Leading death penalty and civil rights lawyer and Director of the Squire Patton Boggs Public Service Initiative George H. Kendall was presented with the 2017 Norman Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award by the New York City Bar Association’s Capital Punishment Committee at its annual Capital Defense Training Program. This award honors Dean Redlich’s legacy by recognizing those members of the New York bar who “emulate his life-long dedication to challenging the death penalty.”
The Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award is given periodically to an individual who has demonstrated outstanding lifetime commitment to capital defense work, whether as counsel for a capital defendant or as an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
For more than 35 years, Mr. Kendall has handled capital, criminal and civil rights cases around the US at trial, on appeal and in post-conviction proceedings, including in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Kendall regularly consults with capital defense lawyers nationwide and has worked with the Defender Services Division of the Administrative Office of the US Courts in improving the quality of legal representation in federal criminal cases and has also worked closely with The Innocence Project and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) on policy initiatives.
Mr. Kendall frequently appears as a panelist or keynote speaker at capital litigation seminars. He is the Chair of the Board of the Death Penalty Information Center. In addition to serving as a member of the Advisory Group for the Georgetown University Law Center Supreme Court Institute, Mr. Kendall has taught courses on criminal justice at several law schools, including Yale Law School, Florida State University College of Law and St. John’s School of Law, and currently teaches an externship with PSI colleagues at Columbia Law School.
In addition to the Norman Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award, Mr. Kendall is the recipient of numerous awards for his life-long dedication to bring access to justice for those who are denied it or forgotten by the system, including: the Equal Justice Champion Award from the Equal Justice Initiative; the Constitutional Champion Award from The Constitution Project; the Life in the Balance Achievement Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association; the New York State Defenders Association Service of Justice Award; and the John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award from the American Bar Association.