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Over the years, lawyers at the firm have handled death penalty appeals, both in the California Supreme Court and, with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The firm also participates in a program with the San Francisco and Alameda County Public Defender's and District Attorney's Offices in which Heller Ehrman attorneys are loaned to those offices for a three-month period to handle preliminary hearings and jury trials.
In Coleman v. Vasquez, Heller Ehrman prosecuted petitions for habeas corpus relief in both federal and California courts on behalf of a death row inmate. The case raised novel questions concerning racial discrimination in the state's decision to seek the death penalty and the impact that severe childhood sexual and physical abuse should have on sentencing decisions.
Heller Ehrman attorneys took part in unsuccessful efforts to stop the execution of Robert Alton Harris. Following his execution, a group of California Assembly members filed a State Bar complaint against Harris' principal attorneys, complaining that they had filed frivolous motions and applications on Harris' behalf. Heller Ehrman defended the attorneys being investigated by the State Bar as a result of that complaint.
Firm attorneys have volunteered through various appellate panels to represent inmates in appeals relating to civil rights and other issues.
CHALLENGING GEORGIA DEATH PENALTY SENTENCE
Under the auspices of the ABA Death Penalty Representation Project, Heller Ehrman has been representing Marion Wilson, a young African-American convicted of murder, in Georgia state habeas proceedings since November 2000 We recently conducted an evidentiary hearing in Butts County, GA in support of Marion's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
Georgia currently has 117 inmates on death row and has built a small courtroom on the grounds of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison to hold habeas corpus hearings (challenges of criminal convictions after all direct appeals have been exhausted.) Assisted by Brian Kammer of the Georgia Resource Center, Madison's David Harth and Gabrielle Bina called a number of witnesses in support of Marion's claim that his original attorneys failed to effectively represent him at his trial. In a cross-examination of Marion's former attorneys, we established that they had never tried a capital case before taking on Marion's defense, spent less than 50 hours preparing for trial and failed to disclose to Marion that one of them had accepted a position in the Georgia Attorney General's office prior to the trial. We also established that the former counsel never spoke to Marion's neighbors, teachers, social workers or family members, aside from his mother. We called several mitigation witnesses that the previous defense missed, eliciting at times emotional testimony from Marion's first grade teacher and the aunt who took Marion in as a child during his mother's frequent absences. The Heller Ehrman team will submitt briefs to the trial judge in August 2005, with a decision expected sometime in 2006.
