The American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project will honor the work of pro bono attorneys at its annual Volunteer Recognition & Awards Event on Sept. 12 in Washington, D.C.
The event will honor law firms Arnold & Porter and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner with the Exceptional Service Award and Cliff Sloan with the John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award. The Honorable Elsa Alcala, a retired judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, will be featured as the keynote speaker.
Arnold & Porter is a national law firm with a longstanding commitment to pro bono capital representation. The firm’s legacy of pro bono death penalty work includes numerous high-profile cases, such as Troy Anthony Davis, Zacarias Moussaoui, Roger Coleman, James Briley and Dennis Stockton. In 2011, Arnold & Porter received the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project’s Exceptional Service Award for the first time. Since then, the firm has continued to zealously advocate for capital defendants across the country.
Within the last six years, Arnold & Porter has secured release for three of its capital clients. In 2018, Clemente Javier Aguirre was exonerated after spending ten years on Florida’s death row. The firm represented both Jimmy Dennis and Henry Daniels for over 15 years in Pennsylvania state courts and federal courts. In 2017, Dennis was released, and Daniels was released a few months ago.
Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner is a 150-year-old international law firm headquartered in St. Louis, with 1,200 attorneys and 31 offices worldwide. BCLP strives to address the needs of the underserved and to advocate for the protection of human rights. It has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to representing prisoners facing the death penalty in Missouri and throughout the United States.
In Missouri, BCLP has partnered with the Midwest Innocence Project and federal defenders to represent Marcellus Williams, who remains on death row despite DNA evidence that proves his innocence.
Professor Sloan is a retired partner and dedicated pro bono death penalty lawyer from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He continues to represent death-sentenced prisoners while teaching the next generation of pro bono lawyers and capital defenders at Georgetown Law.
At Skadden, Sloan took on numerous pro bono matters, including twice achieving a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case Moore v. Texas. He also has made significant legal contributions by representing numerous amici, including the ABA, in the Supreme Court and other courts.
Alcala was a judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest court in Texas to hear appeals in death penalty cases, from 2011 to 2018. She has also worked as a prosecutor, defense attorney and forceful advocate for judicial reform. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, she worked as a prosecutor in Harris County for almost a decade. At the end of 2018, with 20 years of service on the judiciary, she made another career shift towards criminal defense to focus on justice reform advocacy. She has co-written bills and advocated for legislation to improve the justice system and also serves as a board member for the Innocence Project of Texas and the Anthony Graves Foundation.
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