Ellie McCarty is a member of the JD class of 2028 from Ringwood, NJ. She is in Section 7.  

Q: How did you get involved in your first PLAP case? 
My client called in asking for representation for a disciplinary hearing in a few days during my office hours, so I requested his case, got a continuance, and Katrina Weinert mentored me on it. Our client had done a lot of advocacy for himself even before seeking representation. He had requested a lot of his own discovery, which helped us really tailor our combined motion to dismiss and discovery request. I had heard that these motions are really a formality and are rarely ever successful, so I was mostly writing that motion with a future appeal in mind.  

Q: What was the discovery process like? 
After submitting discovery, we got a lot of evidence back, even more than we expected. There were different incident reports, multiple BWC videos to review, photos, and more. Even though our client had received a lot of discovery himself, there was a lot of additional “view only” footage that he hadn’t been granted access to. We went to the prison and watched hours of footage. We thought that most of it would be redundant, but all the different angles and perspectives were actually very valuable. 

Q: What was the process of setting the hearing date like? 
We requested some additional view-only evidence that we knew they had, and in the meantime our client was transferred to a new prison. We finally got the hearing scheduled for right after finals, but the new prison decided to postpone the hearing at the last minute. We then had to go to a different prison to see the new “view only” evidence, so the date was delayed even further.  

Q: What did you do after reviewing all the discovery? 
We kept in touch with the disciplinary officer, who sent us a disciplinary report from our client’s cellmate with new information that was exculpatory for our client. After considering all of this, the hearing officer reviewed our client’s file the morning of the hearing and decided to grant our motion to dismiss. 

Q: What was the most impactful part of working on the case? 
Even though we didn’t get to the hearing, the opportunity to refute what was a lazy and nonsensical accusation was really meaningful. And for our client, I know it meant a lot to see his perspective and experience vindicated through the evidence and our argument.