Joey L. Mogul

Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office. Mogul’s practice focuses on representing people who have suffered from police and other governmental torture, abuse and misconduct in civil rights cases, and defending individuals in criminal and capital cases. Mogul is also dedicated to representing organizers and community organizations seeking justice and liberation.

Mogul has sought justice for Chicago Police torture survivors for over twenty years, successfully representing a number of Burge torture survivors in their criminal post-conviction proceedings and in federal civil rights cases. Mogul served as co-lead counsel in litigation securing legal representation for the Burge torture survivors who remain behind bars in post-conviction proceedings in 2014. Mogul also successfully presented the cases to the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in Geneva, Switzerland in 2006, obtaining a specific finding from the CAT calling for the prosecution of the perpetrators and accountability in these cases in May of 2006.

Mogul drafted the original City Council ordinance providing reparations for the Chicago Police (Burge) torture survivors filed in 2013 on behalf of an organization Mogul initiated and co-founded, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM). On May 6, 2015, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed unprecedented legislation providing reparations to the Burge torture survivors becoming the first municipality to provide systemic redress for racially motivated police violence.

Mogul has represented several organizers and activists arrested and charged for participating in uprisings in support of Black Lives, sex workers, and those opposing the prison industrial complex, war and militarism in criminal and civil rights cases.

Recently, Mogul successfully represented the No Cop Academy campaign in their FOIA litigation against the City of Chicago and the Chicago Freedom School (CFS) in securing the rescission of an illegal cease and desist order and monetary settlement after CFS was illegally raided by the Chicago Police and other City of Chicago officials on May 30, 2020, in the aftermath of a huge demonstration in support of Black lives in the City of Chicago.

From 2003 through 2012, Mogul represented a class of over 800 people falsely arrested en masse at an anti-Iraq war demonstration in Chicago on March 20, 2003, and successfully argued the case in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Vodak v. City of Chicago, 639 F.3d 738 (2011). Mogul also co-coordinated the NLG mass defense of individuals arrested at this and other anti-war protests, and successfully obtained an acquittal on behalf of the only person arrested and forced to trial on charges stemming from the March 20, 2003 protest.

Mogul frequently represents lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in criminal court and civil rights proceedings involving police and prison misconduct, abuse, rape and torture. Mogul successfully represented a Latina transgender woman in a civil rights case who was profiled as a sex worker and discriminatorily treated on the basis of her gender identity by the Cicero Police Department resulting in an historic settlement. Mogul’s work has included securing organizational support from LGBT individuals and organizations for capital defendants who have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death based on homophobic, transphobic and sexist arguments. Mogul is co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press 2011).

Education:
Oberlin College BS 1992
City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law JD 1997

Court Admissions:
United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
Illinois Supreme Court

Publications:

Awards & Honors:

  • Super Lawyer 2019 and 2021
  • Distinguished Achievement Award, Oberlin Alumni Association, 2018
  • Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, 2017
  • Soros Justice Fellow 2016
  • USHRN Movement Builders Award 2015
  • First Defense Legal Aid’s 20 for 20 Award, May of 2015
  • City University of New York School of Law’s Distinguished Alumni Award, 2014
  • The Illinois Academy of Criminology Anne O’Brien Stevens Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Criminal Justice, 2014
  • The Vanguard Award of the Chicago Bar Association, 2013
  • The Sullivan Ballou Award for Human Rights, 2011
  • Chicago Chapter of the NLG Arthur Kinoy People’s Law Award in 2003 and 2011
  • Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (ICADP) Legal Advocacy Award, 2005

Professional Affiliations:

Co-Founder of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM)

Board Member, Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC)

National Lawyers Guild (NLG)
National Police Accountability Project (NPAP)

Former Independent Advisor, Midwest Coalition for Human Rights

Joey can be contacted at JoeyMogul [at] peopleslawoffice.com