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Stephen L. Braga is an American lawyer, best known for his pro bono representation of Martin Tankleff and the West Memphis Three. He also represented Michael Scanlon, the number two target in the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. Braga is currently the Director of the Appellate Litigation Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law. In addition, he chairs the national white collar practice at Bracewell LLP. [1]
Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr., referred to in the media as the West Memphis Three, had been incarcerated since 1993 in Arkansas for the murders of three young boys.[ citation needed ] In the 18 years that followed, DNA testing, jury misconduct, and other new pieces of evidence raised doubt about the involvement of the three men in the crime.[ citation needed ] In 2009, Braga joined Echol's legal team and took the lead on efforts to retry the three men., Braga developed a strategy involving a legal compromise: the Alford plea.[ citation needed ] As he explained to the National Law Journal: '"What is the middle ground between insistence on guilt by the prosecutors and insistence on innocence by the defendants?" He concluded: "The thing that seemed logical, the only safe harbor, was the Alford plea."[ citation needed ] His efforts were successful. After entering their Alford pleas, each of the defendants' sentences were deemed as time served, and finally, the men were released from prison on August 19, 2011.[ citation needed ]
From 1995 to 2008, Braga served as lead counsel on a team of volunteer lawyers and investigators [2] which sought reversal of the 1990 conviction of Martin Tankleff for the murder of his parents. [3] Tankleff had confessed to the murders after being falsely told by Detective James McCready that physical evidence implicated him and that his father had awoken at the hospital and identified Tankleff as the attacker. [4] Tankleff later recanted the confession. The investigation team interviewed a long series of contacts, ultimately uncovering evidence from more than 20 witnesses that two other people had admitted to the murder. [2] [5] Braga argued the new evidence appeal that led to the order for a new trial. [2]
Braga is representing Michael Scanlon's appeal to the United States Supreme Court to allow amendment to his plea bargain in 2010 with regard to the Abramoff Indian Casino lobbying scandal. Braga is asking that Scanlon's agreement to renege on his agreement to reimburse the affected Indian tribes almost US$20 million, arguing that Scanlon had no fiduciary duty to the tribes. [6]
Braga received his B.A., cum laude, from Fairfield University in 1978 and his J.D., magna cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1981, where he was an Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. [7]
Braga began his legal career clerking for one year for The Honorable Thomas A. Flannery of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He has practiced law at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, Baker Botts, and Ropes & Gray. [8] In 2019, Braga joined Bracewell LLP to chair the firm's national white collar defense practice. [9]
Braga taught law as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. [7]
An Alford plea, in United States law, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. In entering an Alford plea, the defendant admits that the evidence presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The West Memphis Three are three men convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, United States. Damien Echols was sentenced to death, Jessie Misskelley Jr. to life imprisonment plus two 20-year sentences, and Jason Baldwin to life imprisonment. During the trial, the prosecution asserted that the juveniles killed the children as part of a Satanic ritual.
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills is a 1996 American documentary film directed, produced and edited by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky about the trials of the West Memphis Three, three teenage youths accused of the May 1993 murders and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys as a part of an alleged satanic ritual in West Memphis, Arkansas.
Robert William Ney is an American politician from Ohio. In 2007, he was convicted on charges of corruption and sentenced to 30 months in jail. A Republican, Ney represented Ohio's 18th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 until November 3, 2006, when he resigned. Ney's resignation took place after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal. Before he pleaded guilty, Ney was identified in the guilty pleas of Jack Abramoff, former Tom DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon and former Ney chief of staff Neil Volz for receiving lavish gifts in exchange for political favors.
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and to 21 people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
Michael Scanlon is a former communications director for Rep. Tom DeLay, lobbyist, and public relations executive who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He is currently assisting in the investigation of his former partners Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed by separate state and federal grand jury investigations related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials.
The Abramoff/Scanlon Indian lobbying scandal was fraud perpetrated by lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon on Native American tribes who were seeking to develop casino gambling on their reservations.
Joseph Berlinger is an American filmmaker and producer. Particularly focused on true crime documentaries, Berlinger's films and docu-series draw attention to social justice issues in the US and abroad in such films as Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Crude, Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger and Intent To Destroy: Death, Denial and Depiction.
SunCruz Casinos offered offshore "cruises to nowhere", legally transporting passengers into international waters beyond the reach of federal and state gambling laws. In the 2000s (decade), it became known for the involvement of some high-profile lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff, and the murder of its former owner, Gus Boulis.
Ropes & Gray LLP is a global law firm with 11 offices located in the United States, Asia and Europe. The firm has more than 1,400 lawyers and professionals worldwide, and its clients include corporations and financial institutions, government agencies, universities, and health care organizations. It was founded in 1865 in Boston, Massachusetts by John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray.
Kevin A. Ring is a former American attorney and congressional staffer; he served Republicans in both the House and the Senate, including U.S. Representative John T. Doolittle (R-CA). He also served as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights Subcommittee.
Richard Jason Ofshe is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation advocacy organization and is known for his expert testimony relating to coercion in small groups, confessions, and interrogations.
David Burnett is a Democratic politician and former member of the Arkansas Senate. Before he entered the Senate, Burnett had been a judge. Burnett is known as the original trial judge of the West Memphis Three case who was biased and made several serious mistakes during the trial.
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, and sequel to their films Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000). The three films are about West Memphis Three, three teenage boys accused of the May 1993 murders and sexual mutilation of three prepubescent boys as a part of an alleged satanic ritual in West Memphis, Arkansas. Purgatory offers an update on the case of the West Memphis Three, who were all recognized guilty of the murders in 1994 but kept on claiming their innocence since then, before culminating with the trio's attempt at an Alford plea.
West of Memphis is a 2012 New Zealand-American documentary film directed and co-written by Amy J. Berg, produced by Peter Jackson and Damien Echols, and released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics to critical acclaim. It received a nomination for Best Documentary Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Devil's Knot is a 2013 American biographical crime drama film directed by Atom Egoyan. Adopted from Mara Leveritt's 2002 book of the same name, the film is about the true story of three murdered children, and the three teenagers known as the West Memphis Three who were convicted of killing them, during the Satanic ritual abuse panic. The teenagers were subsequently sentenced to death (Echols) and life imprisonment, before all were released after eighteen years. Produced by Elizabeth Fowler, Richard Saperstein, Clark Peterson, Christopher Woodrow, and Paul Harris Boardman, the film stars Colin Firth, Reese Witherspoon, Dane DeHaan, Mireille Enos, Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Stephen Moyer, Alessandro Nivola, and Amy Ryan.
Laura Nirider is an American attorney and legal scholar working as an Associate Professor of Law and the co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. An expert on false confessions, Nirider specializes in representing young people who confessed to crimes they did not commit, and working to reform the process of police interrogation. Nirider's work gained international visibility following her involvement in several high-profile cases involving juvenile confessions. Her clients have included Brendan Dassey, whose case was profiled on the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, and Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three, whose case was profiled on the HBO series Paradise Lost and the documentary West of Memphis. She also hosts a podcast on false confessions, entitled Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions.
Damien Wayne Echols is an American writer and film producer. He is best known as a member of the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers controversially accused of a triple murder. Upon his release from prison in 2011 under an Alford plea, Echols authored several autobiographies and spiritual books. He has been featured in multiple books, documentaries, and podcasts about his spiritual works and the West Memphis Three case.