Lauren I. Freidenberg-McBride

Lauren Freidenberg-McBride, with Tim Ford and Braden Pence, represented Mitchell's estate and his father, Harry Joe Mitchell, in the federal civil-rights action that followed. The case she built was not only about what had happened to one man; it was about the three failure points that let it happen — a chronic condition identified at intake and then left to untrained hands, incompetent management of a disease that punishes neglect quickly, and no way to detect a medical collapse in a single-occupancy cell.

The $1.9 million settlement she completed answered each point. The jail agreed to install sensors in single-occupancy cells to detect abnormal conduct and vital signs. It agreed to offer a wrist monitor to anyone who discloses a chronic medical condition at intake, or whose condition staff later learns of. And it committed to annual staff training on diabetes management — monitoring procedures, blood-sugar testing, insulin administration, and the warning signs of a body in trouble. By October 2025, county officials were contacting vendors, evaluating wiring changes, and examining medical wristbands and meal procedures. Her client had compromised on damages precisely to secure those changes, so that the next person with a chronic illness behind that door would not depend on luck.

Sixty Seconds on Suicide Watch

Suicide watch exists for one moment: the moment a person begins to hurt themselves while an officer is watching. The question Freidenberg-McBride and Jesse Wing put at the center of the Jessie Booth case was brutally practical — in that moment, what must the observing officer actually do?

Representing Booth's estate and family in federal civil-rights and state medical-malpractice claims against Clark County, they pressed the case to an answer with teeth. On June 4, 2025, Judge David G. Estudillo directed entry of a $2.6 million judgment against the county and approved enforceable changes to its suicide-watch policy. The revised rule reads like a checklist written for the worst sixty seconds of a shift: give a direct order; summon additional staff through a Code Red; intervene when the self-harm continues; consult mental-health personnel about restraints or constant observation. The county also agreed to train its correctional officers on the revised rule in 2025, 2026, and 2027 — three consecutive years, so the policy lives in muscle memory rather than a binder.

Release Within Twenty-Four Hours

Humberto Jimenez-Perez had a final order of removal and nowhere to be removed to. By February 2026 he had spent more than eight months in immigration detention while the government produced no evidence that Cuba — or any other country — would accept him. Under Zadvydas v. Davis, detention without a reasonably foreseeable removal is detention without a lawful purpose.

Freidenberg-McBride and Anna Deal, supported by Andrew Drake and Itzel Barajas, brought the habeas petition. On February 17, 2026, Judge James L. Robart granted it, entered judgment, and ordered Jimenez-Perez released within twenty-four hours. The Ninth Circuit issued its mandate on May 13, completing the appellate sequence around an order that had already restored a man's liberty in a single day.

The Clemency File

In a separate Washington matter, Freidenberg-McBride obtained commutation of a Department of Corrections sentence ten years early. Inadequate medical care sat at the center of the request, and the file she assembled brought the medical record, the sentence history, present conditions, and the case for executive intervention into one document aimed at a single outcome: an immediate reduction in custody. Executive clemency is one of the rarest forms of relief in the law, and it moved because the record made the reason unignorable.

Thirty-Five Million Before Seattle

Freidenberg-McBride earned two bachelor's degrees from the University of California, San Diego, and her law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law, where her training began at ground level — clerking with the San Diego County Alternate Public Defender and with the school's Small Claims Clinic, which served low-income residents across San Diego's neighborhoods. Client interviews, factual reconstruction, and direct courtroom responsibility came first; everything else was built on top.

She has devoted her entire career to civil rights litigation since her 2016 admission, practicing first at Southern California firms handling high-profile, complex civil-rights cases in state and federal courts, where she secured results for clients exceeding $35 million. She then joined MacDonald Hoague & Bayless in Seattle, a firm that has fought for civil rights and liberties since 1952, where she is Of Counsel and her docket spans wrongful death, excessive force, and violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

She is admitted in Washington and California and before the Ninth Circuit, and she serves on the board of directors of the National Police Accountability Project, the national organization supporting the network of more than five hundred civil rights attorneys who hold police departments, jails, and prisons accountable. She has said that watching tangible policy improvements take hold inside law enforcement agencies is among the most rewarding parts of the work — and her cases are structured, from the first filing, to produce exactly that.