Karen L. Murtagh, Esq.

Karen L. Murtagh, Esq. began working as an intern at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York (PLS) during the summer of 1983, and was sponsored by Albany Law School. After graduating from law school, she was hired as a staff attorney for the Albany office of PLS, where she has served as Executive Director since 2008.

Ms. Murtagh was first exposed to the issues surrounding prison conditions when she was a young teenager. To address some of the underlying causes of the 1971 Attica uprising, her father, also a lawyer, was called to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, to teach courses to Correction Officers on the Constitutional rights of prisoners. Ms. Murtagh would accompany her father every Wednesday night to the prison. There, she would sit in the back of the classroom and listen to her father explain to Correction Officers why respecting, protecting, and enforcing the Constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals would, in the long run, improve the safety and security of the prison; these individuals would be better prepared for successful reintegration into their communities upon release. Sitting in and observing her father’s classes every week shaped the future of Ms. Murtagh’s career.

Ms. Murtagh is admitted to practice law in New York State, all Federal District Courts of New York, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She has litigated issues concerning prisoners’ due process rights at disciplinary hearings, prison conditions, deliberate indifference, the First Amendment, and the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

She has tried cases in both the Court of Claims and federal court and has argued numerous cases before New York State courts. In the New York Court of Appeals, Ms. Murtagh successfully argued that an incarcerated person’s mental health must be considered as a mitigating factor at a prison disciplinary hearing.

Ms. Murtagh was also a successful amicus, appearing before the United States Supreme Court in a case challenging the constitutionality of a New York State statute that prohibited incarcerated individuals from filing federal 1983 actions in State court.