The City of New York agreed to a $13 million settlement with NSB client Tiffany Wilson for the loss of her brother, Sharrif Wilson, and for the more than 20 years he spent wrongfully incarcerated for the sickening triple murder and sexual assault of the mother, sister, and cousin of his best friend—crimes that DNA…
Read articleThe Second Circuit Court of Appeals today affirmed a 2014 jury verdict award to John Restivo and Dennis Halstead. Mr. Restivo and Mr. Halstead were wrongly convicted in 1986 and spent nearly 18 years in prison for a rape and murder DNA later proved they did not commit. The decision upholds the jury’s finding that…
Read articleOn August 5, 2016, NSB and cocounsel Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin, LLP procured a 6.2 million dollar award for Freddie Peacock, who served nearly 6 years in prison and an additional 10 years on parole for a crime he did not commit. Decades after his release from prison, Mr. Peacock was finally cleared by DNA…
Read articleOn August 1, 2016, NSB and cocounsel Lathrop & Gage procured a monumental 16.5 million dollar settlement, with an additional 4 million dollars pending the resolution of appeal, for the families of Larry Ruffin, Bobby Ray Dixon, and Phillip Bivens. Mr. Ruffin, Mr. Dixon and Mr. Bivens collectively served 83 years in prison for crimes…
Read articleOn July 6, U.S. District Judge Roslyn O. Silver ruled that NSB client Debra Milke had properly alleged three separate theories of widespread systemic misconduct in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, dating long before and long after Ms. Milke’s 1990 wrongful conviction. Overall, Judge Silver has ruled that Ms. Milke has stated viable claims for…
Read articleOn March 10, Judge William H. Pauley III issued a decision allowing NSB client David Ganek to proceed with his lawsuit against the FBI and federal prosecutors for the 2010 raid that shut down his hedge fund, Level Global. In his suit, Ganek asserts that the government fabricated evidence in order to persuade a judge…
Read articleOn March 10, Neufeld Scheck & Brustin clients Margaret Goetzee Nagle and John Eric Goetzee won a $1.75 million settlement from Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman for failing to prevent the 2011 suicide of their brother, United States Coast Guard Commander William Goetzee. Mr. Goetzee was at the jail awaiting a court date on charges…
Read articleOn Friday, February 26, D.C. Superior Court Judge John M. Mott issued his post-trial decision awarding Mr. Tribble $13.2 million to compensate him for 25 years of wrongful imprisonment, a “journey of injustice” which “subjected Mr. Tribble to all the horror, degradation, and threats to personal security and privacy inherent in prison life, each heightened by his…
Read articleThe City of Los Angeles approved a $16.7 million settlement to compensate NSB client Kash Delano Register for the over 34 years he spent wrongly imprisoned for the 1979 robbery and murder of 79-year-old Jack Sasson. This is believed to be the largest individual civil rights settlement ever in Los Angeles. Mr. Register was 18…
Read articleOn November 30, in recognition of the NSB’s expertise in wrongful conviction law, Judge Joanna Seybert awarded the firm a total of nearly $5 million in fees and costs for its 8 years of work on civil rights claims made by John Restivo and Dennis Halstead. Mr. Restivo and Mr. Halstead each spent 18 years…
Read articleA day after a federal jury found that District of Columbia police officers had fabricated evidence and hid exculpatory evidence during Donald Gates’s trial for a 1981 rape and murder, the government settled Mr. Gates’s claims for $16.65 million. Neufeld Scheck & Brustin will formally request an audit of old homicide cases investigated by the…
Read articleIn September 2015 NSB client Sedrick Courtney won an $8 million settlement from the City of Tulsa. Mr. Courtney spent over 15 years in prison after a forensic hair analyst falsely claimed a hair from Mr. Courtney bore unusual similarities to a hair from the crime scene. Mr. Courtney proved his innocence and was exonerated…
Read articleNSB Partner Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann and Associate Alexandra Lampert co-authored Chapter Two, “Procedural Guide to Section 1983 Litigation in Federal Court,” drawing on the firm’s experience litigating civil rights cases to provide guidance to other litigators on all procedural topics involved in federal court litigation, from filing a complaint to litigating motions and appeals. ABA…
Read articleMonths after a D.C. Superior Court Judge awarded NSB client Kirk Odom a total of $9,154,500 for damages he suffered while wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, the Court agreed to reverse its prior ruling and added an additional $500,000 to what already was the largest award in history under the District’s Unjust Imprisonment Act.
Read articleIn May 2015, Byron Halsey won a $12.5 million settlement of his 2009 lawsuit against detectives from the City of Plainfield, NJ and the Union County Prosecutor’s Office, who used illegal tactics to prosecute and frame him as the murderer of his girlfriend’s children. Mr. Halsey spent nearly 22 years incarcerated in New Jersey jails…
Read articleShariff Wilson’s wrongful conviction at age 15 of the murder of his friend’s mother, sister and another girl was vacated in February 2014 after he served 22 years in prison when DNA evidence proved his innocence. Less than a year after release, Mr. Wilson succumbed to illness and passed away. On July 15, 2015, Tiffany…
Read articleThe National Law Journal has released its list of the top verdicts of 2014, including two of NSB’s recent trial wins. Jeffrey Deskovic’s $40m verdict against Putnam County Investigator Dan Stephens and Putnam County ranked 51st on the National Law Journal’s list, and John Restivo and Dennis Halstead’s $36m verdict against the Estate of Detective…
Read articleOn February 27, a D.C. Superior Court judge ordered the District of Columbia to pay $9.2 million in damages to Kirk Odom under the District’s Unjust Imprisonment Act—the largest award issued under the Act, and one of the largest non-jury awards ever in a U.S. wrongful imprisonment case. The court rejected the District’s arguments that…
Read articleOn Thursday, February 26, NSB filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of David Ganek, former principal owner of Level Global Investors, L.P. The suit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York against several FBI agents and SDNY prosecutors, alleges that the FBI and United States Attorney’s Office fabricated information to…
Read articleThe U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has granted NSB clients’ motion for partial summary judgment against Marlin Gusman, the Sheriff of Orleans Parish, in the case brought by Coast Guard Commander William Goetzee’s surviving relatives for his 2011 suicide at the problem-plagued jail. The Court agreed with the plaintiffs that the…
Read articleA federal jury has awarded Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16-and-a-half years wrongfully imprisoned for the rape and murder of a high school classmate before DNA testing proved him innocent, $40 million plus $1.65 million in stipulated lost wages for a total of $41,650,000—the largest wrongful conviction jury verdict in U.S. history. The jury found former…
Read articleThe New York SuperLawyers Magazine has named Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck, and Nick Brustin 2014 “SuperLawyers,” and has named Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann and Emma Freudenberger “Rising Stars” in the field of civil rights.
Read articleThe National Law Journal has selected Neufeld Scheck & Brustin to its inaugural list of the nation’s top 50 trial firms, recognizing the firm’s recent record in complex, high-stakes plaintiff’s cases. Read more here.
Read articleThe Illinois State Police have agreed to pay $40 million to five men who were wrongfully convicted of rape and murder as teenagers and served a combined 80 years in prison before DNA testing proved their innocence. The lawsuits alleged that police had coerced false confessions from three of the five plaintiffs, which led to…
Read article