addition to Kruse, played key roles in these cases including partner Darryl Anderson; senior associate Lauren Miller Etlinger; and associates Sumera Khan, Geraldine Young and Adam Bernard.
Finally, Gagnon represented the foster parents in the adoption process of “Baby Chloe” – the abandoned newborn found in a plastic Wal-Mart bag in a Houston suburb in early 2013. Despite a citywide search for the biological parents, no relatives of the child came forward. The adoption was finally completed in December 2013. You can read more about “Baby Chloe’s” story here.
Dechert was the other firm to win the Pro Bono Publico Award and the other individuals honored by the ABA included retired Judge Edward M. Ginsburg of Senior Partners for Justice, New York partner Alan Howard of Crowell & Moring and Kermit Lowery, vice president and assistant general counsel of LexisNexis.
The video presentation from the award ceremony can be viewed here.
© 2014 The Texas Lawbook. Content of The Texas Lawbook is controlled and protected by specific licensing agreements with our subscribers and under federal copyright laws. Any distribution of this content without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
If you see any inaccuracy in any article in The Texas Lawbook, please contact us. Our goal is content that is 100% true and accurate. Thank you.