Nora Demleitner, Dean of Washington and Lee University School of Law, is serving as a consultant to the Vera Institute of Justice (NYC) in its European-American Prison Project. The project is funded by the Prison Law Office in California, which has been the chief litigant in California’s prison health care case, a federal class action civil rights lawsuit alleging that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) medical services were inadequate and violated the Eighth Amendment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. As a result of the case, the CDCR’s prison medical conditions were found to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
As a result of that victory, the Prison Law Office received state funds, which it has been investing with Vera to bring about larger scale prison reform.Vera has selected three progressive correctional systems — Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Colorado — to send delegations to Germany and the Netherlands to learn about how the sentencing and correctional systems there are being run.
Dean Demleitner is serving as the European sentencing expert on the Vera team. She recently visited two prisons in Georgia as part of a two-day working group meeting, which consisted of correctional officials, including the commissioner of corrections, state representatives, judges, prosecutors, and other experts. Next week she will visit Colorado for another working group meeting.
Dean Demleitner joined W&L Law in 2012. She teaches and has written widely in the areas of criminal, comparative, and immigration law. Her special expertise is in sentencing and collateral sentencing consequences.
