For Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP partner Ralph Mayrell, preparing Tyrone Jones to testify about spending 10.5 years in prison for conspiracy to commit a murder he wasn't involved in was one of the hardest parts of proving his innocence and winning him compensation for the time he wrongly spent behind bars.

"Even though that is not relevant to whether Mr. Jones was entitled to recovery, the fact is that judges are people, and so we needed Mr. Jones to tell his story of what he lost," Mayrell told Law360. "The time with family he lost, the people he got to know in prison who then died in prison, the experiences he went through."

In April, Jones finally closed the book on his 1999 conviction for conspiracy to commit murder, proving his innocence and receiving a nearly $1 million award from a Maryland administrative law judge. His exoneration was decades in the making, and required his attorneys to not just dig up new evidence but convince lawmakers to update a state law in order to obtain the award.

Jones was freed in 2010, when Maryland prosecutors entered a "nolle pross" plea — a voluntary dropping of the case — after it was found that exculpatory evidence had been withheld from the defense during discovery, before Jones' trial. The state did not concede Jones' innocence, only stating that it would be impossible to try him again with the same evidence.

Jones sought compensation in 2023 under Maryland's Walter Lomax Act, but his claim was prevented, because in 1999, conspiracy to commit murder was only considered a misdemeanor crime, which Mayrell called "an insane idea."

Under the law when Jones applied, only those previously convicted of a felony could seek Walter Lomax Act compensation.

Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP attorneys Neel Lalchandani, Catalina Odio and former firm attorney Michael Abrams represented Jones during his initial 2023 claim for compensation to the Office of Administrative Hearings. On appealing that denial for judicial review in Baltimore City Circuit Court, they sought out the HSF Kramer team for help.

Mayrell and Lalchandani had known one another from their joint representation of another wrongly imprisoned Baltimore man, Demetrius Smith, who had successfully overcome Walter Lomax Act hurdles, eventually receiving more than $340,000.

"Neel knew that I had to appeal in that case and had been successful, and so he came to me for this case because I probably was the first person to appeal a Walter Lomax Act case in Maryland, because it was such a new law," Mayrell said.

Simultaneously, the team connected with legislators to help pass amendments to the Walter Lomax Act, which were approved last July.

Lalchandani told Law360 that Brown Goldstein submitted written testimony to Maryland legislators, arguing, "the wrongfully convicted should not be precluded from receiving compensation based on a semantic loophole."

One of those amendments included extending the applicant class to include felony convicts, who have until July 2026 under the revisions to apply for compensation. The bill also helped further expand the scope of those eligible for compensation, and was amended to include a 15-day written notice requirement for when the state seeks to lower the amount of an individual's compensation claim.

"I think it was a common sense fix," Lalchandani said. "When the legislature passed the law, the General Assembly, … Nobody anticipated this gap in the law, and we were really heartened to see that they acted quickly and fixed the gap and made a couple other small tweaks to the law."

The Brown Goldstein team took the lead on advocating for the change before the legislature, with the HSF Kramer's team focusing on ensuring the Walter Lomax Act revisions were written in a way that would work to get Jones a recovery.

"In addition to the changes that we had, the legislature made it retroactive, so it allowed Mr. Jones to benefit, even though he had filed initially," Lalchandani said.

Their changes got backing from the State's Attorney and Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. But the State's Attorney still had the team formally prove Jones' innocence.

"And the standard's really difficult, you have to prove he was innocent by clear and convincing evidence, so that's almost the same as the opposite of the burden of proof in a criminal case where you're presumed innocent," Mayrell said.

What followed was a monthslong investigation to develop facts that proved Jones' innocence. The team hit the street in Baltimore, tracking down two new alibi witnesses for Jones for events that had happened more than two decades ago. Lalchandani said they used private investigators to track people down, many of whom didn't want to talk, even if they'd testified at the original trial.

"It takes a lot of patience, it takes sometimes, just building a little bit of a relationship and kind of explaining like, who we are and that we just want to know the truth and get their side, and how important it is for them to testify," Lalchandani said.

The team relied on street names and those found in the trial court record to churn up new leads.

Mark Russell, an HSF Kramer associate who assisted on the case, said in one instance that after searching for a witness for months, the team only connected with them after a visit Jones made to his barber.

Russell was exchanging emails between examinations at trial to secure an affidavit for that witness, he said.

"We were trying to find this guy, trying to find this guy; Mr. Jones walks into his barber, and his barber has the guy on the phone. They're just catching up after a couple years of not talking, he lives elsewhere," Russell said.

Key to Jones' conviction on conspiracy to commit murder was a single particle unique to primer gunshot residue that investigators found on Jones' left hand.

"I think what's now common knowledge is that primer gunshot residue gets everywhere, and that if you're going to test for it, you have to bag the hands of the person who you suspect, and it has to be under a certain amount of hours, and you need a certain number of particles," Russell said. "Even then, I think there's really only one or two labs in the country that still do this testing."

He added, "But there was this rampant contamination problem in Baltimore, not to mention that they placed Mr. Jones in the back of a police car, where academic literature had found contamination."

The other evidence used to convict Jones was equally unreliable.

For instance, Jones was identified as being involved in the killing of 16-year-old Tyree Wright by the teen's younger brother, who had said he only remembered the shooter's accomplice, and that person was wearing a grey tank top.

Wright's uncle also positively identified Jones in a police lineup a few days after his nephew's killing, although he initially told law enforcement he didn't witness anyone's identities. The uncle's initial report to police was withheld from defense counsel during Jones' initial trial, a Brady Act violation that contributed to his January 2010 release.

"Even at that time though, what happens is the convictions were vacated, but the state had the opportunity to retry Mr. Jones, and they actually represented that they would retry Mr. Jones," Lalchandani said.

The team not only proved Jones' innocence, but presented evidence of who actually killed Wright. Russell said that Wright had been caught in a case of mistaken identity, and killed in a targeted manner by individuals who were feuding with someone else over stolen guns.

Michele Nethercott, Jones' post-conviction attorney who led the University of Baltimore Innocence Project until retiring in 2021, testified about her investigation into the crime years earlier, having then conducted an examination of the actual killer's neighborhood reputation, finding that person was known as someone who was violent, Russell said.

Russell said that tracking down witnesses without relying on their actual names was extremely difficult, especially dealing with more than 20-year-old memories.

That on-the-street investigation has inspired the HSF Kramer team to extrapolate their method to other Walter Lomax Act cases.

"We're doing two more of these Walter Lomax Act compensation cases now, and in both of them, I think the lessons learned from this case, we're applying them there, to find the most obscure people, hunting them down in Baltimore, so that we're able to build the strongest cases possible for these people," Mayrell said.

Beyond helping track down witnesses, helping prepare Jones to testify on his prison experiences was extremely difficult, Mayrell said.

"Prepping Mr. Jones to do that and to give that testimony and having to sit there and listen to it frankly, was probably the hardest part for me just as a lawyer," Mayrell said.

The Office of Administrative Hearings mails out their decisions, so Russell said he learned of the team's victory via an email from his co-counsel. It was a surreal feeling, he said, having worked to prove Jones' innocence, only made better by the group's visit with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

Moore met with Jones' legal team, and apologized to him on behalf of the state during a May 7 event.

"This should have never happened," Moore said. "And I know there are no words that can undo the injustice and what was taken away from you and your family, but I hope you do know that the words we are sharing are sincere, the support we want to offer is real, and you've still got a long journey ahead that we hope to support."

Mayrell said that meeting meant a lot to exonerees like Jones.

"For these guys — it's almost always men and so far almost always out of Baltimore — for them, it is a huge deal to be in a room with someone who has power and who's giving them the time of day," Mayrell said. "And who is sincerely personally interested, who will tell members of his staff that he thinks could help these guys, that they should give attention to this, is something that not every governor would do; not every governor has done."

Mayrell said one of the most important lessons the team had learned from working on Jones' case was the importance of having a positive relationship with opposing counsel. That relationship helped the team pass revisions to the Walter Lomax Act quickly, working together when opportunities to do so arose.

"Regardless of their position on the rest of the case, they recognized that the law needed to be changed to address this situation, that Mr. Jones shouldn't be blocked in this scenario from getting compensation," Mayrell said. "And I think that also includes how we litigated the rest of the case, in particular, knowing that we would have the ability to talk with the other side to reach a useful resolution."

Lalchandani said he was thankful to work with his growing community of exonerated clients, a resilient group of people who were unwavering in their innocence, even in the face of deals that would have them admit culpability in exchange for freedom and their time served.

"These cases strike at the heart of our legal system," Lalchandani said. "This is when you have just an abject failure of our system, so as lawyers working within this system, I think it's incumbent to do what little part we can to try and rectify those total failures."

--Editing by Nicole Bleier.

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