Jacob “Coby” Loup joined the firm in 2017, after clerking for the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He has had numerous successes at the firm, including writing the briefs that won the vacatur of a Suffolk County murder conviction in People v. Greenspan, 186 A.D.3d 505 (2d Dep’t 2020) and the vacatur of a Queens rape conviction in People v. King, 192 A.D.3d 1140 (2d Dep’t 2021); writing a successful motion to dismiss the indictment in the Greenspan case; and securing the immediate compassionate release from federal prison of a pro bono client at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In civil rights matters, he has obtained settlements totaling $6 million for a client who spent ten years in prison for a rape he did not commit and a settlement of $6.25 million for another client who was wrongfully imprisoned for almost ten years for attempted murder.
Coby has argued twice in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In one of those cases, Hurd v. Fredenburgh, 984 F.3d 1075 (2d Cir. 2021), the court established for the first time that it violates the Constitution to imprison a person past their mandatory conditional release date. In the other case, he argued a habeas appeal and, while the appeal was pending, negotiated a time-served deal for his client.
Coby graduated from Harvard Law School, where he received clinical training in criminal defense advocacy and defended clients in criminal court and in parole and prison disciplinary hearings. He was also an executive editor of the Law Review. Before law school, he was an investigator at a criminal defense and civil rights law firm in Denver, where he worked on cases involving police brutality, unlawful jail and prison conditions, and employment discrimination.