News & Commentary written by Trisha Trigilio

Trisha Trigilio is a senior staff attorney with the Criminal Law Reform Project. Her work aims to fight mass incarceration by reducing the number of people in pretrial detention. Her litigation has secured multiple firsts, including the first preliminary injunction enforcing the Sixth Amendment right to counsel at an initial bail hearing.

Trisha was previously a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, where she litigated cases advancing the right to counsel and challenging arbitrary pretrial detention, criminalization of homelessness, and debtors’ prisons. Prior to joining the ACLU of Texas, Trisha was an instructor at the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, where she litigated cases challenging police brutality, debtors’ prisons, arbitrary detention of families seeking asylum, and inhumane conditions in Texas prisons and family detention centers.

Trisha served as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Paul Oetken of the Southern District of New York. She also served as a law clerk to the court’s Office of Pro Se Litigation, where she advised judges about civil rights cases and habeas petitions filed by people who could not afford counsel. Trisha earned her undergraduate and law degrees from New York University.