49 | RACIAL JUSTICE AND EQUITY RACIAL JUSTICE AND EQUITY | 50 The Government appealed the district court’s granting of the temporary injunction. However, in October 2021, the government initiated mediation with the ACLU to resolve the pending appeal, and in April 2022, the government moved to withdraw its appeal of the preliminary injunction. The case now awaits class certification, which, if successful on the merits, will obligate the facility to release medically vulnerable detainees and to avoid detaining such immigrants in the first place. Winning the Release of a Wrongly Convicted Death Row Inmate Weil, in collaboration with Fish & Richardson and the Innocence Project, helped Mr. Sherwood Brown, a man who was convicted and sentenced to death for a terrible crime that he did not commit, walk free after 28 years in prison. Mr. Brown was the 100th African American in the U.S. since 1973 to be exonerated from a wrongful capital conviction and death sentence. In 1993, at the age of 25, Mr. Brown was arrested for the murder of three women who lived near his home in Eudora, Miss. He remained in custody until his release last year. Mr. Brown was convicted of all three murders in 1995 and sentenced to death, confined on death row in Mississippi’s Parchman Prison; Weil took his case in 2006. In 2017, when the Mississippi Supreme Court vacated his conviction in response to a motion filed by Weil, Fish and the Innocence Project, which showed that contrary to the State’s theory at his trial, DNA testing proved that blood on Mr. Brown’s shoes did not match the victim’s blood and that none of Mr. Brown’s DNA was found in samples taken from the victims. Rather than dismiss the charges, the District Attorney’s office announced it intended to retry Mr. Brown for the murders. Bail is not available for capital murder suspects in Mississippi, and Mr. Brown was transferred to the DeSoto County jail to await trial. After three and a half more years in jail, the District Attorney agreed to drop the charges, and Mr. Brown walked free for the first time on August 24, 2021. Furthering the Reform of Police Laws and Policies Following the completion of an extensive and multi-jurisdictional 250+ page report into police accountability, equality and equity for serving officers and staff, our global team of attorneys from Frankfurt, London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C. have continued to provide support to the National Black Police Association. The findings from our research have proved fruitful for the U.K. charity and the team is working with the organization on next steps. In addition, the findings from the report will feed into the NBPA’s submission to the UN Convention of Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) in the summer as part of UNCERD’s five-year cycle of reviewing individual states/governments on the effectiveness of implementation since it was ratified (1969 in the U.K.). Weil represented The Institute for American Police Reform (IAPR) in its formation, including its structuring for future growth and application for tax-exempt nonprofit status. IAPR believes that policing is essential, and so is policing reform. IAPR is a non-partisan organization providing guidance on policing laws and policies, police accountability and partnerships in community, leadership development, and police standards and training development. IAPR’s CEO, Nicholas Sensley, and a number of its board members are current or former police chiefs of color. As such, they are uniquely qualified to understand and heal the divide between police officers and communities of color. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY The Weil Legal Innovators Program (WLI) is the Firm’s flagship philanthropic initiative that places rising law school students in fully-funded, one-year fellowships at nonprofit organizations across the U.S. This commitment comes with an annual investment of more than $1 million from the Firm and stands as one of the most significant social impact initiatives in the legal sector. Nonprofit organizations that are tackling racial inequities have been a partner to Weil Legal Innovators since the program’s inaugural year, but after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others in the summer of 2020, Weil’s commitment to racial justice became even more imperative. As such, for the 2021-2022 Weil Legal Innovators program cycle, Weil put even more emphasis on partnering with nonprofit organizations whose mission either directly or tangentially improves the lives of the BIPOC community, and collaborated with those nonprofit partners to craft Innovator roles in which that work would be at the forefront. Subsequently, Weil welcomed the 2021-2022 class of Innovators. Some Innovators are placed at nonprofits that are directly providing economic and educational tools for empowerment to communities of color – such as the National Urban League, the Tahirih Justice Center, and the United Way of New York City – while other Innovators are working at nonprofits that tangentially improve the livelihood of diverse populations through research, such as Earthwatch. Collectively, the Innovators are providing critical support and capacity to the nonprofit sector, helping move the needle on issues of systemic racism, environmental justice, and myriad other intersecting issues.
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