Professors Debra Cohen (right) and Randy McLaughlin (left) were honored last night by the Westchester Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute for Nonviolence and each received a “Champion of Justice” award for their civil rights advocacy.

DEBRA S. COHEN

Debra S. Cohen resolves civil-rights, open-government, and land-use issues by effectively utilizing litigation, negotiation, media and community-organizing strategies. A graduate of Vassar College and Pace University Law School, where she has been an Adjunct Professor of Civil Rights Law since 2005, Ms. Cohen has served as special counsel to several municipalities and local officials in Westchester County, offering guidance on a myriad of ethical and legal issues.

Following her graduation cum laude from Pace University Law School in 1998, Ms. Cohen co-founded the law school's Social Justice Center, where she was the first staff attorney and then Associate Director. She has served as counsel on a number of civil-rights cases--including representing the family of Charles Campbell, who was shot and killed in 1996 by an off-duty New York City police officer in a dispute over a parking space. The police officer was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison, and a federal jury awarded the family $4.5 million in damages in the civil suit.

Ms. Cohen has represented a wide variety of clients alleging civil-rights violations by police, schools, government officials, and employers, and has assisted both individuals and organizations seeking assistance with open-government and land-use concerns. Among her many accomplishments, Ms. Cohen has represented a developer in Yonkers, New York, who obtained approval to build a community-oriented, "smart" development that includes a twenty-five-story residential building, a hydroponic garden, and the preservation and incorporation of historic structures within the project.

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RANDY'S BIO:

RANDOLPH M. MCLAUGHLIN

Professor Randolph M. McLaughlin, a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, became Of Counsel to Newman Ferrara LLP in September 2011. Professor McLaughlin is a faculty member at Pace University School of Law, where he teaches courses focusing on civil rights, litigation, labor law, voting rights, civil procedure, and New York practice. Before joining Pace's law faculty in 1988, Professor McLaughlin was associated with Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, where he specialized in civil litigation and labor law. In 1978, he began his legal career at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil-rights/civil-liberties legal organization in New York City. For eight years he worked side by side with the renowned civil-rights attorney William Kunstler. He was responsible for the management and coordination of important cases at both the trial and appellate levels, and pioneered the development of legal strategies to redress racially-motivated violence. In 1982, he won substantial monetary award for five black women who had been attacked by members of the Chattanooga Ku Klux Klan.

In 1985, Professor McLaughlin represented two civil-rights leaders in a constitutional- tort action against a former United States Senator, a Senate investigator, and a Kentucky prosecutor, in connection with the search and seizure of the plaintiffs' personal papers in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In that case, a federal jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.6 million dollars in compensatory damages. The case was featured in a book by Caroline Kennedy, entitled In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action (1981).

On February 20, 1997, Professor McLaughlin won a landmark victory in a voting-rights case against the Town of Hempstead, N.Y., entitled Goosby v. Town Board of the Town of Hempstead, 981 F. Supp. 751 (E.D.N.Y. 1997), aff'd, 180 F.3d 476 (2d. Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1138 (2000). A federal judge ruled that the town-wide method of electing the Town Council was discriminatory, and ordered that the system be dismantled.

In 1997, Professor McLaughlin represented the family of Charles Campbell, who had been killed during a dispute over a parking space in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. The shooter, an off-duty New York City police officer, was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of twenty years to life. Professor McLaughlin filed suit against the shooter and his alleged accomplices, and a federal jury eventually awarded the plaintiff $5 million dollars in damages.

In 2007, he intervened on behalf of a Hispanic political activist in a voting-rights lawsuit brought by the United States Department of Justice against the Village of Port Chester, N.Y. On January 17, 2008, the District Court found that the Village's at-large election system violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court ordered the Village to adopt a cumulative voting system to remedy the violations of federal law.

In addition to his litigation practice, Professor McLaughlin has represented and advised not-for-profit charities in connection with governance and best-practice issues. In 2001, Professor McLaughlin was appointed special counsel to Hale House Center, Inc.--founded in 1969 by Clara "Mother" Hale to provide 24-hour residential care for infants and toddlers who were born to drug addicted mothers who were unable to care for their children. Professor McLaughlin successfully negotiated a resolution of an investigation by the New York State Attorney General into the charity. After a new Board of Directors was appointed, Professor McLaughlin was retained to serve as general counsel to assist in the restructuring of the organization.