Maslon LLP Honored with "Light of Justice" Award by Texas Defender Service

Maslon is pleased to announce that the Maslon team working on behalf of Douglas Tyrone Armstrong will be honored with a "Light of Justice Award" by Texas Defender Service, an organization that aims to improve the quality of representation afforded to those facing a death sentence and to expose and eradicate the systemic flaws plaguing the Texas death penalty. The "Light of Justice Award" will be presented at the organization's annual luncheon on Tuesday, December 4, 2018.

Beginning in 2007, a Maslon pro bono team—led at varying times by attorneys Catherine Ahlin-Halverson, Julian Zebot, Mike McCarthy, Nicole Narotzky, and Maslon alumni Haley Schaffer and Judge David Schultz—investigated, prepared, filed, and argued a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that Mr. Armstrong is actually innocent of the crime for which he had been convicted and that, at the time of his original trial for capital murder, he had received patently ineffective assistance of counsel from his court-appointed trial attorneys. In November 2017, after Armstrong had spent ten years on death row, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Armstrong's death sentence and remanded for a new sentencing. In March 2018, the trial court sentenced Mr. Armstrong to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty against him as a direct result of the Maslon team's work on his behalf.

Read Maslon's full press release announcing the vacation of Armstrong's death sentence.

For more information about Texas Defender Service, visit: texasdefender.org.