People's Law Office (PLO) is a law office in Chicago, Illinois, which focuses on public interest law, representing clients believed to have been the subject of attacks by governmental officials and agencies. It was founded in 1969. Clients have included political activists, people who have been wrongfully arrested and imprisoned, or subjected to excessive force; and criminal defendants.
History In the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention held in Chicago, where hundreds of people were arrested and criminally charged during massive protests, a group of lawyers decided they wanted to work in and with the movement for social and political change. They wanted to set up a law firm to be part of that movement, with a workload based on political events and involvements, rather than the usual constraints of a law firm. PLO was organized as a non-hierarchical collective. All attorneys who work at the office for more than a few years become equal partners, having an equal say in decisions about running the office and receiving equal pay, and consulting with other attorneys and office staff about office decisions.Jeffrey Haas. The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill. 2010). pp. 43-60.
Legal work
Black Panther Party In its early years, PLO was notable for its representation of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and in particular for representing Fred Hampton, one of the leaders of the BPP in Chicago. Hampton and another BPP leader, Mark Clark, were killed in a police raid of Hampton's apartment in the early morning hours of December 4, 1969. PLO lawyers took the lead in investigating the case and exposing as a lie the police story of a shoot-out with people in the apartment. PLO lawyers were able to demonstrate that the police fired all but one of the shots exchanged. Further, they publicly established that the police had conducted a "shoot-in" and murder.Haas, Jeffrey. The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther"The Assassination of Fred Hampton, Democracy Now, 4 December 2009chicago-police-forty-years-later "The Assassination of Fred Hampton by the FBI and Chicago Police Forty Years Later", Monthly Review, 1 December 2009
Subsequently, PLO and associated lawyers filed a civil suit related to the raid. Their investigation and the trial revealed that the federal government was involved in the raid. It was part of the FBI COINTELPRO program designed to destroy the Panthers. Hampton's bodyguard was documented as an FBI informant. PLO lawyers Jeffrey Haas and G. Flint Taylor, together with attorney James D. Montgomery, served as trial counsel for the 18-month trial. It was presided over Judge Sam Perry. The trial ended with a hung jury, but the judge entered judgment in favor of the government defendants. This decision was reversed on appeal, with the federal appeals court finding that there was substantial evidence of a conspiracy between the FBI, Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan and the police to murder Hampton and destroy the Panthers. After the case was sent back to the trial court and a new judge, it was settled in the early 1980s for a then-unprecedented $1.85 million.
Attica Prison rebellion PLO lawyers took the lead in the legal representation of the Attica prisoners following the 1971 Attica Prison rebellion in upstate New York. Following the suppression of the uprising and the killing by law enforcement of 39 guards and prisoners, the PLO lawyers were some of the first outsiders to enter the prison. They worked on several cases in which prisoners sought relief from maltreatment and abuse by guards following the riot.
When 62 prisoners were charged with crimes arising from the rebellion, but no government officials were charged in the 39 deaths or alleged abuse of prisoners following suppression of the rising, several PLO lawyers relocated to Buffalo, New York, the site of the criminal trials. They worked with other lawyers, law students and paralegals to defend the prisoners. Eventually, almost all the prisoners were acquitted, or the charges against them were dismissed. In 1976, New York Governor Hugh Carey pardoned all of the prisoners who had pleaded guilty in return for reduced sentences. He commuted the sentences of the two prisoners who had been convicted at trial. PLO lawyers joined with other attorneys to file a civil case for damages on behalf of the prisoners and against the state correctional system. This case continued for years, and eventually resulted in a settlement for the prisoners of $12 million.
Representing prisoners PLO also represented prisoners in several other prisons in the 1970s, challenging the segregation of prisoner organizers, fighting against prison behavior modification units, later named "control units;" and defending jailhouse lawyers. After an uprising at Pontiac prison in 1978, PLO lawyers helped coordinate the legal defense of the prisoners charged with crimes. Seventeen of the prisoners were charged in capital cases that were subject to the death penalty. All the prisoners charged with capital crimes were eventually acquitted or the charges were dropped. PLO also litigated to improve medical care in prisons. In Green v. Carlson, PLO sued federal Bureau of Prisons officials for the death of a prisoner at Terre Haute Federal Prison and eventually obtained a ruling from the United States Supreme Court upholding the right of a prisoner to bring a cruel and unusual punishment claim for damages against federal officials. And in Cleavinger v. Saxner, PLO lawyers represented two prisoners who had been disciplined for petitioning for the improvement of medical care at Terre Haute prison. The U.S. Supreme Court held that prison officials were properly held liable in money damages for this wrongful discipline. PLO continues to work with prisoners today and is currently involved with litigation involving the lack of medical care for prisoners, and the failure to effectively prevent jail suicide.
Support for the Puerto Rican independence movement In the 1970s the office agreed to represent Puerto Rican defendants who were part of the independence movement: Oscar Collazo, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Irvin Flores, Lolita Lebrón, and Rafael Cancel Miranda. Collazo had been convicted in the attempted assassination of President Truman in 1950. The other four had been convicted in the United States Capitol shooting incident (1954). (Cordero was released from prison in 1978 because he had terminal cancer). In 1979, the sentences of the four remaining in prison were unconditionally commuted and they were released.
The office also represented other militant proponents of Puerto Rican independence, fighting subpoenas issued against supporters of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) fugitives and other pro-independence activists. In 1980, when 11 alleged FALN members were arrested and charged with numerous criminal offenses including seditious conspiracy, they refused to recognize the authority of the U.S. courts. They asserted they were prisoners of war rather than criminal defendants. PLO lawyers prepared ing a petition to the U.N. Decolonization Committee and the Human Rights Commission in support of their position.
When other alleged FALN members were charged with seditious conspiracy in 1985, PLO lawyers helped defend them. All of these defendants were convicted and most sentenced to lengthy prison terms. in 1985, PLO began to represent an alleged member of the Macheteros, a clandestine pro- Puerto Rican independence organization, who was charged, with others, in Hartford, Connecticut with conspiracy to rob Wells Fargo of $7.3 million.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the office monitored the prison conditions of the Puerto Rican political prisoners. They spoke and wrote about violations of their human rights, participating in meetings with the Department of Justice and the White House, advocating for their release, and coordinating with the campaign for their release. In 1999, in response to this movement, President Bill Clinton arranged gradual release of most of the prisoners after they served more time. Oscar López Rivera, did not accept the release offer, as it required him to serve an additional ten years and did not include all of the prisoners. Those prisoners not included in President Clinton's offer were released in 2009 and 2010. Before leaving office in 2017 President Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar Rivera, allowing him to be released on May 17, 2017. Since his release, Oscar Rivera has made several public appearances throughout Puerto Rico and the United States. The decision of the New York Puerto Rican Day parade to honor Rivera generated controversy, with some sponsors withdrawing their support. In response, Rivera withdrew as an honoree, although he did march in the parade.
Representing demonstrators and activists From its inception, PLO has represented a wide range of political demonstrators and activists in the United States. In the 1970s this included the BPP, the Young Lords, Young Patriots, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the anti-Vietnam-war movement, militant community organizations such as Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park and the Latin American Defense Organization, Iranian students demonstrating in the 1970s against the Shah and his secret police (SAVAK), Palestinian students protesting against Israeli Day, Dennis Brutus, a South African poet and political activist who the government was attempting to deport, demonstrators against U.S. intervention in Central America, activists arrested for civil disobedience and sanctuary networking, anti-intervention and anti-nuclear demonstrators who were alleged to have trespassed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, women who were arrested on International Women's Day for chaining themselves to the Playboy Club, demonstrators arrested at protests against the Rock Island Arsenal, Pledge of Resistance demonstrators, Armed Forces Day demonstrators, Hiroshima Day demonstrators, and Sanctuary supporters, anti-apartheid protestors, toxic waste demonstrators, homeless activists, anti-CIA protesters, anti-Zionist protesters, and demonstrators who protested discriminatory Chicago Transit Authority hiring practices. In the 1980s PLO continued this work, joining in protests against U.S. involvement in Central America, South Africa, and the Middle East. It represented activists who were arrested for direct action and civil disobedience, as well as activists from many different organizations, including student groups, the Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition (a pro-choice direct action group), Homeless on the Move for Equality, Greenpeace, Queer Nation, ADAPT (a disability rights activist group), activists protesting the lack of Latino hiring at the Chicago Transit Authority, and ACORN. The office also defended the Pledge of Resistance and Queer Nation against injunctions brought against them.
In the 1990s PLO worked with AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), coordinating legal observers at demonstrations and providing representation in criminal and civil courts. At a demonstration against the American Medical Association in June, 1991, 27 ACT UP members were arrested and brutalized by Chicago police. PLO participated in the criminal defense where most charges were thrown out, and then filed and successfully litigated civil rights complaints on behalf of several of the demonstrators.