Update! Bob talked to Sean, they clarified some things and Bob is back on board. This means Sean’s got a lawyer who’s working pro-bono, but needs to pay his assistants and cover filing and travel costs.  The more money we can raise, the more help Bob can afford to provide. There’s lots to do so don’t hesitate to chip in.

Fitrakis and Gadell Newton are no longer representing Sean Swain. We are seeking new legal counsel to help with a variety of legal struggles Sean has been facing. The most important and most recent case is a pretty clear first amendment issue, where ODRC officials fumbled terribly, described their own conduct reports as inappropriately targeting ideology and speech and then attempted to “re-do” the process coming up with new conduct reports that were just as poor and ideologically targeted, and then transferred Sean to supermax on the basis of the first conduct report, which even they had admitted was inappropriate.

Sean needs lawyers who will follow through. We have raised some money (less than $1000) but hope to raise more. Experience in post-conviction or civil rights would be great, but really the most important thing is communication, and working with Sean (he and his outside supporters can do a lot of the work) and reliability. Half the battle in these politicized cases is media attention, embarrassing or shaming the ODRC and the State of Ohio into doing the right thing, so we need a lawyer who is comfortable with us using the case to generate media attention, about both Sean’s situation and the general state of abuse and downright bizarre practices in US prisons.