In early 2014, Alexander Baxter was bitten by a police dog that was unleashed on him while he was sitting with his hands in the air, having surrendered to police. He sued for excessive force, but in late 2018, a federal appeals court ruled that his claim should be thrown out under the doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Decarceration has always been an emergency, a life and death proposition, but COVID-19 makes this effort intensely urgent. The ACLU has been working with our partners to litigate for the rights of those who are incarcerated and cannot protect themselves because of the policies of the institutions in which they are jailed.

As of January 2020, over 4,600 individuals, roughly 600 of whom are currently in pretrial detention, were on the waiting list for an attorney in the State of Missouri. These individuals have been charged with crimes and have already qualified for a court-appointed attorney but are being forced to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for one to become available due to an overburdened indigent defense system. As a result, a criminal defendant will likely wait months, or sometimes even years, before they are assigned an attorney.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and the ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project filed a federal lawsuit in May of 2013, on behalf of Plaintiffs Gilbert Weber and Tyrone Hightower, challenging the Grand Rapids Police Department's longstanding practice of arresting innocent people for criminal trespass on commercial property without warning and without the business owner's knowledge. Even where those arrested are patronizing the business in question, police justify these illegal arrests by pointing to form letters signed by business owners months or years prior to the arrest agreeing to prosecute "trespassers."

In Oklahoma cash bail is being used keep poor people behind bars. In Canadian County, Oklahoma if you have the money, you get out of jail. If you are poor, you stay in. That’s why we sued.