Foster Care

Several years ago, the Bazelon Mental Health Law Center and the ACLU decided to do something to address the foster care system in Alabama, which was one of the worst in the nation.  After evaluating the striking evidence they had compiled to demonstrate that the system was failing Alabama’s most vulnerable children, I agreed to join with them to bring a  class action on behalf of all emotionally disturbed children in the State of Alabama against Alabama’s child welfare agency, challenging the constitutionality of the system.  I served as lead counsel for all legal issues. After the federal court upheld our legal theories, the State settled the case by entering into a consent decree requiring a complete overhaul of the system.  This was a landmark case which allowed us to monitor the foster care system for many years and transformed it, in many ways, into a model for the nation.

Public Schools

I turned my attention next to the public school system in Alabama which clearly was failing  Alabama’s children.  The system consistently was ranked at or near the very bottom nationally.  I agreed to file a class action on behalf of all of the school children in Alabama’s public schools, challenging the constitutionality of the State’s public education system on both minimum standards and equity grounds and a group of terrific lawyers took on the case.  The Court struck down a segregationist era State constitutional amendment which had removed the right to a public education from Alabama’s Constitution and eventually, the entire public school system was declared unconstitutional.

Indigent Defense

After visiting a number of rural county jails in Alabama and seeing how they were warehousing poor criminal defendants who simply had no resources for bail and who waited months and even years before an initial appearance and without ever meeting with a lawyer,  I decided that something had to be done.  With the support of the Southern Poverty Law Center, I brought a class action on behalf of all indigent criminal defendants alleging that Alabama’s system for providing legal assistance to indigent defendants deprived such defendants of their rights to effective assistance of counsel. The case was settled with the establishment of all new procedures governing initial appearances and the appointment of counsel process and in the construction of a new county jail for pretrial detainees in the county where the lead plaintiff had been housed.

State Prisons

All of Alabama’s State prisoners after sentencing are processed through Kilby State Prison, a large old facility which also houses mentally ill inmates and others requiring segregation in special units.  After touring the facility and its shockingly barbaric segregation unit at the request of a federal judge, I filed a class action on behalf of all inmates confined in the segregation unit at the prison and asked the Southern Poverty Law Center to help. The action challenged all conditions of confinement. The case was settled with the requirement that the state open its prison to outside experts for remodeling and for the development of all new procedures regarding conditions of confinement in the segregation unit.

In another case, two indigent state prisoners had filed a pro se Complaint in federal court on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, alleging that the Alabama prison system discriminates against African-American inmates in its process for awarding institutional good time credit. The prisoners were appointed an attorney who did virtually no work on the case and a judgment was entered against them at their trial.  They were denied the right to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal by both the District Court and the United States Court of Appeals.  I was asked by an Eleventh Circuit judge to represent these inmates on appeal. I argued to the Eleventh Circuit that, even though the trial court appointment of counsel for these inmates had been discretionary, once a trial court appoints counsel in such cases, counsel cannot be permitted to proceed in a manner which is so deficient that it works to the detriment of the indigent litigants. The Court of Appeals reversed the lower court judgment and ordered a new trial.

Through my class action prison litigation work, I also have been asked by various federal judges to take on selected damages actions involving prisoners in particularly egregious situations.  One such case I handled was for a female inmate in Alabama’s only state prison facility for women. The woman was locked in a room without running water, bathroom facilities, or any air conditioning for five days. She was given a bedpan and was forced to dig through her excrement with a stick and dispose of the contents of the bedpan out the window of her room. This barbaric treatment was forced upon her purportedly because of suspicion that she had shared a needle with an HIV positive inmate and had the needle hidden somewhere in her body. At trial, I obtained a judgment for money damages, which was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

County Jails

Most of Alabama’s counties are rural with antiquated jails housing inmates in conditions which are unconstitutional in many ways and most are unconstitutionally overcrowded. There is no public support to remedy the situation and generally it can only be addressed when inmates, often serving short sentences or being held pre-trial, are willing to risk incurring the wrath of a local sheriff by complaining, only to help those who come after them.  I decided to use class actions to try to address the problem.  These cases have resulted in the construction of many new county jails, under court order, in the end with the tacit support of the sheriff who only could get a new jail built if the county were under court order.  In each case, in addition to the new jail, the county has had to update its policies as well.

In some instances, I have combined injunctive relief actions seeking a new jail and updated conditions and policies with damages actions to address specific injuries flowing from the unconstitutional conditions.  In one case, for example, I represented a highly decorated Vietnam veteran inmate who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Because of the complete indifference to his medical condition and as a result of other barbaric conditions of confinement, he was injured at the jail.  The county paid him money damages for his injuries and when other inmates agreed to pursue his conditions’ claims as part of a class action, the County was forced to build a new jail and implement appropriate policies and conditions of confinement in the new facility.