Gibson Dunn Frank Wheat Memorial Awards 2021

The Pro Bono Committee is thrilled to announce the winners of this year’s Frank Wheat Memorial Awards.  This year’s winners demonstrated an unfailing dedication to pro bono, a commitment to excellence, and a passion for service, exemplifying the very best of Gibson Dunn.  As in previous years, this year’s winners and nominees worked on a wide variety of matters—including both high-stakes individual pro bono representations and large-scale projects with far-reaching impacts—that reflect the breadth of Gibson Dunn’s pro bono practice. 

Frank Wheat, a former Los Angeles partner, was a superb transactional lawyer, SEC commissioner, and president of the Los Angeles County Bar.  He was also a giant in the nonprofit community, having founded the Alliance for Children’s Rights in addition to serving as a leader of the Sierra Club and as a founding director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest.  He exemplified the commitment to the community and to pro bono service that has always been a core tenet of the Gibson Dunn culture.  The Frank Wheat Award is given annually to individual lawyers and teams that have demonstrated leadership and initiative in their pro bono work, obtained significant results for their pro bono clients, and served as a source of inspiration to others.  Recipients of the Frank Wheat Memorial Award each receive a $2,500 prize to be donated to pro bono organizations designated by the recipients. 

In recognition of the nominees’ exceptional efforts on behalf of their pro bono clients, we selected two winners in each category.  In the team category, we chose to recognize a DC-based team of attorneys that, after nearly seven years of dedicated efforts and advocacy, successfully reversed a decades-old wrongful conviction.  Separately, we also recognize a firmwide team that came together to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.  In the individual category, we chose to honor a New York attorney who has displayed a tireless dedication to enhancing the firm’s international human rights pro bono practice, as well as a Dallas attorney who has advocated zealously for the rights of crime victims. 

These all reflect important pieces of the firm’s diverse and vibrant pro bono practice, which includes advising small businesses and nonprofits, appellate litigation, immigration, racial justice and criminal justice reform, veterans advocacy, and many other important initiatives.  In 2021, a year that presented countless challenges, Gibson Dunn remained committed to pro bono work, devoting more than 140,000 pro bono hours valued at approximately $128 million to hundreds of projects firmwide.  Our attorneys averaged more than 90 pro bono hours per attorney in the United States and more than 80 pro bono hours per attorney worldwide.   

Please read about the inspiring work of this year’s winners and nominees, and join us in congratulating them for all they have accomplished.

Happy New Year!

TEAM AWARD WINNERS

Actual Innocence Representation of David Faulkner

On January 29, 2021, David R. Faulkner returned home for the first time in more than two decades, to the warm embrace of family, friends, and the Gibson Dunn team who had worked nearly seven years to bring him there.  Days later, the wrongful charges that had imprisoned Mr. Faulkner for most of his adult life were dismissed and the nightmare of a wrongful murder conviction was ended.

This tragic case began with the brutal murder of Adeline Wilford in January 1987.  Ms. Wilford was stabbed repeatedly and left for dead after interrupting a burglary-in-progress at her farmhouse on the outskirts of Easton, Maryland.  Police immediately identified a series of palm prints on and just inside an open window, which they determined must match the murderer, but the case went cold after dozens of suspects failed to match the prints.  In 2000, at the urging of Ms. Wilford’s family, police reopened the investigation.  Crediting a witness the original investigators had dismissed (because she had a reputation for dishonesty and because the three individuals she identified did not match the palm prints left at the point-of-entry), the new investigators persuaded two individuals to point their fingers at Mr. Faulkner.  The State’s case against Mr. Faulkner relied on incentivized testimony from witnesses, with absolutely no physical evidence tying Mr. Faulkner to the crime scene.  Although Mr. Faulkner maintained his innocence and presented payroll records showing he was at work in a different county at the time of the murder, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In July 2014, a Gibson Dunn team joined forces with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project to represent Mr. Faulkner in efforts to overturn his convictions using a newly-enacted “actual innocence” statute.  The Gibson Dunn effort was massive, beginning with a comprehensive re-investigation of the crime.  Gibson Dunn issued over 20 subpoenas and multiple Public Information Act requests, reviewed thousands of documents, and interviewed scores of witnesses.  Over the course of this re-investigation, Gibson Dunn and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project developed substantial new evidence of Mr. Faulkner’s innocence that was not available at his original trial, which became the basis for a Petition for Writ of Actual Innocence filed in July 2015.

Over the next three years, Gibson Dunn attorneys litigated two evidentiary hearings before the Talbot County Circuit Court, totaling more than two weeks and featuring the testimony of dozens of witnesses and hundreds of exhibits.  The Circuit Court rejected Mr. Faulkner’s claims of actual innocence both times—separated by a successful, interim appeal.  Eventually, Mr. Faulkner’s case wound its way to the Maryland Court of Appeals.  In January 2020, Gibson Dunn argued to the State’s highest court that the trial court abused its discretion by failing to appropriately assess the cumulative effect of all the newly discovered evidence of innocence.  On April 27, 2020, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously granted Mr. Faulkner’s Petition for Writ of Actual Innocence and returned the case to the trial court.  After initially threatening to re-prosecute Mr. Faulkner, the State informed the trial court on February 3, 2021, that it did not intend to pursue a retrial.  Mr. Faulkner was granted his unconditional release and freed from custody that very day—after two decades of wrongful imprisonment. 

The team, which contributed more than 15,000 hours valued at more than $10 million to this case, included partners John Chesley, Jonathan Phillips, and Patrick Stokes, of counsel Ryan Stewart, and associates Michael Dziuban, Melissa Farrar, Lisa Bender, Ryan DuBose, Meredith Ashlock, Zachary Kady, Alex Bruhn, Brandon Alan Willmore, Hila Solomon, Amy Feagles, Veronica Till Goodson, Brian Williamson, David Schnitzer, Christine Budasoff, Anna Casey, Sara Akhtar, Katie Magallanes, Shannon McDermott, and Tessa Gellerson.

Afghanistan Response Efforts

In 2021, as it became clear the Taliban soon would return to power in Afghanistan, a firmwide team of Gibson Dunn attorneys—including attorneys from our U.S., Brussels, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore offices—sprang into action to identify ways to help Afghan families who feared Taliban violence due to their collaboration with the U.S. military or government, their work to promote the Afghan government and civil society, or their public support for causes seen as antithetical to the Taliban’s rule.  Beginning in August 2021, the firm quickly began filing applications for humanitarian parole, a temporary permission to enter the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit, on behalf of vulnerable families in Afghanistan.

The firm’s initial efforts focused on a handful of families with a direct connection to Gibson Dunn, such as interpreters who worked with Gibson Dunn attorneys who previously served in the U.S. military, but quickly expanded to include approximately 300 clients seeking to flee the imminent threat of violence in Afghanistan.  Several were interpreters for the U.S. military, while others were members of the Afghan military and Afghan National Police working alongside U.S. forces in hostile regions.  Others are women and children whose husbands and fathers already immigrated to the United States on Special Immigrant Visas to begin building a home for their families.  Some are pregnant or have infants and small children.  Some are being targeted because they were journalists, open critics of the Taliban, or female professionals.  Many of the firm’s clients already have faced threats and physical abuse at the hands of the Taliban, while others are being actively hunted by the Taliban.  Although many of these families initially wished to remain in Afghanistan to help rebuild their home country, recent developments made them face the difficult reality that they had to leave.

Gibson Dunn’s pro bono efforts thus far have largely focused on filing humanitarian parole applications to help families at risk of Taliban reprisals enter the United States on a temporary basis.  As an increasing number of Afghan refugees has arrived in the United States, the firm’s work has shifted to help Afghan refugees settle in their new homes and obtain permanent immigration status, including via asylum and Special Immigrant Visa applications. 

In parallel to the firm’s work with individual clients, Gibson Dunn is a founding member of Welcome.US and the Welcome Legal Alliance, which will work to mobilize law firms, corporate legal teams, and the broader legal community to ensure Afghans arriving in the United States have access to legal services throughout their resettlement process.  In October 2021, Gibson Dunn Chair & Managing Partner Barbara Becker participated in a White House roundtable to discuss the role of the private sector in effectively welcoming and resettling Afghan allies.  Building on these discussions, the firm is coordinating closely with legal aid organizations, resettlement agencies, in-house legal teams, and other law firms to facilitate partnerships in this space and promote access to justice for Afghans resettling in the United States.

INDIVIDUAL AWARD WINNERS

Charline Yim, New York

The firm is pleased to honor Charline Yim of counsel in the New York office, for her tireless commitment to enhancing Gibson Dunn’s pro bono efforts in the international human rights arena. For several years, Charline has been instrumental in establishing and expanding Gibson Dunn’s international human rights law practice. As a result of her commitment to excellence, Gibson Dunn has been able to develop strong partnerships with prominent organizations including Human Rights Watch, the Center for Justice and Accountability, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, International Senior Lawyers Project, and the Public Interest Law and Policy Group.

Charline has acted as the lead attorney on a number of high-profile matters, including representing Yazidi victims of ISIS in U.S. federal court; representing a Crimean human rights activist in an ongoing case before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; representing a Cuban human rights activist before United Nations Special Procedures; representing a Kashmiri human rights activist arbitrarily detained in India; representing an Eastern European NGO in preparation of a Global Magnitsky submission to OFAC; providing research support to the UK’s High Level Panel on Media Freedom; providing assistance to a well-known NGO in development of an amicus brief to the International Criminal Court; providing strategic advice to an NGO in negotiation of a multilateral treaty at the United Nations; providing advice to a number of NGOs on sanctions regimes in the United States in connection with President Trump’s sanction of the International Criminal Court; coordinating a training on international arbitration for the Government of Ethiopia; and coordinating a number of law firm partners to develop a multi-jurisdictional analysis of transitional justice mechanisms.

In addition to her excellent substantive work on these matters, Charline simultaneously serves as an incredible mentor for her fellow attorneys, particularly for associates interested in international human rights work.  Charline generously makes herself available to provide advice to junior attorneys, actively encourages junior attorneys to pursue pro bono projects that interest them, and always acts as a support and sounding board on her pro bono projects.  But for Charline’s initiative and drive, Gibson Dunn would not have the thriving international human rights pro bono practice the firm has today.

Brad Hubbard, Dallas

The firm also is pleased to honor Brad Hubbard, a litigation associate in the Dallas office, for his commitment to giving voice to the voiceless and standing up for the rights of crime victims.  This year alone, Brad took on four separate pro bono matters seeking to defend the rights of crime victims and ensure their rights are heard in court. 

Brad drafted an amicus brief on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress standing up for the rights of survivors of sexual assault in the military, arguing that sexual violence has no place in the military and that no statute of limitations bars its prosecution.  A unanimous Supreme Court agreed, ruling for the victims and adopting many of the arguments and themes he pressed.  Brad also represented Senators Feinstein, Kyl, and Hatch, the co-authors of the landmark Crime Victims’ Rights Acts, before both the Eleventh Circuit and the Supreme Court, submitting amicus briefs urging those courts to recognize the hard-fought rights of crime survivors under the Act.

In another matter, Brad represented the adult children of a murder victim, submitting a brief focusing on the hardships and emotional turmoil they endured in the nearly two decades since their father’s murder.  The brief was so powerful that, at oral argument, one of the Supreme Court justices took the very unusual step of reading an excerpt from the bench—allowing the victims’ own words to resonate in the courtroom and letting them know their voices had been heard in the highest court of the land.  Finally, Brad represented a justice of the peace seeking to continue his practice of honoring volunteer chaplains of all faiths to counsel and comfort victims and family members at crime and accident scenes who ask for a person of their faith. 

2021 Frank Wheat Award Nominees

Team:

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Cross-Office Amicus Brief Teams

Individual:

Roscoe Jones (Washington, D.C.)