Law360’s Pro Bono Spotlight features Keker, Van Nest & Peters’ Felony Murder Resentencing Project, as it marks five years of helping imprisoned Californians petition to reduce their life sentences following the state's felony murder rule reforms in 2018.
These efforts recently led to the release of San Bernardino resident Demetrius Howard, who had spent three decades in prison.
In September, the California Court of Appeal affirmed a 2023 verdict vacating Howard’s murder conviction. His co-defendant, who was under the influence of drugs, was found to have acted alone in the fatal shooting during a 1992 robbery. Howard was not directly involved in the killing but was charged under the state’s former felony murder law, which held all participants in a crime liable for any deaths that occurred.
"This case involved a situation where our client had been involved in an attempted robbery, but his co-defendant was under the influence of PCP and other drugs, acting erratically and unpredictably, shooting the victim to our client's complete surprise," said Maya James, the Keker partner who has led the work for Howard. "The co-defendant testified and explained that he didn't even know our client was there. He acted unilaterally, arbitrarily and unpredictably, acting entirely on his own."
James said there have been many challenges in navigating the new statute, including initial legal resistance from prosecutors who argued that the law changes were unconstitutional. She helped spearhead the firm’s felony murder resentencing work when she was an associate.
“I had previously worked in the San Francisco public defender’s office and felt very passionate about that work, representing these folks under the much more equitable new law,” James said. “The public defenders' office had too many cases to handle at that point, so we started taking cases over time, and now it's a full-fledged project with dozens of folks working on these cases."
Since then, the work has become a full-fledged pro bono project, and dozens of attorneys have worked on more than a half-dozen cases.
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