Graves Dougherty has applied its appellate experience to the pro bono representation of clients in consequential cases:

• Graves Dougherty participated in an appeal decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the point at which a criminal defendant is entitled to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Tex, 128 S. Ct. 2578 (2008).
• On behalf of participants in a federal-state temporary assistance program, Graves Dougherty invalidated a Texas rule that threatened to terminate the participants’ medical benefits in violation of federal law. Comacho v. Tex. Workforce Comm’n, 408 F.3d 229 (5th Cir. 2005).
• Representing a man with mental retardation who had been on Texas’s death row for thirty years, Graves Dougherty persuaded the State’s highest criminal court to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. Ex parte Bell, 152 S.W.2d 103 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).