LEGAL ADVOCACY
PJI is a different kind of civil rights organization. We do not follow any national agenda or framework. We confront issues and take on cases that, very often, no other organization will venture to challenge.
PJI’s legal advocacy blurs the traditional lines of litigation and advocacy to strategically and effectively fight for the fundamental rights of our incarcerated clients. Our methodology is client-centered and community-partnered.
STRATEGIC CRIMINAL LITIGATION
PJI’s Civil Litigation team engages in complex, multiyear civil rights impact lawsuits with an approach that is client-centered and data-driven. We work with people formerly and currently incarcerated and their families to identify where the rights of people in prison are being violated.
CIVIL LITIGATION
PJI’s Strategic Criminal Litigation team identifies, exposes, and fights systemic barriers, flaws, and unlawfulness in the criminal legal system. We challenge excessive sentencing schemes, unlawful convictions, and right past harms that have condemned our clients to decades or lifetimes in prison.
In the past three years, PJI has brought home dozens of clients through post-conviction mechanisms, saving collectively over 1,200 years of prison time.
Home after 35 years.
Herman Evans
Herman Evans was serving life in prison for murder a murder that occurred in 1987 until the true killer came forward and confessed.
That confession happened in 2012 but fell on deaf ears in the courts until PJI was able to demonstrate that withheld evidence also contributed to his wrongful conviction.
ACTIVE CASES
STATUS: ON-GOING
VOTE v. LeBlanc
ENDING FORCED PLANTATION LABOR
As part of our End Plantation Prisons project, Promise of Justice Initiative and Rights Behind Bars filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Prison Enterprises challenging the harsh and unconstitutional conditions of forced agricultural labor at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola.
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