Litigation

Can a police officer who frames an innocent person be held accountable in court? Before the MacArthur Justice Center won the landmark Supreme Court decision in Thompson v. Clark, the answer across most of the country was no: Once the innocent person got the false charges against them dismissed, the police officer who fabricated or falsified evidence against them was immune from a civil lawsuit. We took that issue all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.

When Timothy Finley was in the midst of a severe mental health spiral, Michigan prison officials responded by imposing on him the one condition they knew was likely to make it worse: months of solitary confinement in a tiny windowless cell. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting to ensure that incarcerated people like Mr. Finley have their known psychiatric needs taken seriously, not punished with damaging social isolation.

The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting alongside Wayne Washington, who spent 14 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, to ensure that Illinois courts upholds the intent and purpose of the certificate of innocence statute to remove barriers that prevent innocent people from clearing their names and getting relief.

Instead of being helping Tony Timpa after he called the 911 due to a mental health crisis, responding officers from the Dallas Police Department (DPD) applied bodily force to his chest until he asphyxiated and suffocated him to death. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting to ensure police departments, like DPD, are answerable for their systemic failures to protect and serve the communities they swore an oath to instead of shielding officers from culpability with the qualified immunity doctrine.

UPDATE: In February 2022, the Tenth Circuit agreed with Mr. Thomas and sent the case back down to proceed in district court. The MacArthur Justice Center is proud to represent Mr. Thomas in partnership with Kirkland & Ellis as we seek to ensure that juvenile offenders like Mr. Thomas have the real possibility of release...

Update: The Ninth Circuit sided with Mr. Jones in an opinion making clear that prisons cannot use broad policies as an excuse to censor prisoners’ free expression. The court held that Mr. Jones had presented sufficient evidence that the Arizona Department of Corrections “selectively enforces” its regulations “against disfavored expression, rap and R&B musical genres.”...

On February 27, 2019, the MacArthur Justice Center obtained a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in Garza v. Idaho. In an opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court recognized that a criminal defendant has the constitutional right to an appeal where his defense attorney improperly forfeited it, and that this right...

Corey Williams was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder as an intellectually disabled 16-year old child, and spent 20 years in Louisiana prison for a crime that he did not commit. We represented Mr. Williams in a petition for certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court and obtained his immediate release from prison through a settlement with the State of Louisiana.

The MacArthur Justice Center filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Louisiana death-row inmate Rogers Lacaze, challenging his conviction based on serious issues of juror misconduct and judicial bias. Our brief laid out the split among the circuit courts and state courts of highest resort on these issues and urged the...

Prior to being incarcerated, Mr. Sanders was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. In prison, he was designated Seriously Mentally Ill. Nevertheless, for nearly ten years, Mr. Sanders was held in solitary confinement. As a result, his mental health deteriorated, he self-mutilated, and he attempted suicide. In 2016, Mr. Sanders filed a pro se lawsuit in which...