Dechert and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis Successfully Prevent Death Sentence for Pro Bono Client

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 30, 2004--Dechert LLP and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP today announced that the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas has vacated the death sentence of their pro bono client Simon Pirela, a mentally retarded prisoner who was born in Puerto Rico and who has been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1983. This is one of the first decisions applying the United States Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), which categorically barred the execution of mentally retarded individuals.

The decision in Commonwealth v. Pirela, issued by the Honorable Carolyn Engel Temin, came after a ten-day evidentiary hearing at which Mr. Pirela was represented by Dechert partner George G. Gordon and then-Dechert associate Aline Fairweather, and Schnader attorney Stephen J. Anderer, Ph.D., and Robert Brett Dunham of the Defender Association of Philadelphia's Capital Habeas Corpus Unit. Mr. Pirela's legal team presented extensive evidence regarding his brain damage and associated mental limitations, including images of Mr. Pirela's brain prepared through positron emission tomography ("PET") scans, and the results of a neuropsychological evaluation of Mr. Pirela by a nationally recognized expert in the evaluation of Spanish speakers. Because Mr. Pirela does not speak English and has been incarcerated in a very restrictive setting for 20 years, the assessment of his intellectual and adaptive functioning presented particular challenges that were overcome by Mr. Pirela's defense team.

Over the past several years, Dechert and Schnader have represented Mr. Pirela separately in two first-degree murder cases. In 2000, a Schnader team led by Samuel W. Silver and Stephen J. Anderer successfully obtained a life sentence for Mr. Pirela in one of the cases, Commonwealth v. Morales. The firms' joint representation of Mr. Pirela at his recent hearing was the natural outcome of the firms' close cooperation in their efforts to prevent Mr. Pirela's execution, including sharing the significant expense for the PET scan and MRI of Mr. Pirela's brain.

Dechert and Schnader have both been recognized for their commitment to providing legal services pro bono to people in need. Both firms are members of the Law Firm Pro Bono Project and are signatories to the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge whereby they have pledged to devote three percent of their time each year to pro bono matters. Both firms have appointed senior lawyers to lead their pro bono efforts. Dechert recently appointed Suzanne E. Turner as the firm's first pro bono partner. Ms. Turner is resident in Dechert's London office. At Schnader, a counsel of the firm, Joseph A. Sullivan, directs Schnader's public service commitment.

With more than 700 lawyers located in 17 cities, Dechert provides a full range of legal services to corporations and financial institutions in transactional, regulatory, and litigation matters. Visit Dechert on the web at www.dechert.com.

Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP (www.schnader.com) is a national law firm with offices in New York, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey. Schnader serves local, national and international clients ranging from large international corporations to individual entrepreneurs in more than 30 areas of the law, spanning litigation, environmental, e-commerce, aviation, rail transport, government investigations, corporate compliance, class action defense, family law, intellectual property, real estate, securities and transactional law, and trusts and estates.