FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Milbank seeks to overturn conviction of Louisiana inmate sentenced to death in 1986
NEW YORK, May 16, 2014 – In a dramatic development in a death penalty case spanning three decades, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy helped secure a court order vacating the death sentence of a Louisiana man convicted of rape and murder in 1986.
In a hearing in Louisiana state court earlier this month, Milbank and the prosecution jointly moved to have John Francis Wille, who was convicted in the 1985 rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in a parish near New Orleans, resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently serving his sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (at Angola).
For Milbank and a team of lawyers representing Mr. Wille, this is an important first step in an ongoing battle to overturn his conviction and demonstrate that he is actually innocent. In evidentiary hearings, a Milbank team led by special counsel Tawfiq Rangwala, asserted that Mr. Wille’s constitutional rights were violated because, among other things, he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel at trial and did not receive complete disclosure of material exculpatory evidence in the hands of law enforcement. These violations rendered the trial unfair and the verdict unreliable. Milbank also advised the court that DNA recently obtained from significant evidence found at the crime scene conclusively proves that Mr. Wille is innocent.
A post-conviction proceeding seeking to reverse Mr. Wille’s conviction is ongoing. The sole direct evidence against Mr. Wille in his 1986 trial was his confession (along with those of his girlfriend and her daughter). All of these confessions were recanted, and Milbank argues they are demonstrably false and were procured by coercion and improper police conduct. At trial, the jury never heard key evidence that would have undermined the confessions in part because Mr. Wille’s lawyers, one of whom was assigned the case to satisfy his sentence for a felony conviction, never mounted a defense or developed a strategy for challenging the confessions.
“We are pleased that Mr. Wille is no longer on death row, where he has languished for nearly 30 years, and his resentencing is a critical step toward our goal of proving that he was wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit,” Mr. Rangwala said.
Milbank is representing Mr. Wille pro bono, along with Denise LeBoeuf, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project and Nicholas J. Trenticosta.More than a dozen Milbank attorneys and staff across several of the firm’s offices have worked on the case for a number of years.
The proceedings are scheduled to resume in late 2014.
About Milbank
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy is a leading international law firm that has been providing innovative legal solutions to clients throughout the world for more than 145 years. Milbank is headquartered in New York and has offices in Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Munich, São Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, DC.
The firm’s lawyers provide a full range of legal services to the world’s leading commercial, financial and industrial enterprises, as well as to institutions, individuals and governments. Milbank’s lawyers meet the needs of its clients by offering a highly integrated and collaborative range of services across key practice groups throughout its global network. Milbank’s integrated practice is underpinned by its attorneys’ acknowledged technical excellence, sectorial expertise and a strong tradition of innovation and client service.
