Building RSHC: Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP 2017 Annual Report - Report - Page 14
Meeting Our Commitments
RSHC lawyers serve their communities in many
ways, including as volunteers and leaders in
organizations in which our lawyers are actively
involved:
ACLU of Illinois
All Stars Project Development School for Youth
Black Women Lawyers’ Association
Chicago Bar Foundation
Chicago Committee on Minorities
in Large Law Firms
Chicago Urban League
Chicago Volunteer Legal Services
Chicago Youth Centers
Civic Consulting Alliance
Commercial Club of Chicago
Community Development Commission
Cook County Bar Association
Dominican Bar Association
Housing Choice Partners
Illinois Equal Justice Foundation
Just the Beginning – A Pipeline Organization
LaRabida Children’s Hospital
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Leadership Greater Chicago
Legacy Charter School
Legal Aid Society
National Bar Association
National Filipino American Lawyers Association
Northwestern University Pritzker
School of Law, Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Center
on Wrongful Convictions
Partnership for College Completion
Quad Communities Development Corporation
Raphael House
Rush Health System
Sikh Coalition
Sinai Health Systems
UCAN
Urban Prep Academies
Vassar College
YMCA of San Francisco
A law firm built for clients.®
Pro Bono and Public Service
From day one, we committed ourselves to doing important
pro bono and public service work in our communities. We
have sought to correct miscarriages of justice, provide access
to justice, and hold accountable those who appear to have
abused their official positions.
We have worked as both defenders and prosecutors, and
on matters of local and national interest. Our lawyers have
helped free the wrongfully convicted; challenged the effort to
punish “sanctuary” cities; led a special grand jury investigating
allegations of a police cover-up.
Some of this work involves highly controversial matters. All our
clients—public and private, paying and pro bono—can rely on
RSHC to stand up for them when the heat is on.
Wrongful Convictions
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In November 2017, Ron Safer led a team of RSHC lawyers that
won the exoneration of Arthur Brown, a person who served 29
years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Ryan Poscablo, Sandy Musumeci, and Brian Neff represented
a developmentally disabled teenager in Newark, New Jersey,
who was wrongfully arrested for allegedly robbing a retired
police officer jogging in a park more than a mile from the
teenager’s home. After receiving a desperate call from the
school counselor, RSHC investigated, advocated zealously on
our client’s behalf, and ultimately the case was dismissed in its
entirety.
In February 2017, Ron Safer was part of a team of Chicago
lawyers that won the release of the “Marquette Four,” four
then-teenagers who were coerced into confessing to a murder
in 1995 that they did not commit. Those four also served 22
years in prison.
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