The DJ has Jennifer Hansen's article: Farewell to an appellate giant who never sought the spotlight --Jonathan Demson, a quietly brilliant and fiercely dedicated solo appellate attorney who handled over 400 cases, argued four times in the California Supreme Court, and secured more than 150 reversals for defendants wrongly denied resentencing consideration, left an outsized impact on California criminal law despite never seeking recognition or publicity before his untimely death.
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.