Jacob Sussman: Criminal Defense, Civil Rights, and Reform

Jake Sussman is a civil rights and criminal defense attorney based in North Carolina with more than two decades of experience in capital defense, police accountability litigation, and criminal justice reform. Since 2023 he has served as Chief Counsel for Justice System Reform at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, while holding an “of counsel” position at the Charlotte firm Tin Fulton Walker & Owen and a seat on the board of The Sentencing Project.¹²

Where He Practices Now

At the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Sussman leads a program the organization describes as working to end mass incarceration and the death penalty, improve public safety, challenge systemic racism, and hold officials accountable.³ He keeps a litigation foothold through his of-counsel role at Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, and his national policy work continues through The Sentencing Project board.

He is admitted to practice in New York and North Carolina, multiple federal district courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.²

Criminal Defense Cases

Brian Nichols Capital Case

Sussman and Henderson Hill were appointed to defend Brian Nichols, who faced a 54-count indictment including multiple capital charges after killing a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff’s deputy, and a federal law enforcement agent during an escape from the Fulton County Courthouse on March 11, 2005. On December 13, 2008, the jury declined to impose the death penalty, and Nichols was sentenced to multiple life terms without the possibility of parole.⁴

General David Petraeus

Sussman was part of the defense team representing former CIA Director and military commander David Petraeus, who was prosecuted for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.²

Juvenile Life Sentences

Sussman has secured the release of clients given extreme sentences as minors. In one case, he won freedom for a woman sentenced to life in prison at age 15 for a murder-for-hire conviction tied to an abusive stepfather. In another, he secured the release of a man sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed at age 14.²

He has also represented an attorney facing multiple federal counts of obstruction of justice, a matter that ended with voluntary dismissal of all charges, and he negotiated a non-prison sentence for a health care employee under federal investigation for bribery and extortion.⁵

Civil Rights Litigation

Marriage Equality in North Carolina

Sussman served as lead lawyer in General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Reisinger, which challenged the constitutionality of North Carolina’s Amendment One banning same-sex marriage. On October 10, 2014, U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn ruled that the amendment violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution, effectively establishing marriage equality in the state.⁶²

Police Accountability

Over more than 16 years at North Carolina civil rights firms, Sussman has brought numerous lawsuits against law enforcement agencies alleging wrongful death, excessive force, unlawful conditions of confinement, First Amendment violations, and racial discrimination.⁷ He received the ACLU of Charlotte’s Richard L. Hester Civil Liberties Award in 2016 for this work.²

Immigration Class Action

In February 2026, Sussman filed a class action in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina on behalf of five Latino North Carolina residents, challenging what the complaint describes as warrantless immigration arrests conducted without individualized probable cause. The defendants include the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol, and several named officials, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.⁸

The plaintiffs allege that federal agents have been conducting arrests in communities across Charlotte, Durham, and Raleigh without legal justification, violating the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. They are seeking a declaratory judgment that the warrantless arrest policy is unlawful and a permanent injunction to block the practice. Sussman said of the case: “We cannot continue to allow our own government to break the law, make up rules as it goes, and abuse and assault communities across the state.”⁸ As of mid-June 2026, the defendants have filed a motion to dismiss, and the case remains pending before District Judge Susan C. Rodriguez.⁹

Policy and Reform Work

From 2017 to 2021, Sussman stepped away from private practice to help build The Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. As managing director, he led a group that provided legal, policy, communications, and networking support to advocates and elected officials rethinking public safety. At an NYU event, he described the organization’s central premise as the idea that “the local courthouse is the driver of mass incarceration” and that within the courthouse the prosecutor holds the most power.¹⁰¹¹¹

Much of his recent advocacy addresses North Carolina’s 2025 anti-crime legislation. In a 2025 interview, he criticized new state laws that limit bail and pretrial release and reactivate the death penalty, arguing that such measures lack evidence of effectiveness and that state resources would be better directed toward the state’s underfunded mental health system.¹² One law he has addressed is H307, known as “Iryna’s Law,” which took effect on December 1, 2025, and seeks to accelerate the review process for executions in the state.¹³

Sussman has written for The Appeal, where his 2017 articles covered topics including a guilty plea rendered unconstitutional by prosecutorial misconduct in Delaware, the reversal of a 34-year-old conviction, and a Gaston County district attorney accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.¹⁴

Background and Credentials

Sussman was born and raised in New York City. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University in 1997 and a law degree from New York University School of Law in 2002, where he was selected as a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar. Before law school he worked as an investigator in New York City, and after a federal clerkship he moved to North Carolina in 2003 to join the civil rights firm Ferguson Stein Chambers Gresham & Sumter in Charlotte, the state’s first integrated law firm.²¹⁵

He was named Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year” for Civil Rights Law in Charlotte in 2025 and has held an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell since 2014. He has been regularly selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers.²⁷

In 2019 he was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Massachusetts Advisory Committee, which advises the federal commission on voting rights, policing practices, and disparate incarceration rates in the state.¹⁶ He has also served on the boards of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, the New North Carolina Project, and the HopeStar Foundation.⁷

1
The Sentencing Project. Jake Sussman
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Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. Jake Sussman
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Justice System Reform
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Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. State of Georgia v. Nichols
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Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. United States v. S.C.
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Town of Carrboro. General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Reisinger
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Jake Sussman
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ACLU. Five Individuals Launch Class Action Lawsuit Over Warrantless Immigration Arrests in North Carolina
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Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Aceituno v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security
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NYU School of Law. Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law Event
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Stanford Law School. 21 Principles for the 21st Century Prosecutor
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NC Newsline. Jake Sussman of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice on Improved Mental Health Programs and Other Services to Enhance Public Safety
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Southern Coalition for Social Justice. End Death Penalty
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The Appeal. Jake Sussman
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Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter. Our History
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U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. SAC Appointees Press Release