Soros Justice Fellowships

Orleans Public Defenders

From the systematic, excessive detention of defendants before they've been charged, to the jailing of citizens simply due to their inability to pay fines, to the refusal of public agencies to provide requested public documents, attorneys at the Orleans Public Defenders (OPD) face a long list of problems in providing their clients with adequate and meaningful defense. With more than double the national average in caseloads, OPD attorneys have no sustained ability, in the course of representing clients, to challenge these types of long-standing and deeply-entrenched injustices in New Orleans criminal courts. Joshua Perry will coordinate a project to bring new tools to help the OPD address these issues.

An OPD staff attorney, Perry represents clients in cases ranging from simple drug possession to violent felonies. He graduated with an honors degree in English and American Literature from Harvard College, and magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif. In law school, he litigated prisoners’ rights cases in federal court as a Civil Rights Clinic student practitioner, served as an associate editor on the New York University Law Review, and interned with the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and the Defender Association of Philadelphia. He has been a speechwriter, a teacher, and a freelance journalist.

New Orleans, LA |