EDLC Enlists the Heller Ehrman Law Firm
At EDLC's request, a team of attorneys from Heller Ehrman, led by Marcia Newlands, a partner in the Seattle office, began working on the case. Newlands immediately accepted the local lawyers' invitation to travel to Mexico for a week to meet with government officials involved in the case. She quickly began to utilize and develop all manner of contacts.
Newlands also generated interest and involvement on the part of staff and members of the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and numerous Mexican and Latin American environmental and human rights non-governmental organizations. She succeeded in having articles about the case published in Mexican newspapers, obtained U.N. staff participation, and pressured the Attorney General of Mexico to meet to discuss the case. A more comprehensive and strategic effort could not have been mounted.
Victory
These efforts succeeded. Just three months after the firm became involved, Mexican Attorney General Macedo de la Concha held a 
press conference to announce that Mexico was dropping the charges against Baldenegro and his co- defendant, Hermenegildo Rivas. Both men were unconditionally released from prison, and the arresting officers were then charged criminally with wrongful arrest.
Randall Gingrich, then the director of the Sierra Madre Alliance, is convinced that the two men would still be in jail and facing lengthy prison terms were it not for the efforts of Marcia Newlands and the Heller Ehrman team:
"Thanks largely to Marcia's efforts, a Tarahumara leader, Isidro Baldenegro was released from prison. It is rare that a U.S. law firm would give pro bono services to indigenous leaders in remote and neglected regions of the world who are engaged in struggles for their land, forest, and cultural survival. It is even rarer that a U.S. attorney would go far beyond strictly legal strategies in the international sphere, utilizing every diplomatic, civic and legal tool available to gain her client’s release."
In April 2005, Marcia Newlands and Lewis Gordon, EDLC's Director, watched Isidro Baldenegro accept the Goldman Environmental Prize - long considered to be the "Nobel Prize" for grassroots environmental activists- before an audience of 3,000 people at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. The last time Newlands had seen her client was in his jail cell in Chihuahua.
Isidro Baldenegro
Our territories are not recognized, logging companies invade our lands, and those involved in illegal activities control our lives.
- Isidro Baldenegro, accepting the Goldman
Environmental Prize.