The Firm’s attorneys practice in areas of law that involve civil rights, discrimination, constitutional litigation and official misconduct, among others.
Peter Neufeld
Peter Neufeld, one of the firm’s founding partners, has almost 30 years of trial experience. Mr. Neufeld enjoys a national reputation as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, successfully trying cases and arguing appeals in state and federal courts nationwide. Mr. Neufeld has obtained numerous substantial verdicts and settlements on behalf of victims of police misconduct and wrongful convictions and his cases have lead to systemic reform of criminal justice and police practices.
In addition to his civil rights practice at NSB, Mr. Neufeld, along with NSB partner Barry Scheck, co-founded and co-directs The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. The Project currently represents hundreds of inmates seeking post-conviction release through DNA testing. In its 15 years of existence, The Innocence Project has been responsible in whole or in part for exonerating most of the more than 200 hundred men to be cleared through post-conviction DNA testing. Mr. Neufeld has also taught extensively on the intersection of science and law, including the proper use of expert witnesses. His articles on these subjects appear in both science and law publications. He has lectured on civil rights and criminal justice before legal and scientific organizations, state commissions and bar associations, and has taught continuing legal education programs for judges and lawyers across the country as well as abroad, on the subjects of forensic science, expert witnesses and cross examination. Mr. Neufeld also taught trial advocacy for several years at Fordham University Law School. Mr. Neufeld, along with NSB partner Barry Scheck and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, is also the author of “Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted,” published in 2000.
Mr. Neufeld is also on the Board of Trustees for Montefiore Medical Center and is a member of the New York State Commission on Forensic Science with responsibility for regulating all state and local crime laboratories. Mr. Neufeld has also received numerous awards and honors including, for example, The Norman S. Ostrow Award from The New York Counsel of Defense Lawyers in 2007; the University of Virginia School of Law, William J. Brennan, Jr. Award in 2006; named one of the 100 Best Lawyers over several years; Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalist in 2002; The Charles W. Froessel Award, Distinguished Service to the Legal Community in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union, Florina Lasker Award in 2001; the New York Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Thurgood Marshall Award in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union, The Jerry Bishop Guardian of Liberty Award in 2001; The American Society of Criminology, President’s Award in 2001; Runner Up for National Law Journal Lawyer of the Year in 2000; the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Gideon Award in 2000; The Legal Aid Society, Outstanding Commitment to Human Rights award in 2000; The American Ethical Union, Elliott-Black Award in 2000; the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, Significant Contributions of Criminal Justice award in 2000; the Southern Center for Human Rights, Equal Justice Award in 2000; and the New York University School of Law, and the Public Interest Foundation award in 1999.
Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Neufeld was a staff attorney for many years with The Legal Aid Society in the Bronx.
Mr. Neufeld received his law degree in 1975 from New York University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1972.
Barry Scheck
Barry Scheck, one of the firm’s founding partners, has more than 30 years of trial experience in state and federal courts nationwide. Mr. Scheck enjoys a national reputation as a criminal defense and civil rights trial lawyer, and has successfully tried cases and argued appeals in state and federal courts nationwide. Mr. Scheck’s criminal and civil trials have redefined and expanded the rights of victims of police misconduct and wrongful convictions throughout the country.
In addition to his civil rights practice at NSB, Mr. Scheck is also a Professor of Law and the Emeritus Director of Clinical Education the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Mr. Scheck, along with NSB partner Peter Neufeld co-directs The Innocence Project at Cardozo. The Project currently represents hundreds of inmates seeking post-conviction release through DNA testing. In its 15 years of existence, The Innocence Project has been responsible in whole or in part for exonerating most of the more than 200 hundred men to be cleared through post-conviction DNA testing.
Barry Scheck has also published extensively on a variety of legal issues ranging from trial practice to forensic science and, along with NSB partner Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, is also the author of “Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted,” published in 2000. Mr. Scheck has also been a Commissioner of the New York State Forensic Science Review Board since 1994, a Commissioner of the National Institute of Justice Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence from 1997-2000, an Advisor for AGID-Lab since 2001, and on the advisory board for Celera Genetic, Project to Identify Dead at World Trade Center. Mr. Scheck is also an active member and the past president (2004-2005) of the National Associations of Criminal Defense Lawyers from 2004-2005, and from 1995-1997 served on the American Bar Association Special President’s Commission on High Profile Trials.
Over the years Mr. Scheck has received numerous honors and awards for his trial work and advocacy including, for example: the New York State Bar Association Charles F. Crimi Memorial Award for outstanding practitioner in 1995; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Robert C. Heeney Award for recognition of outstanding contributions in 1996; the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Distinguished Defense Attorney Award in 1999; the National Law Journal Runner-up for Lawyer of the Year in 2000, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers “Gideon Award” in 2000; the Southern Center for Human Rights Equal Justice Award in 2000, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers - Thurgood Marshall Award in 2001; the New York Civil Liberties Union Florina Lasker Award, “for courage in the defense of civil liberties” in 2001 and was named one of the National Law Journal's 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2006.
Prior to becoming a law professor and entering private practice, Mr. Scheck was a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society in the Bronx.
Mr. Scheck has also taught trial practice, appellate advocacy, legal ethics and instructed on the forensic sciences to judges, lawyers and students nationwide. Mr. Scheck has been an instructor, for example, at the National College of Criminal Defense Lawyers, NITA, and the NAACP annual training seminar for death penalty lawyers and has been retained to train lawyers in trial practice at major Wall Street law firms including Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; and Paul Weiss Rifkind.
Mr. Scheck is a Graduate of the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, and a graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in American Studies/Economics.
Nick Brustin
Nick Brustin, a partner in the firm, has broad experience in federal and state trial and appellate courts in New York and throughout the country. Mr. Brustin’s civil rights practice principally involves representing individual plaintiffs nationwide who have been the victims of police brutality or other official misconduct, and individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and incarcerated.
In 2006, Mr. Brustin successfully litigated and then obtained a multi-million dollar jury verdict in federal court in Indiana on behalf of Larry Mayes, an African-American man who spent more than 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit as a result of individual and systemic police misconduct in the Hammond Police Department. In 2008, Mr. Brustin negotiated 2008's largest settlement against the New York City Police Department on behalf of Hector Gonzalez, a man who spent more than 6 years in prison for a crime he did not commit as a result of misconduct by NYPD officers and detectives.
Mr. Brustin is currently representing victims of police misconduct and those who have been wrongfully convicted in New York, Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Kansas. Mr. Brustin was also an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University School of Law and has lectured on civil rights issues, appearing at the annual NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Civil Rights Conference and various civil rights continuing education seminars around the country.
Before joining the Firm, Mr. Brustin was an Honors Program Trial Attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where he worked on school desegregation cases including the DOJ’s successful efforts to integrate The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. Mr. Brustin also was associated with Beldock, Levine & Hoffman where he focused on civil rights and employment discrimination litigation including the firm’s class action race discrimination lawsuit against the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Mr. Brustin received his law degree from Fordham University School of Law, a Masters Degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and his undergraduate degree from Brown University.
Deborah L. Cornwall
Debi Cornwall, a partner in the firm, joined NSB in 2001, during which time she has litigated civil-rights cases at both the trial and appellate levels around the country on behalf of DNA exonerees and victims of police brutality. In 2006 and 2007, Ms. Cornwall, along with Peter Neufeld, successfully litigated and then obtained multi-million dollar verdicts from Virginia and California federal juries respectively, on behalf of Earl Washington Jr., a mentally retarded man who falsely confessed to a murder he did not commit and on behalf of Herman Atkins, a black man falsely convicted of raping a white woman. In addition to securing substantial verdicts, the litigation led to reform-oriented broader audits in both states.
Ms. Cornwall has represented civil rights plaintiffs in California, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. She has prosecuted successful appeals in the Fourth, Sixth, Ninth Circuits and New York State Courts.
In 2008, she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York for her pro bono work on capital cases.
Before joining NSB, Ms. Cornwall was a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She has also worked with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and the Federal Defender Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was the captain of the winning team in the final round of the Ames Moot Court Competition and represented indigent criminal defendants through the Criminal Justice Institute. Her undergraduate degree is from Brown University, magna cum laude and with honors.
Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann
Ms. Hoffmann joined NSB in 2006. She previously clerked for the late Honorable Reginald C. Lindsay of the District of Massachusetts. In 2004 Ms. Hoffmann graduated third in her class from New York University School of Law, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, where she received the Benjamin F. Butler Memorial Award for “unusual distinction in scholarship, character and professional activities.” While in law school, Ms. Hoffmann worked in NYU’s Capital Defender Clinic at the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama and served as a torts teaching assistant for Prof. Mark Geistfeld. She interned at the Innocence Project, Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Division in Manhattan, the CPCS Public Defender Division in Cambridge, and NSB. Ms. Hoffmann graduated cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in Government in 2000.
Ms. Hoffmann is admitted to practice in New York, Massachusetts and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of Massachusetts.
Sarah Crowley
Ms. Crowley joined NSB in 2008. She previously clerked for the Honorable Lawrence M. McKenna of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and worked as a litigation associate at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, LLP. In 2006, Ms. Crowley graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. While in law school, Ms. Crowley represented incarcerated individuals in parole appeals and taught family law classes in New York State prisons through the Prisoners and Families Clinic, was the president of Impact, a non-partisan voting rights organization, co-founded the Columbia Social Change Network, and was a member of the Human Rights Law Review. She also served as a board member of the Public Interest Law Foundation, and currently serves as an alumni board member. Ms. Crowley has worked at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, North Carolina and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. She graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in Comparative Literature.
Ms. Crowley is admitted to practice in New York and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of New York.
Emma Freudenberger
Ms. Freudenberger joined NSB in 2008. She previously served as the death penalty clerk for the Supreme Court of New Jersey. Ms. Freudenberger graduated from Columbia Law School in 2007, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and recipient of the Valentin J.T. Wertheimer Prize, the Public Interest Peer of the Year Award, and the New York State Bar Association 2007 Law Student Legal Ethics Award. While in law school, she served as Editor-in-Chief of A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review’s legal resource for prisoners, and oversaw publication of its Seventh Edition. Ms. Freudenberger has also worked as a research assistant for Professors Suzanne Goldberg and Susan Sturm, and at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, the Immigration Law Unit of the Legal Aid Society, and the Vera Institute of Justice. She received a B.A. in English with honors from Wesleyan University in 2001.
Ms. Freudenberger is admitted to practice in New York and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Amos Blackman
Mr. Blackman joined NSB in 2009. He previously clerked for the Honorable Carlos F. Lucero of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. In 2008, Mr. Blackman graduated from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar, a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Public Interest Peer of the Year, and a recipient of the Allan Morrow Prize, awarded for outstanding achievement in the furtherance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. While in law school, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, worked in Columbia's Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic, and was a teaching assistant to Professor Katherine Franke. Mr. Blackman also interned with the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco - Employment Law Center and the ACLU of Southern California. Mr. Blackman graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in Computer Science in 2001.
Mr. Blackman is admitted to practice in New York.
Chloe Cockburn
Ms. Cockburn joined NSB in 2010. From 2007-2008, she served as a fellow in the General Counsel’s office at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, where she assisted in designing significant reforms of the New Orleans criminal justice system. In 2008-2009, Ms. Cockburn clerked for the Honorable Charles P. Sifton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. From 2009-2010, Ms. Cockburn held the Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellowship in civil liberties at the ACLU Racial Justice Program. At the ACLU, she assisted in litigation in Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Idaho, Texas, and Michigan. In 2007, Ms. Cockburn graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Executive Board of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, was a teaching assistant for Professors Lani Guinier and Charles Nesson, represented indigent clients through the Criminal Justice Institute, and received public interest and writing fellowships. She interned with Attorney Robert McDuff in Jackson, Mississippi, and for the Public Defender Service of Washington D.C. Ms. Cockburn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in Classics and Studio Art in 2001.
Ms. Cockburn is admitted to practice in New York.
