Meet Returning Citizen Leon Irby
By Sherry Reames
When Leon Irby entered prison in 1972, he was facing the kind of sentence that could, under the right circumstances, have allowed his release on parole as soon as 1999 or 2000. As things turned out, however, he wasn’t released until another 25 years had gone by. When I asked what kept him behind bars for more than 50 years, he said, with a wry smile, that he was a “‘60s social activist” in his youth and never let himself be reconciled to the system that was oppressing him and other prisoners.
Leon nearly always resisted in nonviolent ways, having been influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. But he continually aggravated the authorities by filing complaints, participating in hunger strikes, writing letters to the press, and calling unwelcome attention to problems the authorities were trying to conceal. He also learned enough about the law to file appeal after appeal on behalf of other prisoners as well as himself. And sometimes his appeals succeeded! One of his important cases established the right of Wisconsin prisoners to file civil actions to correct errors and falsifications in their records. Another case made it harder for prison authorities to make unjustified use of solitary confinement.
The authorities retaliated against Leon, of course. They stood back and allowed other prisoners to beat him up. They tried diagnosing him as mentally ill and sought court permission to medicate him against his will, but the judge ruled that he was sane. They kept him in solitary confinement for years, and even sent him to the Supermax at Boscobel. (He responded by filing a suit over conditions there.) They also shipped him out of state to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas – where, in an irony they presumably didn’t expect, he found more humane treatment than he’d seen and experienced in Wisconsin.
Leon’s most important victory over the system, of course, was his ability to survive all those ordeals. He finally emerged from prison in January 2025 with his mind and spirit still intact. Allies at the UW Law School, including professors Kate Finley and Zoe Engberg and their students, had been working since 2017 to get him released on parole, and Attorney Laura Yurs and her assistant Danté Cottingham pitched in at the end to satisfy the final requirements from the parole board. Leon has already lectured to one of Professor Engberg’s classes, sharing some of his hard-won knowledge of the prison system.
Leon has a lot to teach non-lawyers too, as I discovered in a couple of half-hour conversations, because he knows so much about the history of Wisconsin’s penal system, as well as its current problems. He has started attending the MOSES monthly general meetings, and I hope many other MOSES members will get to know him. We have a lot to learn from his experience and insights, and I hope we can repay some of that debt by sharing our knowledge of Madison as he looks for a job and more permanent housing here.