Legal Aid Society Salutes Past
“Servants of Justice”
2006
Theodore A. Howard
Wiley Rein & Fielding LLP
Ted Howard’s involvement in pro bono matters commenced at an early stage of his legal career and continues to the present. Since 1991, he has represented an Alabama death-row inmate, Danny Bradley, in federal post-conviction proceedings. He drafted briefs serving as the basis for the Alabama Supreme Court’s entry of an order staying Mr. Bradley’s execution in 2001, ten days before the death sentence was to be carried out, and argued the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit resulting in that Court’s issuance of the first federal appellate decision in the United States recognizing the viability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 of a state post-conviction prisoner’s potential right to compel a State’s production of forensic trial evidence for purposes of DNA testing. Bradley v. Pryor, 305 F.3d 1287 (11th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 538 U.S. 999 (2003).
Mr. Howard has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the D.C. Prisoners’ Legal Services Project, Inc. since 1992, and has been President of that organization since 1995. He has acted as counsel on behalf of prisoners in a number of matters placed through that organization, and currently serves as co-lead counsel representing inmates at the D.C. Jail in their action seeking an injunction to require the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Corrections to comply with their non-discretionary obligations under the Jail Improvement Act to impose a cap on the inmate population at the Jail for safety and security reasons. In a matter referred by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, he has advised a group of concerned African-American parents who are challenging the validity of the screening and testing methodologies employed by Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools in selecting elementary school students for placement on the “gifted and talented” track in the County’s magnet middle schools, which have resulted in disproportionately low participation of Hispanic and African-American children. Mr. Howard also serves as co-lead counsel with attorneys from the Legal Aid Society in a prospective class action brought on behalf of indigent and working-poor tenants against the City’s largest manager of low-income rental properties, alleging that the company’s routine practice of suing tenants for untimely payment of their monthly rent and using the filing and subsequent dismissal of these lawsuits as the premise for charging the tenants with excessive “court costs” constitutes an unlawful business practice proscribed by the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act. He regularly serves as a supervising partner for junior associates at Wiley Rein with respect to landlord-tenant and child custody cases assigned through the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Legal Clinic. He has been recognized as one of “America’s Leading Lawyers for Business” by Chambers Publications.
David A Reiser
Zuckerman Spaeder LLP
Mr. Reiser has had a career-long commitment to representing clients who are unable to pay for legal representation. During law school he headed the board of Yale’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization and was a director of the Danbury Prison Project. After a judicial clerkship, he was an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where he represented indigent criminal defendants in D.C. Superior Court and the D.C. Court of Appeals, and supervised third year law students. As a law teacher, he represented clients pro bono in consumer, disability and prisoners’ rights cases, and supervised students in a habeas corpus clinic. He then joined the new Office of the Capital Collateral Representative in Florida, where he represented death row prisoners in post-conviction proceedings.
Mr. Reiser was an attorney at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service from 1986 to 1999, where he handled both criminal and civil litigation. He served as lead counsel in the litigation that closed the detention facility for juveniles at Cedar Knoll. He also drafted amicus briefs on behalf of the Public Defender Service, the ABA, NACDL and NLADA in numerous significant cases in the Supreme Court and the federal courts of appeals. During leaves from PDS he supervised students at George Washington University Law Center representing indigent criminal defendants in appeals to the D.C. Court of Appeals, and consulted with the Defender Services Division of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Following his time at the Public Defender, he joined HUD, where he was involved in policy work on public housing, lead paint and fair housing. After leaving HUD for private practice in 2001, he continued pro bono work in habeas corpus litigation and by drafting amicus briefs. In 2003, Mr. Reiser undertook to give a significant portion of his time to Legal Aid. Mr. Reiser helped to found Legal Aid’s Appellate Advocacy Project, has handled several appeals and assisted in the litigation of appeal and trial matters.
2005
Katherine S. Broderick
Dean, University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law
Andrew H. Marks
Crowell & Moring LLP
2004
Lois G. Williams
R. Sargent Shriver
E. Clinton Bamberger, Jr.
Edgar S. Cahn
Jean Camper Cahn posthumously
2003
Peter J. Nickles
Covington & Burling
The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia
2002
Samuel F. Harahan
Council for Court Excellence
Douglas G. Robinson
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
2001
Lynn E. Cunningham
George Washington University Law School
John E. Nolan
Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Charles F.C. Ruff, posthumously
Covington & Burling
2000
Patty Mullahy Fugere
Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless
Robert N. Weiner
Arnold & Porter LLP
1999
Blossom Athey
Covington & Burling
Eldon H. Crowell
Crowell & Moring LLP
1998
Eric H. Holder, Jr.
United States Department of Justice
Francine Salzman Temko
The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia
1997
Peter B. Edelman
Georgetown University Law Center
Timothy J. May
Patton Boggs LLP
1996
R. Kenneth Mundy
Robert L. Weinberg
Williams & Connolly LLP
1995
Willie E. Cook, Jr.
Neighborhood Legal Services Program
David B. Isbell
Covington & Burling
1994
Charles T. Duncan
Reid and Priest
Stephen J. Pollak
Shea & Gardner
Janet Reno
Attorney General of the United States
1993
Justice Thurgood Marshall
Supreme Court of the United States
Zona F. Hostetler
O’Toole, Rothwell, Nassau & Steinbach
John H. Pickering
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
1992
Howard C. Westwood
Covington & Burling
D.C. Legal Service Providers
1991
Augustus L. Palmer
Howard University
Barbara M. Rossotti
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
1990
Earl W. Kintner
Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn, PLLC
Charles A. Horsky
Covington & Burling
