Mawuli Davis

Annapolis to Atlanta

Davis's route to movement lawyering ran through the United States Naval Academy, where he played varsity basketball and earned a degree in political science. He served as a naval officer for nearly a decade, earning a master's in public administration from Bowie State University while stationed in Rota, Spain, and later attended Georgia State University College of Law at night while still working — duty and education balanced against each other until he graduated in 2002.

He began in commercial real estate law, then went out on his own, launching a practice with his wife before founding his firm in 2005 and joining with law-school classmate Robert Bozeman two years later. Davis Bozeman Johnson Law grew into one of Georgia's largest Black-owned firms, with offices in Decatur, Savannah, and Statesboro — and Davis built its Civil Rights Division into the place Georgia families call when the government is on the other side.

The legal work grew alongside nearly three decades of organizing. Davis was a member of the historic "Durban 400" that participated in the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in South Africa. After the acquittal of George Zimmerman, he was a primary organizer of the march of more than 5,000 protestors from the Atlanta University Center to CNN Headquarters. He helped campaign to end cash bonds in Atlanta, supported removal of Decatur's Confederate monument, and co-founded Let Us Make Man, the Black Man Lab, and the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights. He has represented activists from the Occupy Movement, Moral Monday, and Black Lives Matter, and he chronicled the journey — Navy, consciousness, fatherhood, movement — in his book We Need You. Georgia State honored him with its highest award, the Ben Johnson Public Service Award, in 2019, and the DeKalb Lawyers Association named its Legal Warrior Award in his honor.

His firm's civil-rights cases and criminal defense therefore enter a community structure already engaged in protest, education, youth development, public meetings, and legislative change. The courtroom is one room in a much larger house.

Constitutional Claims in Separate Lanes

Young and Pilgrim filed their federal civil-rights action in June 2021, challenging the force used by individual officers and asserting municipal and curfew-related theories against Atlanta officials. Davis preserved the individual force claims through early motion practice while related officer and disciplinary proceedings developed additional evidence, keeping the students' civil compensation claims active and building the record around the officers who confronted them.

That separation mattered. Employment procedure asked whether the City followed its rules when disciplining officers. Criminal review asked whether prosecutors could prove offenses beyond a reasonable doubt. The civil case asked whether Young and Pilgrim's constitutional and state-law rights had been violated and what relief followed. The surviving civil claims stayed focused on what happened at the car: the door, the broken window, the Tasers, the shouted gun allegation, the absence of a recovered weapon, the restraints, and the injuries to two students trying to leave a traffic jam the curfew itself had created.

Atlanta's City Council approved a $2 million settlement in July 2024 by a 13–1 vote. Young and Pilgrim each received $1 million — equal shares for two students who had been in the same car. Davis represented Young; Pilgrim had separate counsel; and the broader team of Atlanta civil-rights lawyers had preserved body-camera footage, police reports, medical consequences, and the students' own accounts through years of litigation. After the settlement, Davis said the resolution would allow the students and their families to continue healing from the traumatic experience.

A Flash-Bang in a Nineteen-Month-Old's Playpen

In May 2014, a multi-jurisdictional drug task force executed a late-night no-knock warrant at a Habersham County house where the Phonesavanh family was staying. The officers were looking for a relative who was not inside.

A flash-bang grenade landed in the playpen where nineteen-month-old Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh slept. It exploded against his face and chest, causing devastating burns and injuries that required repeated surgery. The search found no drugs, no weapons, no money, and no target of the warrant in the home.

Davis represented Bou Bou and his parents with Richard Hendrix, Steven Wisebram, Candice McKinley, and other members of the civil team. The litigation had to identify each participating agency, the warrant information, task-force responsibilities, insurance coverage, the grenade's deployment, and the medical care Bou Bou would need as he grew.

The civil resolution arrived in components rather than one award. Habersham County's insurance paid $964,000 to the family after part of the policy was allocated to the property owner. The City of Cornelia paid $1 million. Rabun and Stephens Counties later contributed $1.65 million. The combined settlement totaled $3.614 million and ended the federal civil-rights action and a related insurance dispute — several governments and insurance policies answering for the same coordinated raid. The settlement could finance care. It could not erase the surgeries still ahead, and Davis has never pretended otherwise.

The Eight-Foot Wall

Troy Robinson was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by DeKalb County police in August 2015 because an officer questioned its temporary tag. Robinson ran from the stop, crossed a road and a parking lot, and tried to climb an eight-foot wall.

The decisive timing was disputed. Officer Casey Benton said he fired his Taser while Robinson was still on the ground and that only one probe connected. Robinson's family presented evidence supporting a different account: Benton fired upward while Robinson stood atop the wall, the electrical charge incapacitated him, and he fell headfirst, broke his neck, and died.

Davis and Sidney Moore represented Robinson's mother and his nine children, and the case separated the legality of the traffic stop and foot pursuit from the force used at the wall. In August 2021, the Eleventh Circuit decided Bradley v. Benton. It held that Benton was protected by qualified immunity for the initial stop and pursuit — but the family's excessive-force claim survived.

Taking the family's evidence as true at summary judgment, the court treated the Taser as deadly force: Robinson was elevated, and an incapacitating shock carried an obvious risk of a fatal fall. He was unarmed, had made no threatening gesture, and had not committed a violent crime. Firing without warning at a fleeing person atop the wall violated a clearly established right. Davis's appellate work preserved a jury's authority to determine when and where the Taser was fired — and established a published constitutional limit on Taser use against a person at height. The officer could pursue Robinson; the authority to pursue did not decide what could lawfully be done at the top of the wall.

Seventeen Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds

Johnny Hollman Sr., sixty-two, was driving home from Bible study in August 2023, taking dinner to his wife. After a minor collision, Atlanta officer Kiran Kimbrough concluded that Hollman was at fault and asked him to sign a citation. Hollman disagreed and requested a supervisor.

The family's complaint alleged that Hollman eventually said three times that he would sign; that Kimbrough forced him to the ground, used a Taser repeatedly, and continued while Hollman said he could not breathe. His daughter Arnitra remained connected by telephone for seventeen minutes and forty-six seconds and arrived to find her father unresponsive.

Hollman was a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, deacon-board chair, lay minister, and community leader. The medical examiner classified the death as a homicide and identified heart disease as a contributing factor.

Atlanta fired Kimbrough after an internal review concluded that he made the physical arrest without waiting for a supervisor. Davis, Harold Spence, and their team filed the federal case in January 2024, asserting excessive force, First Amendment retaliation, failure to provide medical care, municipal-policy, negligence, and wrongful-death claims — including the allegation that personnel monitoring the body-camera feed heard Hollman request a supervisor and did not send one.

The police department changed its citation procedure after Hollman's death. Officers were instructed to explain that a signature is not an admission of guilt, and a driver who still declines can receive the citation marked "refusal to sign" without a physical arrest over the signature dispute. In May 2024, the Atlanta City Council unanimously approved $3.8 million to resolve the family's civil claims.

For Davis, the case followed Hollman's final encounter beyond compensation. A supervisor request, a signature line, real-time camera monitoring, Taser use, and medical response became points at which a future traffic stop could take another course. That is the measure he works toward: not only what a family recovers, but what changes.

The Man Blamed for a Collapsed Interstate

When a section of Interstate 85 collapsed after a March 2017 fire, Atlanta's anger rapidly focused on Basil Eleby, a homeless man struggling with addiction. Prosecutors charged him with first-degree arson and criminal damage and set bond at $200,000.

Lawrence Zimmerman, Gerald Griggs, Mawuli Davis, Gary Spencer, and Tiffany Roberts formed a five-lawyer pro bono team. They entered a not-guilty plea, challenged the rush to assign one person responsibility for infrastructure, and pointed to the combustible material stored beneath the bridge and the city's failure to address homelessness and addiction.

The defense secured a $10,000 signature bond, and Eleby entered residential treatment rather than remaining in jail — a bond plan built around mental-health and substance-use care, testing, housing, employment, and continued court supervision. In December 2017, prosecutors agreed to transfer the case into Fulton County's Drug and Mental Health Accountability Court. Eleby did not have to enter a guilty plea; successful completion of the eighteen-month program would require dismissal of the arson charges.

The legal team and community organizations helped Eleby obtain employment, pursue his GED, participate in treatment, and rebuild family and community connections. Davis's firm hired him while the case was suspended. On February 28, 2020, Eleby graduated from the behavioral-health program, and the dismissal followed. The defense had replaced a $200,000 bond and a possible prison path with treatment, work, and restoration — a criminal case designed, from the first filing, around a second chance.

Following Power Beyond the Case

The students' settlement divided compensation equally. Bou Bou's case coordinated four governments and a child's future medical care. Bradley established a published limit on Taser use at height. Hollman's case changed how Atlanta handles an unsigned citation. Eleby's defense ended in a graduation instead of a conviction.

Davis has represented clients wherever government power is exercised — in street encounters, jails, federal court, appellate proceedings, city settlement processes, treatment programs, and community advocacy. His matters have produced compensation, medical resources, treatment and dismissal, published constitutional rulings, and changes in police procedure: results that help a client heal, receive care, return home, or change how a later encounter unfolds. He does not collapse the separate proceedings that follow the same event into one claim; the civil case seeks relief for the family, while discipline, police instruction, and criminal charging move through their own channels — each one another room where he has learned to follow power and hold it to account.