Askari Danso Lumumba is a Certified Paralegal and jailhouse lawyer who has been incarcerated for approximately 23 years in Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) facilities. He is one of the so-called, “Fishback prisoners,” who became eligible for parole consideration under a recently enacted Virginia law. This statute was meant to right an old wrong that the Virginia State Supreme Court held in Fishback v. Commonwealth “simply defie[d] reason.” For approximately five years after Virginia abolished parole entirely in 1995, jurors sentencing defendants were not told that they were no longer eligible for parole. Wrote Daniel Rosen in Prison Legal News: “As a result, jurors may have recommended more prison time, incorrectly believing offenders would only serve a fraction of their sentence, as the case had been previously.” As a co-founder of the Prisoner of Conscience and Virginia Prison Justice Network, Askari was a vocal advocate for this corrective legislation and other reform bills. Askari went before the parole board for the first time in 2020 under the corrective legislation that was enacted in that year. 

Askari has litigated a number of civil rights and habeas corpus claims despite the retaliation that is frequently experienced by jailhouse lawyers who challenge conditions of confinement. He disputed the retaliation that was allegedly caused by his efforts to notify the public of the endangering conditions he witnessed and experienced inside during the pandemic. 

Askari is a member of the PLAN Advisory Board. In addition to assisting with PLAN’s COVID-19 Campaign, he is also a contributor to Dignity in the Criminal Legal System: A Handbook for Advocacy, Litigation, and Reform (September 2022) that was published jointly by PLAN and Delaware Law School’s Dignity Rights Clinic. This publication is among the JLL’s holdings. Askari has significant experience and familiarity with the PLAN community and legal advocacy model. He also brings to the JLL team extensive direct experience with the legal needs and priorities of incarcerated individuals and the challenges people inside encounter when trying to exhaust remedies and seek judicial relief.