In July 2009, a team of Jones Day attorneys recruited by MAIP helped vacate the sentence of F.R., a 17-year-old boy from Ghana. F.R. had been convicted, held for months, and threatened with deportation for a crime he could not have committed.

The boy, who had been forced into involuntary servitude, was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor when he began a relationship with the fifteen-year-old daughter of the man who brought him to the United States. To commit this crime, the perpetrator must be 18, but F.R. was only 17. So, the girl’s father provided false documents saying he was 21 when he reported the relationship to the police.

Jones Day attorneys used the boy’s passport and birth records from Ghana to file a writ of error coram vobis. F.R. was released on July 30, 2009, after the Court granted his petition.