The Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project (PAP) is one of the nation’s leading law school civil rights clinics focusing on issues of race and criminal justice. Founded in 2000 by Clinical Professors Craig Futterman and Randolph Stone, we strive to be a grassroots, ground-up, community-based law school clinic. Founded in 2000 by Clinical Professors Craig Futterman and Randolph Stone, it strives to be a grassroots, ground-up, community-based law school clinic. Professor Futterman is the director. Below are its significant achievements for 2024-25.

At a time in which there are even greater challenges across the country to addressing racism and civil rights violations by law enforcement, our Clinic students continue to fight to improve police accountability, public safety, and police services in Chicago, while serving clients who would otherwise lack the means to access counsel. With attacks on the rule of law and threatened cuts to legal services for people in need, Clinic students have learned what it means to be ethical lawyers who serve their clients with integrity and maintain a commitment to due process and equal protection for all people under the law.

Christopher Ellis

In July, the Clinic won a year-long Stage 3 post-conviction trial before the Honorable Carol Howard in Cook County Circuit Court vacating the criminal conviction of our client, Christopher Ellis. Mr. Ellis was wrongly convicted of aggravated battery against the police based on the testimony of two Chicago police officers who have engaged in a pattern of targeting Black people for harassment, physical abuse, and false arrest. After Mr. Ellis attempted to assert his rights, the two officers yanked him out of his car, threw him face down to the street, beat and stomped him, fired 50,000 volts of electricity into his back, and then falsely accused Mr. Ellis of aggravated battery against the police officers to cover up their abuse. 

Students began the trial in the Fall and presented closing arguments at the end of the academic year.  The trial was both a model of excellence and collaboration. PAP students Gloria Bueno, ’26, Bronte Foley, ’25, and Sabrina Huang, ’26, worked together with Joshua Kaufman,’25, in the Exoneration Project, led by Clinical Lecturer Karl Leonard.  Rebecca Marvin Diamond, ’24, who worked with Mr. Ellis as a student in the Clinic and is now an associate at Jenner & Block, returned to try the case as a part of the Clinic team and delivered a rousing closing argument. Students were responsible for every aspect of the trial. They identified and presented the statement of an independent witness who confirmed that Mr. Ellis did not batter the police. The two officers beat up Mr. Ellis.  Students presented evidence of the officers’ similar abuse of other Black people, including video evidence of one of the officers harassing a Black man, bragging, “I kill motherf---ers,” after having shot another young Black man in the back, killing him.  Students performed statistical analyses of Chicago police misconduct complaints and uses of force and showed that the two officers had been accused of more misconduct and committed more violence against community members than fellow members of the CPD. For example, Bronte Foley showed that the officer who had repeatedly fired a Taser into Mr. Ellis’ back had fired his Taser at more Black people than any other member of the Chicago Police Department. Indeed, she demonstrated that the two officers committed more violence against Black people than any other member of a Department that itself had been engaged in a pattern and practice of excessive and discriminatory force. 

Mr. Ellis, who was moved to tears as he received the verdict in court, expressed his deep gratitude to the students, “No one has ever fought with me like you.”       

The Federal Civil Rights Consent Decree Governing the Chicago Police Department

In 2025, the United States Department of Justice retreated from the enforcement of consent decrees that seek to redress patterns and practices of civil rights violations and racial discrimination by the police across the country. Despite the Trump Administration’s efforts to terminate civil rights consent decrees, the federal Consent Decree that we won in Chicago to remedy the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) pattern and practice of excessive and discriminatory violence targeted disproportionately against Black people remains strong. The Clinic won the Decree over the objection of the Trump Administration. It remains the first and only governmental civil rights consent decree in the country involving law enforcement in which the people who have been most harmed by CPD’s civil rights violations have the power to enforce the Decree in federal court. Clinic students represent a diverse coalition of community-based groups in their fight to end and remedy these decades-long civil rights violations.

This year, Clinic students made remarkable progress in ending CPD’s practice of violent, illegal, and traumatic raids targeting Black and Brown families in Chicago. In addition to overhauling CPD policy and training, student advocacy prevented thousands of children from harm this year alone from the decrease in unnecessary raids.  The number of CPD home raids declined from an average of more than 1,800 a year to 210 last year.  Clinic students also worked with social worker Anjanette Young , who survived a violent and demeaning raid, in which officers wrongfully burst into her home at gunpoint without giving Ms. Young the opportunity to put on clothes. Parsa Aghel, ’26, played a lead role in drafting the Anjanette Young bill in Illinois, which, if passed, will ban no-knock raids, allow people a reasonable opportunity to answer their door before police enter, prohibit police from pointing guns at children and their caretakers unless they present an imminent risk to others, and outlaw raids for low level offenses where the harm from the raids would outweigh any benefits. 

The Clinic also brought a successful enforcement action which caused CPD to prohibit police officers from stopping people based on their race. In addition, Clinic students worked with the CPD, as a part of the Consent Decree, to transform policies on gender-based violence and police interactions with people with disabilities. The Clinic continues to advocate to:  (1) stop CPD’s discriminatory practice of targeting Black and Brown people for pretextual traffic stops to investigate other crimes for which police lack probable cause; (2) disband CPD tactical units that have been responsible for unnecessary and disproportionate violence directed toward Black and Brown people; and (3) limit CPD traffic stops to violations that pose genuine threats to public safety.

Fighting Threats to CPD Accountability

Until recently, City of Chicago agencies responsible for investigating CPD misconduct had long played a leading role in the City’s machinery to deny the existence of police misconduct and to protect individual police officers from discipline when they violated people’s rights. Successful advocacy by the Clinic led to the creation of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, a municipal body responsible for investigating most complaints of CPD misconduct brought by community members. With the support of the Clinic, COPA had become a politically independent agency that conducts high quality and unbiased investigations and makes it work available to the public. This is the first time in Chicago history that the agency responsible for investigating CPD misconduct has sought to hold officers accountable when they abuse their powers and hurt people. In each of the past three years, COPA recommended meaningful discipline when a police officer violated a person’s rights more times than its predecessors had in the previous four years combined. It is also the first time in history that the agency has endeavored to provide timely and accurate information to the public when police officers kill community members. 

Because of the Clinic’s success in creating the genuine possibility of police accountability in Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has engaged in a multi-pronged assault to turn back the clock to the days of police impunity. The FOP forced the mass resignation of COPA’s leadership, placing the future of CPD accountability in peril.  Clinic students Harmela Anteneh, ’26, and Amber Hunter, ’25, published a powerful op-ed in the Chicago Tribune as a part of the our work to defend against the FOP’s assaults. The FOP also persuaded an arbitrator to allow police officers found to have committed the most severe misconduct to escape public hearings before the independent Chicago Police Board and instead push those cases behind closed doors before FOP-approved arbitrators who have a long track record of protecting Chicago police from accountability. A team of Clinic students led by recent graduate Benjamin Postone, ’24, authored an outstanding amicus brief to the Illinois Appellate Court on behalf of a coalition of civil rights, good government, and community groups that urges the Court of Appeals to reject FOP’s efforts to drive the most serious police misconduct proceedings into secrecy.     

Consent Decree to End Incommunicado Detention 

In 2023, the Clinic won an historic consent decree in Cook County Circuit Court that is designed to end the decades-long practice of incommunicado detention in CPD stations that has facilitated torture, coerced confessions, and wrongful convictions. The Decree requires CPD to: (1) provide people prompt access to counsel and phones after taking them into custody; (2) maintain private rooms in every police station that permit people in custody to have confidential meetings with their attorneys; (3) post signs throughout CPD stations that inform people in custody of their rights and the free 24 hour hotline number to an attorney from the Office of the Cook County Public Defender; and (4) produce data from every CPD arrest concerning access to counsel and phones and permit inspections of CPD facilities for compliance with the Decree. 

Over the 2024-25 academic year, Clinic students, Parsa Aghel, ’26, Harmela Anteneh, ’26, Gabrielle Bozarth, ’25, and Katherine Stanton, ’25, initiated enforcement proceedings that seek to hold the City of Chicago and CPD in contempt of court for violations of the Decree. The Clinic published a statistical report with Professor Kyle Rozema, an empirical legal scholar, using the CPD arrest data and a survey conducted by the Cook County Public Defender of every client in CPD custody regarding access to counsel and phones. The report showed that only 0.2 percent of people in CPD custody get timely access to counsel and less than half the people arrested for serious offenses who are most vulnerable to CPD interrogation get access to a phone within three hours of custody. Amber Hunter, ’25, and Kassidy Mahoney, ’26, analyzed and presented evidence from hundreds of electronically recorded interrogations that revealed systematic violations of the Decree.  In addition, Clinic students demonstrated that: (1) CPD has failed to provide the private meeting rooms for confidential attorney consultations required under the Decree, (2) CPD is systematically denying people in custody in hospitals access to counsel, and (3) CPD failed to post legible signs for most of the two years since the Decree went into effect. Katherine Stanton, ’25, took the lead role in presenting our findings in a court hearing before the Honorable Judge Neil H. Cohen. The Clinic has requested a full contempt trial. Among remedies, the Clinic is asking the Court to order CPD to promptly offer people in custody access to a phone and the Public Defender’s hotline number, videotape the offers, and provide the video evidence to the Court. The Clinic remains committed to doing everything necessary to end CPD’s practice of incommunicado detention and to make real the promise of Miranda to meaningful access to counsel to people subject to custodial interrogation.         

University of Chicago Trauma Center 

Rosie Gruen, ’25, Sam Hallam, ’25, and Parsa Aghel, ’26, have led a medical-legal partnership to prevent law enforcement from violating patient civil rights and interfering with medical care. The Clinic formed this partnership with medical faculty, physicians, medical students, and violence recovery specialists at the University of Chicago Trauma Center and pro bono attorneys from the Akerman law firm to address reports from the doctors and staff at the Trauma Center of police abuse of patients who have suffered gunshot injuries; coercive interrogations of people who are being treated for serious injuries; interference with medical care and patient autonomy over medical decisions; illegal searches and seizures of patients’ personal property; invasions of patient privacy and personal health information; shackling and physical abuse of patients; and forcing medical personal to perform invasive tests on patients. Trauma Center staff also requested our assistance to prepare for potential immigration raids by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

The Clinic team conducted extensive research on the law, best practice, and the medical academic literature. Our research also revealed that despite similar civil rights violations and interference with treatment by law enforcement in hospital settings across the United States, there is a lack of model policies or established best practices on the subject. At the same time, Clinic and medical students also partnered on an interview-based research project in the Trauma Center. 

Drawing upon our work, we recently produced a set of operational and policy recommendations and training material for the Trauma Center.  We will present our recommendations to leadership, faculty, and General Counsel for the University of Chicago Medical Center in the late summer and fall.

As we finalize our research, we also plan to publish a peer-reviewed article and model policy that can be implemented in hospitals throughout the country to prevent civil and human rights violations and improve health outcomes nationwide. 

Partnership with the Cook County Public Defender and Zealous

Sanye Sichinga, ’26, Sabrina Huang, ’26, and Kassidy Mahoney, ’25, have worked in a collaborative project with the Cook County Public Defender and Zealous, a national non-profit dedicated to supporting public defender offices, to identify and address systemic issues in the criminal legal system that deprive clients of the Public Defender and Clinic access to justice. The team developed a community-driven process to launch the Freedom Defense Center of Roseland, a first-of-its-kind community-based law office within the Public Defender’s Office, dedicated to providing holistic legal defense and wraparound services for residents of the South Side. The Clinic is also working to support the opening of a second community defender office later this year in the Austin community on Chicago’s West Side.

Illinois Torture and Inquiry Relief Commission

Amrita Krishnan, ’25, and Erika Doane, ’26, investigated claims of Chicago police torture before the Illinois Torture and Inquiry Relief Commission. Amrita investigated the first of a series of claims that police detectives locked people experiencing severe symptoms of drug withdrawal in interrogation rooms and leveraged the pain from those symptoms to extract incriminating statements. The Torture Commission is using Amrita’s research to develop guidelines to assess when police interrogation of persons experiencing drug withdrawal can constitute torture. Amrita will present the case that she investigated before the entire Torture Commission in September, after she completes the Bar Examination. Erika began investigating a high-profile case involving the murder of a Chicago police officer. She will present her case before the Commission next year.