Farewell to an appellate giant who never sought the spotlight

This past month the California appellate community lost an attorney who handled more than 400 cases in the Courts of Appeal and argued four times in the California Supreme Court, establishing precedents impacting criminal defendants across the state. At the time of his death, he was the attorney of record in more than 50 pending appellate cases in the Second District.

His name was Jonathan Demson, and you probably never heard of him. He was not a certified appellate specialist, he didn't have a website to solicit clients and he never took a private appeal. He avoided legal listservs and he was not a member of criminal defense or appellate legal associations. He worked alone and never publicized his wins, but he had an outsized impact as a sole practitioner, leaving more than 25 published opinions. Jonathan kept up on the law on his own and didn't take short cuts by relying on brief banks. He took on the most serious criminal cases and in the last six years he specialized in complex appeals in cases where courts applied retroactive changes to homicide law, earning a staggering 150 reversals for people who had been wrongly denied relief in the superior court.

I first met Jonathan in 2009, when we were both new to handling criminal appeals in California state court. We chatted at criminal law CLE trainings, and I learned that he had a significant civil legal career before deciding to shift to criminal appeals, having worked as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in the Civil Law Division. He never brought up his legal pedigree, but when I Googled him after our first meeting, I learned that he graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1988 and was the editor-in chief of the Law Journal at UC College of Law (formerly UC Hastings) in 1993. After working in New York, he came to Los Angeles to try writing for films but gravitated back to law when he started taking appointed criminal felony appeals. He taught himself state criminal law and applied his writing chops on behalf of imprisoned clients who could not afford attorneys.

Soon after we met, I started seeing Jonathan's briefs circulated as well-written samples by supervising attorneys at the California Appellate Project, the non-profit that oversees appointment of counsel in the Second District. He had a real gift for clear legal prose, which is valuable asset when trying to convince appellate justices to find in favor of clients who have committed violent crimes.

Jonathan orally argued all of his cases in the state's courts of appeal, which is not something most appointed criminal defense attorneys do. Before the option for remote argument, he drove down to the court of appeal courtroom on Second Street in Los Angeles for every one of his clients. At argument he was very formal and exceedingly respectful to his friends on the other side, who were always deputies from the Attorney General's Office. He was uber prepared yet not rehearsed, preferring a more conversational tone. If you listened, you could catch his Canadian accent.

In 2022, he briefed and argued the case of People v. Padilla (2022) 13 Cal. 5th 152 (Padilla) in the California Supreme Court. His task was to convince the Supreme Court to apply a voter-approved juvenile sentencing reform law to someone who was 16 at the time of his crime but was 40 years old by the time of Jonathan's argument. Jonathan expertly focused the court on the prior Supreme Court precedents that required applying ameliorative criminal laws as widely as constitutionally possible, demonstrating there was no constitutional bar to applying the current more youth-friendly laws to his former minor client. He won the case and in the last two and a half years, Padilla has already been cited in more than 200 opinions, standing for the premise that when an old criminal conviction is reopened the defendant should get the benefit of all new ameliorative laws. Padilla will have a lasting impact allowing defendants sentenced in California's era of mass incarceration to come back to court and have their sentences reconsidered by judges who can recalibrate overly punitive sentences.

Although most recently he was living outside of California, Jonathan had a small circle of appellate lawyers here with whom he regularly checked in, and I was lucky to be one of those people. We texted about new enraging court of appeal opinions and we chatted on the phone every few weeks, discussing cases with hard or novel legal issues. He gave me career advice when I changed jobs, and he liked to hear updates about my elementary school-aged kids.

In September, he had a tragic accident at home from which he never recovered. I sent him several unanswered text messages before I found out he was in the hospital. Now that he's gone I realize I don't know as much about him as I wish I did, which is why I feel compelled to make sure others know who he was and what an impact he had.   

He was truly gone too soon. After 15 years of dedicated work for his clients and the California criminal defense community, he still had more he wanted to accomplish, already scouting his next area of criminal law to master and the next cases to take on. Jonathan Demson will be missed greatly by his friends in the appellate defense community, many of whom, like me, have served or still serve as staff attorneys at the California Appellate Project.