On November 19, 2025, a WilmerHale legal team working pro bono led by Partner Ross Firsenbaum, alongside co-counsel, won the largest wrongful-conviction jury verdict to an individual plaintiff in US history – $80 million for the Estate of Darryl Boyd.
The historic verdict which received national media attention and went against Erie County, NY, was awarded by a federal jury in Rochester, NY. The jury deliberated for less than an hour after a two-and-a-half week trial.
The Law Offices of Joel B. Rudin P.C. in New York City and Spencer Durland of Hoover & Durland in Buffalo, NY were WilmerHale’s co-counsel in the case.
The verdict was the latest chapter in the tragic story of the “Buffalo 5,” teenagers falsely accused of a 1976 murder in the city in Upstate New York. It was a chapter Boyd, who was exonerated in 2021, did not live to see. He died in February of this year of pancreatic cancer after spending more than 27 years in prison and 18 years on parole for a crime he didn’t commit.
Earlier this year, lawyers from the same three firms won a jury verdict of $28 million for Boyd’s 1977 co-defendant, John Walker. Walker is ill and wheelchair-bound but, after winning his epic battle for vindication, he testified for Boyd last week.
So did their teenage friend, Tyrone Woodruff, who has been haunted his whole adult life because police and the DA’s office coerced him in 1976 into falsely accusing and testifying against his friends to escape prosecution for the same crime even though police and prosectors knew he was innocent, too. Woodruff has the indictment number tattooed on his forearm as a constant reminder.
Boyd and Walker were arrested as 16-year-olds in 1976 by Buffalo police, who framed them, but the Erie County DA, led by an aggressive prosecutor named Timothy Drury, suppressed at least 19 items of Brady material that would have exposed the police misconduct, showed their innocence, and pointed to two other far more likely suspects.
A third man, Darren Gibson, convicted in the killing was released from prison in 2008 but died a year later. One of the other teens was acquitted at trial after prosecutors finally shared Brady material.
Soon after the wrongful prosecution he led, Drury became a county judge, then a state supreme court judge for 30 years. Now 85, he was discredited at each trial when he denied any wrongdoing. The juries in each case found that the Erie County DA’s office had unlawful policies and practices to suppress Brady material and to commit summation misconduct.
WilmerHale and co-counsel previously settled with the City of Buffalo for the police misconduct after the Buffalo Common Council issued a proclamation celebrating their exonerations and admitting they were framed.
WilmerHale has devoted almost 16,000 hours in attorney time pro bono representing John and Darryl. Besides Firsenbaum, WilmerHale’s team included Counsel Gideon Hanft, Senior Associates Erin Hughes, Phoebe Silos, and Trena Riley, and Associate Melissa Zubizarreta, along with numerous staff and former colleagues.
“As I stated in my summation, it has been the honor of a lifetime for me personally, and for our entire team, to represent Darryl and John in this case,” Firsenbaum said. “I told both Darryl and John when I first met them that I appreciated that in 1976 they felt like the government had all the power and that they never had a fair fight, and I promised them that in these civil cases we would do everything we could to uncover the real facts and help them clear their names.
“The verdict for Darryl’s estate completed that process, Firsenbaum added. “I am grateful to WilmerHale’s commitment to justice and devotion of resources to cases like Darryl and John’s, and to the Rudin and Hoover & Durland firms for their true partnership in securing a truly historic outcome.”
Pictured (Left to Right): Trena Riley, Stanley Maderich, Ross Firsenbaum, Gideon Hanft, Phoebe Silos, Erin Hughes and Melissa Zubizaretta.