Washington, DC (2002, exact date unknown) -- John Wesley Hall, Jr., a criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, received the twenty-second Robert C. Heeney Memorial Award from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers last week at the NACDL annual meeting in San Francisco. The award is the NACDL's most prestigious award, given annually to the one criminal defense attorney who best exemplifies the goals and values of the association and the legal profession.
A 1973 graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law, Hall has been in private practice in Little Rock since 1979. Hall has a history of outstanding service to the NACDL, serving as a member of the board of directors, from 1989 to 1995, and again from 1997 until the end of his current term in 2003. He has held the position of NACDL Ethics Advisory Committee Chair or Co-Chair since 1991, when the committee was instituted to render confidential ethics advice to NACDL members. Hall is an NACDL liaison to the bar of the International Criminal Court and is currently working on the NACDL comments on the ethics rules for prosecutors and defense attorneys in the ICC. Hall also authors an average of one amicus curiae brief per year for NACDL in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hall is a frequent presenter at continuing legal education seminars in 35 states, speaking on search and seizure and ethics issues facing criminal defense attorneys. He is a past president of the Arkansas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, an NACDL affiliate, as well as the author of the publications Search and Seizure, Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Lawyer, and the Trial Handbook for Arkansas Lawyers.
Contacts
NACDL Communications Department
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's many thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal justice system.