Exoneree-Turned-Lawyer Jeffrey Deskovic Continues Fight for Client's Challenge to Attempted Murder Conviction
From left, attorney Jeffrey Deskovic, exonerated and released in 2006; Andre Brown, exonerated and released last year; and attorney Oscar Michelen
January 27, 2023
New York Law Journal
by Andrew Denney
FOR YEARS, Jeffrey Deskovic has devoted his time and talents to helping people who fell into the same trap that ensnared him back when he was just 17 years old: being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for violent crime.
Since its inception, the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice has screened hundreds of actual innocence casea and won the release of 12 people who had done time for serious crimes they insist they didn’t commit, which includes three full exonerations.
While Deskovic, who completed an arduous journey in 2020 to becoming a lawyer himself, played a key role in all of those cases – incluing writing letters to parole boards and working as a paralegal, he didn’t work the cases himself as co-counsel. The legal work had been handled by the foundation’s in house counsel attorneys and firms that partnered up with the foundation. But for the foundation’s latest victory on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, Deskovic was on the front lines of the legal fight.