Jones Day lawyers represent individuals and nonprofit organizations in both civil and criminal litigation before a variety of administrative agencies and state and federal courts, including the federal courts of appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court. Across the Firm, our lawyers participate in various local clinics that offer free legal advice to the poor on such matters as landlord/tenant law, public benefits, immigration, probate, family law, and consumer fraud. Our lawyers have represented defendants at all levels of the criminal justice system, from wrongfully charged individuals facing their first trials to death row inmates seeking new ones. In addition, we assist nonprofit organizations with corporate-related issues such as incorporation and tax advice.
In December 2011, after a five-day bench trial, a federal judge entered an order in favor of Jones Day's client in an international child abduction case directing the return of his three young children, two with special needs, to Canada to be reunited with their father pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and United States federal law.
Jones Day client Juanita M., a survivor of extreme sexual abuse at the hands of her own cousins, was granted asylum on December 23 after a six month wait. Normally, asylum applications are granted or denied after two weeks, but Juanita’s case was referred to the Asylum Office headquarters in Washington, D.C. because of the complicated nature of the case.
Jones Day Irvine successfully represented the local chapter of a national non-profit organization against an Accusation from the California Department of Social Services (the "Department") in which the Department threatened to revoke the client's child day care center license under the California Child Day Care Facilities Act, Health and Safety Code section 1596.70 et seq.
On November 28, 2011, Jones Day Columbus won a victory for a mentally ill Michigan prisoner before the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The prisoner, Muzaffer Ata, is serving a life sentence for first degree murder. Mr. Ata has a life-long history of severe paranoid schizophrenia and has been hospitalized numerous times because of this mental condition.
In the first case to find a constitutional right to DNA testing since the Supreme Court clarified this developing area of the law, a federal judge has held that Pennsylvania's post-conviction DNA testing procedures violated the Due Process Clause and that testing should be ordered to determine whether Jones Day Washington client Emmitt Grier was wrongly convicted of rape in 2000.