Admitted to practice in New York, Connecticut, and California, Doug Lieb has successfully represented currently and formerly incarcerated people, civic organizations, and victims of discrimination and police abuse in a broad range of matters.

Wrongful conviction litigation is a central focus of Doug’s practice. Doug currently represents people across the country who have collectively experienced more than a century of wrongful incarceration, both in damages lawsuits seeking compensation and in post-conviction proceedings seeking their freedom. Over the course of his career, he has recovered more than $20 million for people who were wrongfully imprisoned and detained for offenses of which they were innocent.

An experienced trial attorney, Doug has tried numerous criminal and civil cases to favorable verdicts before juries and judges. Doug has also obtained significant settlements in excessive force, false arrest, and employment cases, including one of the only seven-figure settlements arising from a single excessive force incident at Rikers Island.

Doug maintains a significant practice in complex class action litigation. As class counsel for racial justice protesters who were kettled, beaten, and falsely arrested by the NYPD in Mott Haven in June 2020, he helped achieve the highest known per-person settlement for a mass arrest class action. He is also class counsel for a class of people incarcerated in New York State prisons who were denied access to an early release program on the basis of their mental health diagnoses.

While earning his law degree from Yale Law School, Doug served as the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, the nation’s leading law review. Before co-founding KLLF, he was a litigator at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, one of New York City’s most respected civil rights litigation firms. He previously clerked for Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Vernon S. Broderick of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. He began his legal career in public defense in Washington and capital defense in Texas.

Doug lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York, with his family. He enjoys hiking, cooking, and the futility of being a New York Jets fan.

Representative cases

Doug’s work includes the following:

• Won reversal of nearly three-decades-old homicide conviction on the basis that suppressed exculpatory evidence and newly discovered forensic scientific evidence would likely have led to a different outcome. Carmon v. State, 2022 WL 17423683 (Conn. Super. Ct. Nov. 30, 2022).

• Won summary judgment ruling that forensic scientist’s fabrication of evidence caused wrongful conviction leading to 30 years of wrongful imprisonment, followed by $12.6 million settlement. Birch v. Town of New Milford, 2023 WL 4684720 (D. Conn. July 21, 2023).

• Secured a $2,125,000 settlement for a person who received no medical care for debilitating spinal issues while incarcerated in federal prison.

• Won appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit establishing that forensic scientists and technicians had a clearly established obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence and can be sued for damages for violating that obligation. Horn v. Stephenson, 11 F.4th 163 (2d Cir. 2021).

• Achieved successful seven-figure settlements on behalf of two West Virginia exonerees who were wrongfully imprisoned.

• Achieved highest known per-person settlement for mass protest arrest on behalf of Mott Haven racial justice protesters, with 223 of 257 eligible class members participating and each receiving at least $21,500.

• Won plaintiff’s verdict at trial, including $30,000 in punitive damages, against Nassau County police officers who unlawfully searched a motor vehicle passenger and were found to have lied about it.

• Won summary judgment ruling that police had an obligation to reasonably accommodate disabled veteran’s PTSD, and that sufficient evidence existed to conclude that officers used excessive force, leading to favorable settlement. Butchino v. City of Plattsburgh, 2022 WL 137721 (N.D.N.Y.).

• Represented university faculty members and performing artists in disciplinary proceedings and disputes with public and private universities.

• Achieved numerous six-figure settlements in confidential severance negotiations on behalf of employees who were wrongfully terminated or pushed out by their employers.

Teaching:

Suing the Police: The Law of Police Misconduct, National Academy of Continuing Legal Education

Publications:
McDonough v. Smith: Favorable Termination and the Confusing Civil Law of Wrongful Convictions, New York Law Journal, April 23, 2020.

Note, Vindicating Vindictiveness: Prosecutorial Discretion and Plea Bargaining, Past and Future, 123 Yale L.J. 1014 (2014)

Comment, Can § 1983 Help To Prevent the Execution of Mentally Retarded Prisoners?, 121 Yale L.J. 1571 (2012)

Note, Regulating Through Habeas: A Bad Incentive for Bad Lawyers?, 65 Stanford L. Rev. Online 7 (2012)