Litigation

Alongside the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, the ACLU of Illinois, and the Legal Action Center, we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against the DuPage County Sheriff on behalf of Christine Finnigan to ensure she is provided with her prescribed medication for addiction treatment (also known as MAT) while...

Over 4,600 individuals, roughly 600 of whom are currently in pretrial detention, are waiting for an attorney in the State of Missouri. These individuals have been charged with crimes and qualify for a court-appointed attorney but are being forced to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for one to become available due to an...

John Buchanan is a transtibial, or below-the-knee, amputee who also has severe disabilities in his arm and hand. After ten months of pre-trial incarceration in Harris County Jail, guards abruptly punished Mr. Buchanan by moving him out of his handicapped-accessible cell and into one that made life intolerably difficult. For the next four months, housed...

The MacArthur Justice Center is pursuing a federal class action challenging the Missouri Parole Board’s demonstrated abuse of power, disregard for due process and failure to comply with state and federal law when it comes to youthful offenders previously given mandatory life without parole sentences.

Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled Unmastered.” Snoop Dogg’s “Tha Blue Carpet Treatment.” And Elijah Muhammad’s “Message to the Blackman in America.” The Arizona Department of Corrections confiscated those and other CDs and books from our client, Edward Lee Jones, citing various regulations about drug-related, sexual, or violent content. Meanwhile, other prisoners were allowed to watch TV shows like...

In every trial, attorneys receive a certain number of “peremptory strikes” that permit them to remove potential jurors without giving a reason. Since taking office in 1992, Evans and his employees have used peremptory strikes against Black jurors 4.4 times more frequently than white jurors. Even the Mississippi Supreme Court has taken notice, observing that...

An emergency class action lawsuit has been against Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, asking for the immediate release of medically vulnerable people in the Cook County Jail in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.

A cartoon of a police officer beating an unarmed civilian (caption: “protecting and serving the poop out of you”); a clip from a Chris Rock sketch entitled “How not to get your ass kicked by the police” (sample “tip” from the video: “get a white friend”); and a meme mocking police violence—these are among the...

Dustin Lance developed a painful and dangerous medical condition while in pretrial detention at the Pittsburg County Jail. He was in severe pain and pleaded with corrections officers for three days to help him. But they did not take him to the nurse or take any steps to provide the emergency medical care that he needed....

Mr. Lee has suffered from mental illness since childhood, having been hospitalized several times prior to his incarceration. His mental history makes him extremely vulnerable to solitary confinement. Within two months of isolation, he began to exhibit symptoms of severe mental illness, including speaking only in numbers and losing the ability to sign his own...