Mohamedu F. Jones - Johnston, RI

Overview

Mohamedu F. Jones, a Partner of Pannone Lopes Devereaux & O’Gara LLC, focuses exclusively on the firm’s distinguished Special Masterships practice. He is a veteran advocate and attorney, and has been involved in large class action lawsuits. He has particular experience monitoring or serving as plaintiffs’ counsel in matters of conditions of confinement, including mental health, medical, segregation and the civil rights of incarcerated persons from the East Coast to the West Coast. In addition, he founded an advocacy organization for immigration relief for Liberian citizens in the United States.

Attorney Jones’ unique skill set includes working in the private sector and for government agencies with a distinct interest in securing social justice and ensuring the fair treatment for all people, particularly for those less fortunate. As a member of the firm’s Special Masterships practice, he excels at working in close collaboration with all stakeholders, providing strategic advice, technical support, and the necessary oversight to achieve and further his clients’ goals.

For more than three decades, Attorney Jones served as a court-appointed monitor or plaintiffs’ counsel with compliance monitoring responsibilities in class action litigation involving conditions of confinement in California, Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah. These responsibilities included in-depth monitoring and reporting of compliance with national standards and court orders in the various cases, extensive supervision and collaboration with the firm’s attorneys in the Special Mastership practice, and with outside experts in the monitoring and reporting processes of these cases. Attorney Jones is also highly-skilled in the design, development, and implementation of targeted strategies and projects to assist defendants with achieving compliance, both overall and in focused areas.

Attorney Jones and the firm’s Special Masterships team are nationally recognized for their ability to conduct in-depth monitoring on-site and report back to federal courts. While in his role as Deputy Special Master, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Attorney Jones’ played a significant role in monitoring the provision of mental health care to more than 30,000 of the 170,000 incarcerated individuals. In June 2023, he was appointed as a Monitor in a case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona involving the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry.

Attorney Jones earned his law degree from the University of Liberia, summa cum laude, and his Master of Law from Harvard Law School, where he was a Scholar of the Fulbright Program, an international educational exchange program sponsored by the United States government to increase mutual understanding among the people of the United States and other nations, and to provide opportunities to participate in the finding of solutions to shared international concerns. He is admitted to practice law in New York and Maryland.