Julia Yoo

The Five-Day DEA Detention

DEA agents told Daniel Chong he would be released. They returned him to a holding cell instead. No occupancy ledger, end-of-day inspection, assigned monitor, or reliable door record brought him back into the agency’s attention.

Chong was a University of California, San Diego engineering student detained during an April 2012 drug raid. Agents interviewed him, decided not to charge him, and said he would be released. He remained handcuffed in a five-by-ten-foot cell from April 21 until April 25.

The cell contained no food, water, or toilet. Chong shouted, kicked the door, tried to activate the sprinkler, drank his urine, and used broken eyeglasses to cut a final message to his mother into his arm. When agents found him, he was severely dehydrated and required hospital and psychiatric care.

Julia Yoo represented Chong with Eugene Iredale. The United States paid $4.1 million in 2013. The settlement compensated Chong; the Inspector General’s investigation then examined how an agency could lose custody of a person inside its own office.

Four Employees Saw or Heard Him

The Justice Department’s Inspector General identified four DEA employees who saw or heard Chong during the detention. Each assumed that someone else remained responsible for him. Three case agents and an on-scene supervisor had responsibility for the people detained during the operation.

The San Diego division lacked a dependable custody-tracking system. It kept no holding-cell occupancy log, required no end-of-day inspection, lacked effective camera coverage and specialized training, and could not rely on its electronic entry system to identify everyone who entered.

The investigation found no single custody record or assigned official responsible for confirming that Chong had actually left the cell after agents decided to release him.

Nationwide Custody Controls

After the incident, the DEA adopted nationwide procedures requiring routine holding-cell inspections, an assigned agent or task-force officer for the detention area, and an occupancy ledger. The new procedures assigned responsibility, required a ledger, and made missed cell checks reviewable.

The Inspector General’s findings prompted procedures intended to prevent another detainee from disappearing inside an agency facility.

A Taser from Twenty to Twenty-Five Feet

Carl Bryan was twenty-one when a Coronado officer stopped him for a seatbelt violation in 2005. Bryan was agitated and standing outside his car, wearing boxer shorts and tennis shoes. He was unarmed and remained twenty to twenty-five feet from the officer.

Without a warning, the officer fired an X26 Taser in dart mode. The electrical current immobilized Bryan. He fell face-first onto the pavement, fractured four teeth, and suffered facial injuries.

Yoo authored the appellate briefing with Iredale. The Ninth Circuit classified dart-mode Taser use as an intermediate, significant level of force. That classification required a governmental interest strong enough to justify the physiological intrusion and the uncontrolled fall it creates.

Intermediate Force and Qualified Immunity

The court evaluated the severity of the suspected offense, immediate threat, resistance, warnings, distance, and available alternatives. A seatbelt violation was minor. On Bryan’s version of the facts, he posed no immediate threat and made no attempt to flee.

The Ninth Circuit held that a jury could find the force unconstitutional. It also granted the officer qualified immunity because the law governing dart-mode Tasers had not been sufficiently clear in 2005. The individual case ended at that boundary while the published force classification became law for later encounters.

The opinion also rejected the idea that perceived mental disturbance increases the justification for force. A belief that Bryan was emotionally distressed called for greater effort to use less intrusive control.

The Camera beside the Traffic Stop

In 2019, Abade Irizarry filmed a traffic stop in Lakewood, Colorado. An officer stood in front of his camera, shone a flashlight into the lens, drove toward him, and followed him after he left. Irizarry alleged retaliation for recording police activity.

Yoo filed an amicus brief in the Tenth Circuit through the National Police Accountability Project. In 2022, the court joined the national consensus and held that the First Amendment protects filming police performing public duties, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.

Six other federal circuits had already recognized the right by May 2019. Their agreement, together with Tenth Circuit principles protecting creation of speech, made the right clearly established. The court reversed the qualified-immunity ruling and returned the retaliation claim for further proceedings.

Nine Linguists and a Federal Polygraph Program

Francisco Bates and eight colleagues worked for Metropolitan Interpreters and Translators, a private contractor supplying linguists for DEA and ICE wiretaps. They listened to intercepted calls, translated conversations, and handled sensitive federal information.

Metropolitan told the linguists that polygraph examinations were mandatory. Employees who objected cited the Employee Polygraph Protection Act. The company scheduled the tests, warned of employment consequences, and removed employees who failed or refused. It also supplied results to ICE, which revoked access to additional work.

Iredale, Yoo, and Grace Jun represented all nine plaintiffs through a nearly three-week trial. Fourteen original plaintiffs had separately resolved claims against the United States.

The Statute Governing the Private Employer

The Employee Polygraph Protection Act generally bars a private employer from requiring, requesting, suggesting, or causing an employee to take a lie-detector test. It also restricts use of results and retaliation against an employee who refuses or fails a test.

Metropolitan remained a private employer despite its federal contract, so the Act still applied. The district court found the company liable, and the jury awarded the nine linguists $4 million in 2015.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2018. It upheld jurisdiction, liability, the verdict, and allocation of noneconomic damages between Metropolitan and the federal defendants who had settled before trial.

Elisa Serna’s Collapse in Medical Observation

Elisa Serna was twenty-four and five weeks pregnant when San Diego County booked her into Las Colinas Detention Facility in November 2019. She disclosed recent heroin use and showed symptoms of withdrawal, including vomiting, fainting, low blood pressure, and seizure activity.

Serna was placed in a medical observation unit. Video and medical evidence showed her collapse in the cell. A nurse and deputy saw her fall; effective treatment and continuing observation never followed. Serna died on the floor five days after booking.

Yoo and the Iredale Law team represented Serna’s parents, estate, husband, and young child. The civil case proceeded through years of motions and discovery toward a scheduled trial.

Fifteen Million Dollars and a Year of Oversight

The 2024 settlement totaled $15 million: San Diego County paid $14 million, and Coast Correctional Medical Group paid $1 million. U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant approved a structured share protecting Serna’s minor child into adulthood.

The nonmonetary terms addressed withdrawal protocols, falls, continuity of care during shift changes, vital-sign checks, compassion training, and possible medical access to cell-monitor video. The sheriff also agreed to meet Serna’s parents.

Under the agreement, U.S. Magistrate Judge David D. Leshner retained enforcement jurisdiction for one year. Yoo described the family’s aim as a path toward more compassionate treatment for people in custody.

Jail Housing Placed Greer on a Top Bunk

Frankie Greer was an Army veteran with chronic epilepsy. At San Diego Central Jail, he told medical staff that his anti-seizure medicine was in his clothing and requested a lower bunk because he had fallen during seizures before.

A nurse documented epilepsy and the lower-bunk instruction. The information did not travel consistently through the Jail Information Management System, the physical face card, medication follow-up, and housing assignment. Deputies placed Greer on a top bunk.

After missing medicine for two days, Greer suffered a seizure and fell at least six feet onto concrete. Cellmates pressed the emergency intercom and shouted. The control tower did not provide a timely response. Greer sustained facial fractures, a brain bleed, respiratory failure, weeks of unconsciousness, and lasting impairment of memory, speech, and cognition.

Disability, Medical Care, and Municipal Practice

Yoo and Iredale pursued claims under Section 1983, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, California civil-rights law, and negligence. A safe lower bunk was both a medical instruction and a reasonable accommodation for an episodic neurological disability.

The federal court allowed claims against individual, supervisory, and County defendants to proceed. The record included prior critical-incident materials offered to show recurring failures in communication, medication, monitoring, emergency response, and corrective action.

San Diego County resolved the case for $7.75 million. The settlement compensated Greer’s injuries; the litigation also made jail information flow—screening, medication, bunk status, intercom response, and next-of-kin records—a civil-rights issue rather than clerical background.

The Women Waiting all Day

Yoo’s custodial work began immediately after law school. At the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, women waited throughout the day for brief access to a volunteer lawyer. An older woman with a serious breast growth surrendered her appointment so a younger woman reporting sexual abuse by a guard could be seen first.

Yoo founded the Law Center for Women Prisoners in 1998. Working with University of Colorado externs and volunteers, the project assisted hundreds of women with medical care, parental rights, sexual abuse, parole-officer harassment, reentry, and the legal consequences of incarceration.

The work produced cases for a woman who miscarried in a cell, a woman raped by a corrections officer, and prisoners abused by a counselor at a private facility. After one settlement, the prison lost its insurance and closed. Client identities and confidential amounts remain private.

FCI Dublin Survivor Litigation

Yoo later represented one survivor in the individual litigation arising from sexual abuse at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California.

In December 2024, the United States agreed to pay $115.8 million across 103 individual survivor claims. Compensation was allocated from separate histories rather than divided automatically. A different class settlement created monitoring, confidential reporting channels, anti-retaliation protections, public acknowledgment, and review of disciplinary records.

California’s Police-Decertification Law

California’s 2021 Senate Bill 2 created the statewide police-decertification process.

SB 2 created a statewide process for investigating and suspending or revoking peace-officer certification after serious misconduct. It established an accountability division and advisory board, required agency reporting, and made specified decertification records available to the public.

The same law amended the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act. Yoo’s signed analysis explains that specified state immunities no longer block Bane Act claims involving malicious prosecution and injuries to people in custody. Unlike federal Section 1983 doctrine, the Bane Act does not recognize qualified immunity and provides remedies that include statutory damages and enhanced fee provisions.

National Police Accountability Leadership

Yoo became president of the National Police Accountability Project in 2020, the first woman and first person of color to lead the national civil-rights lawyers’ organization. She now serves as immediate past president.

NPAP trains lawyers, coordinates appellate strategy, submits amicus briefs, and works with communities and coalition partners. Yoo’s leadership connected cases arising in separate circuits: Taser force, recording police, qualified immunity, jail medical care, protest response, and state-law remedies.

Yoo also serves on the Consumer Attorneys of California Board of Governors and teaches nationally. Through NPAP and CAOC, she trains lawyers, coordinates appellate work, and helps develop litigation strategy beyond her own docket.

Education and Professional Background

Yoo was born in Seoul, grew up in a Korean immigrant family, graduated cum laude from Wellesley College, and earned her law degree at the University of Colorado. A Samsung scholarship helped finance law school.

Her statement—“I don’t separate it and I just carry it with me”—reflects a practice shaped by her immigrant family, early prison work, client advocacy, appellate briefs, and policy work.

Yoo’s cases have produced specific protections. After Chong, the DEA adopted custody logs. In Bryan, the Ninth Circuit classified Taser use; Irizarry recognized the right to record police; and other matters enforced employee-polygraph protections, jail-medical oversight, and procedures for communicating disability-related medical orders.