In one of the first civil suits for which Carlton Johnson, LAW ’84, represented the city of Philadelphia, he saw something he hoped he would never see again. While in a holding cell, a teenage boy who had been arrested was so emotionally overcome, he attempted suicide. The boy’s failed attempt left him a quadriplegic in a permanent vegetative state.

“I promised his mother I would do everything I could to make sure another mother didn’t have to go through that same scenario,” Johnson said. “It was awful.”

He kept his promise. “When we were building additional lockup facilities, we made them suicide-proof, and retrofitted our existing facilities so that they, too, were suicide-proof,” he recalls. “We also gave our officers additional training in terms of monitoring potentially suicidal inmates.”

That case was only one in a tidal wave of civil suits Johnson was tasked with stemming when he joined the city solicitor’s office after graduating from the Beasley School of Law in 1984. He also founded the Civil Rights Unit in the solicitor’s office that same year. It aimed to both fight for the rights of Philadelphia’s citizens and represent the interests of the city.

“As suits would come in, I’d study their patterns and try to come up with solutions to prevent further litigation,” he explains.

For example, Johnson examined lawsuits that resulted from high-speed police chases. He discovered that many officers had never driven prior to joining the force and were offered very little driver training after they joined. He worked with the police department to add driving to the police-academy curriculum. Johnson also implemented policies in the Philadelphia Prison System that improved physical and mental healthcare for prisoners.

“One of the things about Temple’s Law School that sets it apart from others is that you come  away with a sense of mission—to do good things and  to be on what  I like to say is the right side of the equation, helping people and  entities like nonprofits,” Johnson says. “So my Temple education fit perfectly with my worldview of wanting to help people and become a public servant.”

In 2006, he joined the law firm of Archer & Greiner, and now co-chairs its civil-rights and government-relations practice. The firm offers Temple law students scholarships and opportunities to work as summer associates. 

—Jon Caroulis, SMC ’81