Litigation

Officer Te’Juan Johnson and his partner responded to a 911 call reporting that Amylyn Slaymaker’s husband was assaulting her. Despite knowing of the husband’s access to firearms, history of violence, and suicidal behavior, Johnson falsely told Ms. Slaymaker that her husband would be detained for 24 hours when Johnson knew the husband would not be. That duplicity led Ms. Slaymaker to believe it was safe to go home, where her husband killed her. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting for those who are put in danger by police misconduct.

  Phillip Weeks, a local activist who runs the non-profit news site The Gram, has filed suit against the City of St. Louis for violating the state’s Sunshine Law by refusing to give him information about vehicle stops conducted by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD).   In denying Weeks’ request, SLMPD has claimed...

While Matthew Locke was peacefully protesting, a county sheriff and his chief deputy used extreme and gratuitous “pain compliance” tactics on him, causing him severe pain and neurological injury. The district court threw out Mr. Locke’s excessive-force suit based on the judicially invented doctrine of qualified immunity. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting to ensure...

The MacArthur Justice Center, alongside our partners at the Southern Poverty Law Center, have taken up Ms. Jewell’s case on appeal to correct this erroneous and unjust application of the felony murder doctrine and ensure that good and decent people like Ms. Jewell not be branded as murderers for tragic but unintentional accidents.

Officer Xeng Lor shot our client, Xyavier Calliste, twice through the driver’s side door of his car as Mr. Calliste was leaving a parking garage at the Charlotte airport. Recognizing that Lor faced no imminent threat that would justify deadly force, the district court denied Lor summary judgment and qualified immunity. MacArthur Justice Center co-counseled with civil rights attorney Micheal Littlejohn Jr. to represent Mr. Calliste on appeal and ensure that he can go to trial to vindicate his Fourth Amendment rights.

The State of Florida sentenced Sadik Baxter, at the age of 26, to spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole for an accidental death that he did not cause, intend, or play any role in bringing about. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting alongside Mr. Baxter to bring an end to extreme sentences for felony murder that are wildly out of proportion to the person’s culpability.

Gabriel Bassford, proceeding pro se, sued police officers for arresting him simply for filming the police as they conducted an investigation at a gas station. The district court concluded that the officer arrested Mr. Bassford in retaliation for him exercising his First Amendment right to film the police.

We are representing the Estate of Atatiana Jefferson, who was tragically shot and killed in her own home by a Fort Worth Police Department officer.

The Miami Police Department (MPD) has a long-standing, widespread policy and practice of targeting community members with unlawful detentions and false arrests as well as a history of failing to hold accountable police officers who violate the law. MPD officers are accused of unlawful detentions and false arrests three times more often than police officers...

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.