Exceptional Service Awards
Every fall, the Project celebrates volunteer lawyers at its Volunteer Recognition & Awards Dinner. Pro bono firms are nominated by their colleagues for exceptional service to death row prisoners and honored with the Exceptional Service Award.
This year's Exceptional Service awards were presented to two outstanding volunteer law firms, Quarles & Brady and Sidley Austin.
Quarles & Brady, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based law firm, has answered the Project’s call for assistance on multiple occasions. But something elsemakes this firm special. Quarles & Brady has repeatedly taken some of the most difficult and urgent cases for which counsel was needed. Quarles has filed amicus briefs in death penalty cases and provided representation to prisoners in six capital cases in four different states, almost all of them in precarious procedural postures or with imminent deadlines. In 2012, the firm accepted TWO urgent matters on the same astonishing day, replacing near-defeat with a new, fighting chance for justice.
Read their full bio here.
Sidley Austin, a global law firm with 18 offices, has made a truly remarkable commitment to justice for death row prisoners in Alabama. In 2005, Sidle ypartnered with the Project and the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama (EJI) to create its Capital Litigation Project to provide representation todeath-sentenced prisoners inAlabama without counsel.
Read their full bio here.
John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award
Mark J. MacDougall
Th e Project is proud to present the 2014 John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award to Mark J. MacDougall for his unique commitment to providing outstanding legal representation in capital cases in South Carolina.
Mark is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld where his practice is focused on white collar criminal litigation. For more than a decade, Mark has worked pro bono with South Carolina public defenders to represent persons facing the death penalty in that state. Since 2006, Mark has volunteered over 1,720 hours of his time serving as trial counsel in death penalty cases. He has handled six capital cases and led teams of Akin Gump lawyers that have dedicated an additional 10,512 hours to pro bono death penalty work.