Michael Biehl, '14: Kirkland & Ellis Associate Helps Firm Win Seventh Circuit Case that Furthers the Rights of Incarcerated Pro Se Litigants
The Posner Effect (With Help from Kirkland & Ellis)
When Judge Richard Posner in September abruptly retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, he levelled pointed criticism at his colleagues on the bench for failing to do enough to help pro se litigants.
“Most judges regard these people as kind of trash not worth the time of a federal judge,” he told The New York Times.
On Tuesday, his fellow Seventh Circuit judges offered something of a response, issuing a remarkable decision that bends over backwards to try to make sure pro se litigants in prison aren’t shut out of the justice system.
It’s a nice win for lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, who working pro bono represented inmate Cordell Sanders on appeal along with co-counsel from the MacArthur Justice Center.
Fourth-year litigation associate Michael Biehl, who was supervised by partner R. Allan Pixton, handled the oral argument, and described his client’s plight as “very disturbing.”
For the past eight years, Sanders has been in solitary confinement at the Pontiac Correctional Center, and the prison intends to keep him in solitary for 10 more. He’s classified as seriously mentally ill, diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder and schizoaffective disorder.
In his handwritten (but impressively lucid) pro se complaint filed last year in the Central District of Illinois, he acknowledges being kept in isolation due to his “angry, aggressive behavior towards others … with the episodes of anger being grossly out of proportion to any provocation.”
But he says the prison is violating his civil rights by denying him medication and therapy, has failed to devise a treatment plan, and that the isolating stress of being in solitary confinement is making his mental illness worse. Moreover, he said he hasn’t been allowed in the prison yard or outside for exercise since 2013.
Read more at The Litigation Daily