Since its founding in 2015, Sidley’s pro bono Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties Project has been a force for change in the pursuit of equal access to justice for all, including for prisoners who have been deprived of medical care, held in inhumane conditions, or subjected to violence or other constitutional violations.
“Sidley has a rich history of, and demonstrated commitment to, serving its clients in this area of law,” said Chicago office pro bono counsel Leslie Kuhn-Thayer, whose practice primarily focuses on the firm’s prisoners’ civil rights cases. “The opportunity to advocate for better conditions and humane treatment for prisoners is incredibly meaningful to me. Prisons are institutions designed to be isolated from the community, but lawyers can serve an important role in bringing to light violations where they exist, advocating for change where it’s needed, and serving as a voice for clients who may be limited in the ways they can exercise theirs.”
In recent years, such advocacy has spotlighted the harsh realities of solitary confinement through a variety of matters in the federal court system. The firm has contributed to a number of amicus briefs on behalf of psychologists and psychiatrists who have opined about the harms of solitary confinement, as well as on behalf of former correctional officials who have sought to educate courts about growing concerns over the use of the practice.
In 2024 alone, Sidley lawyers committed nearly 10,000 pro bono hours to five individual cases in New York federal court seeking redress for that state’s use of a particularly harsh version of solitary confinement known as administrative segregation, where prisoners are held in solitary conditions without a defined end date. “Keeping inmates in solitary without showing that they pose a current threat to the safety and security of the prison violates the civil rights of those prisoners,” said Sidley partner Ellen Dunn, who supervises the five administrative segregation cases. “There is no dispute that time must be served for serious crimes. But inhumane prison conditions defy substantive and procedural constitutional rights.”
In a recent victory, Sidley achieved a unanimous civil rights verdict for one of these pro bono clients, Wonder Williams, who spent nine continuous years in solitary confinement in New York state prisons. The verdict was against the Deputy Commissioner of the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and the Superintendent of Five Points Correctional Facility. After a five-day trial in September 2024 that included testimony from the client, as well as several fact and expert witnesses, the jury found that the defendants violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
Sidley worked with Mr. Williams to prepare for trial, where he described how his years in isolation in cells the size of a parking spot without meaningful human contact took a mental and physical toll. Mr. Williams’ medical expert also testified to the lasting severe psychological damage and mental anguish caused by long-term solitary confinement.
“This landmark case is the first time we saw solitary confinement in New York state prisons found to violate the Eighth Amendment,” said Sidley partner Sona De. “The jury’s unanimous verdict holding high-level prison officials accountable for that speaks volumes.”
“The verdict demonstrates that our client’s multiyear effort to tell his story of mistreatment was not in vain,” said Dunn. “The protections conferred by the U.S. Constitution have real meaning for incarcerated individuals.”
Mr. Williams “spoke genuinely about what he went through and how it impacted his life,” Kuhn-Thayer said. “Although it was undoubtedly difficult to relive, he conveyed to the jury what happened to him and painted a picture of what it meant to be locked in a small cell nearly every hour of every day for years on end.”
The jury determined that Mr. Williams was entitled to punitive damages, signaling that the jury was convinced that defendants’ actions were extreme. After the verdict, the parties settled the damages claim.
Mr. Williams was released from prison in 2021, and lives with his family.
Sidley is also pro bono co-counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center in an ongoing solitary confinement case on behalf of client Cordell Sanders. Incarcerated at Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois, Mr. Sanders lived for nearly a decade in solitary confinement without access to adequate mental health treatment. “He entered the prison system as a teen diagnosed with mental illness. When later placed in solitary confinement, his mental health worsened and he attempted suicide more than once,” Kuhn-Thayer said.
Mr. Sanders originally filed suit pro se in 2016, challenging the failure to provide him with constitutionally adequate mental health care and asserting that the deficient care he received exacerbated his mental illness and would continue to lead him to self-harm. Sidley became co-counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center in 2018 and helped Mr. Sanders file an amended complaint and litigate his case through the summary judgment stage. The team presented evidence to the court that Mr. Sanders’ treatment evinced deliberate indifference on the part of prison officials and mental health providers tasked with providing patient care.
“Mr. Sanders sought help, but he was often treated as a problem, not a patient. His worsening mental health and feelings of helplessness were a foreseeable result of his continued isolation and inconsistent, or nonexistent, treatment,” Kuhn-Thayer said.
In 2020, as summary judgment motions were pending and the team was preparing for trial, the district court erroneously dismissed the case as a sanction for alleged “fraud on the court,” based on asserted misstatements in the original pro se complaint. Sidley and the MacArthur Justice Center appealed the dismissal and won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, obtaining a reversal on the grounds that the district court’s finding of fraud on the court was clearly erroneous and the court abused its discretion by failing to consider lesser sanctions before dismissing Sanders’ complaint with prejudice.
On remand to the district court, summary judgment was decided in favor of the defendants. Sidley and the MacArthur Justice Center once again appealed, and the case was recently argued before the Seventh Circuit. During the appeal process, the team helped the client achieve a settlement with some of the defendants, while the appeal proceeds against the remaining defendants.
“Litigation is not always a straight path,” Kuhn-Thayer said. “There are ups and downs, and twists and turns. It is a privilege to earn the trust of our clients, to fight for them at each stage of the process, and to ensure they feel heard and seen.”