The American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project celebrated the work of its volunteer attorneys and capital defender partners this month at the 2022 Volunteer Recognition & Awards Program, which was held in person for the first time in three years at the Washington, D.C., offices of Crowell & Moring.
This year’s honorees for the Exceptional Service Award were the firms of Caplan Cobb and Kirkland & Ellis.
Caplan Cobb filed a unique lawsuit on behalf of the federal public defender for the Northern District of Georgia against the attorney general, seeking an injunction of executions in Georgia. The firm’s efforts led to a temporary restraining order and stay of execution for at least 10 people on Georgia’s death row. Caplan Cobb’s work is especially remarkable since it is a small firm with only 12 members.
“Although we are small, we all share an outsized commitment to pro bono,” Mike Caplan said in accepting the award.
This is the second time Kirkland & Ellis has been honored with the Exceptional Service Award, a fact that demonstrates the firm’s decades-long commitment to capital representation. In fact, attorneys from Kirkland have represented capital clients in South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas and from state post-conviction through federal habeas into clemency and even posthumous exoneration.
Mike Williams accepted for Kirkland & Ellis saying, “the death penalty in our justice system is an open wound – it’s visible and it doesn’t heal.”
The Death Penalty Representation Project also recognizes the extraordinary efforts of individual lawyers with the John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award. This year, Norman C. Hile, a retired partner from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, who has dedicated his career to exonerating Kevin Cooper, was honored. Hile’s efforts on Cooper’s behalf led California Gov. Gavin Newsom to order an independent reinvestigation of Cooper’s case in May 2021.
ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross in recorded remarks, said “the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project demonstrates how diligent lawyers can fulfill their professional responsibility to ensure that everyone, even the most vulnerable among us, has a zealous advocate in the judicial process.”
The night’s keynote address was given by Ha’im Al Matin Sharif, a former Nevada prisoner, who was freed five years ago after 29 years on death row, along with his attorney, Cary Sandman.
Sharif described his time on death row, falsely accused of murdering his girlfriend’s infant daughter. “I was mired in the muck of hopelessness and despair, not looking for freedom, but just looking to be heard,” Sharif said. Then to the audience of volunteers he said: “You individuals gave me hope when I did not have any.”
