Handling Your First or Next Police Misconduct Appeal

SUMMARY

Whether you are pursuing or defending an appeal, you'll be confronted with a different set of procedures, legal standards, and strategic considerations than you deal with at the trial court level. This essential CLE course will provide an overview of everything a police misconduct litigator needs to know if they have a case going before a federal circuit court. Seasoned appellate advocate Jim Davy will advise attendees on all aspects of a Section 1983 appeal including what to consider when seeking appellate review, tactics for defending against interlocutory appeals, available resources, and so much more. 

DATE and TIME

Thursday, May 16, 2024

• 2:00pm - 3:30pm PST
• 3:00pm - 4:30pm MST
• 4:00pm - 5:30pm CST
• 5:00pm - 6:30pm EST

A NOTE ON TIME ZONES

Please note that any time not listed with a timezone can be assumed to be in Central Standard Time (CST).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jim Davy

Jim Davy is the founder of All Rise Trial & Appellate, where he advises individuals and organizations on trial and appellate strategy covering a wide range of issues affecting the rights and interests of marginalized people. In addition to numerous prisoners, pretrial detainees, detained immigrants, and other people caught up in the criminal justice system, Jim has represented organizations like the ACLU, the National Police Accountability Project, Public Justice, the National Women’s Law Center, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Upturn, the Juvenile Law Center, United Academics of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Bail Fund, and the National Employment Law Project. He regularly collaborates with public interest organizations and law firms to litigate high-leverage impact cases in federal courts across the country, and is a member of the National Police Accountability Project.

Among other victories, Jim has:

1. dispatched an interlocutory appeal of a denial of qualified immunity, rejecting much of the officer’s challenge as fact-based an inappropriate for appellate review, see Rush v. City of Philadelphia; Officer Richard Nicoletti, 78 F.4th 610 (3d Cir. 2023);

2. co-counseled a successful petition to the en banc Ninth Circuit, resulting in an opinion holding that universities can control off-campus contexts for Title IX purposes, see Brown v. State of Arizona, 82 F.4th 863 (9th Cir. 2023) (en banc);

3. won the first appellate opinion holding that schools can be liable under Title IX for deliberate indifference to sex-based harassment by non-student guests, see Hall v. Millersville, 22 F.4th 397 (3d Cir. 2022);

4. exempted several categories of claims from PLRA exhaustion based on the plain text of a state grievance policy, see Miles v. Anton, 42 F.4th 777 (7th Cir. 2022);

5. clarified state liability for dry-celling prisoners, see Thomas v. Tice, 948 F.3d 133 (3d Cir. 2020); 

6. expanded due process rights for detained immigrants, see E.D. v. Sharkey, 928 F.3d 299 (3d Cir. 2019); 

7. prevailed on a petition for habeas corpus for an incarcerated person who never got a direct appeal, see Ross v. Bush, No. 19-3947 (3d Cir. 2022);

8. confirmed that a prison’s denial of treatment for hepatitis C can state a civil rights claim, see Johnson v. Peterson, 847 F. App’x 343 (6th Cir. 2021);

9. prompted the Commonwealth Court to hold that the Pa. Dep’t of Labor & Industry’s practice of failing to transmit unemployment claimants’ full records to hearing referees violates due process, see Kozicki v. UCBR, 299 A.3d 1055 (Pa. Commw. Ct. 2023);

10. helped make autopsy records of in-custody deaths available to academic researchers, see Coroner v. Keel, No. 242 C.D. 2023 (Pa. Commw. Ct. Dec. 7, 2023);

11. won release for a formerly life-sentenced man in a compassionate release petition with novel legal theories, see United States v. Marshall, 604 F.Supp.3d 277 (E.D. Pa. 2022);

12. improved family visitation at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, see Woods v. Marler, No. 17-cv-4443 (E.D. Pa. 2018); and 

13. secured the largest settlement the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has ever paid to settle a claim that its employees failed to protect a prisoner from sexual assault. 

His amicus briefs have also been cited by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in opinions declining to implement risk assessment algorithms during bail reform, see Philadelphia Community Bail Fund v. First Judicial District; in rejecting Uber’s argument that its drivers are self-employed small business owners, see Lowman v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review; and in ordering release of a juvenile wrongly transferred to adult court, see Commonwealth v. Taylor.  

Previously, Jim has been a law fellow at the nation’s largest labor union, and a staff attorney at state and national non-profit civil rights organizations, where he litigated individual and class action cases against the Trump Justice Department, the Parish Attorneys and Sheriffs of Louisiana, and numerous prisons and other correctional facilities. He clerked for the Hon. L. Felipe Restrepo of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Public Interest Law Scholar and was an editor of the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law & Policy. 

Jim is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Eleventh, D.C. and Federal Circuits; in the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle, and Western Districts of Pennsylvania and the District of the District of Columbia; and at the U.S. Supreme Court.

ACCREDITATION

This event is currently pending accreditation. We will be applying for 1.5 general CLE credits with the State Bar of California. Most states will accept credits for programs approved by other state bars. For attendees whose states require additional documentation or support from out of state CLE sponsors, we will be happy to assist. Please feel free to contact Re'Neisha Stevenson at assistant.npap@nlg.org if you have any questions.

EVENT RECORDING

This event will be recorded and available for viewing to individuals who register.