Filed a civil rights suit against the detention center for violating the substantive due process rights of a 13-year-old boy with serious mental health problems by failing to protect him from harm while being detained at the center.
Brought a Section 1983 civil rights damage action on behalf of a foster youth who had been in foster care for three and a half years without any judicial review and without the provision of services to help him return home to his family by the county child welfare agency.
Represented Pennsylvania children in challenging the way the state implemented the funding formula that paid for services for delinquent and dependent children.
Filed a civil rights class action lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania law and practices that governed the detention of youth charged with committing delinquent acts.
Juvenile Law Center and two private attorneys filed this brief on behalf of an eleven-year-old charged with the murder of his stepmother. The brief argued that the trial court’s interpretation of the transfer statute requiring the juvenile’s confession at the pre-adjudicatory decertification hearing in order to demonstrate his ability to be rehabilitated in the juvenile system was in violation of his right against self-incrimination and rights to due process and fundamental fairness under both the Pennsylvania and United States Constitutions.
Argued that J.B. should be released from detention pending his adjudicatory hearing in juvenile court because his unlawful detention violates Pennsylvania's Juvenile Act; challenged J.B.'s sentence as against the weight of the evidence.
Argued that a sentence of 110 years to life (three consecutive life-terms) for a non-homicide offense committed as a juvenile violates the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Graham v. Florida.
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