Lynne C. Wilson

Lynne Wilson is a civil rights attorney who has practiced in Seattle for more than thirty years. She focuses on police misconduct, prisoner civil rights, and personal injury law in state and federal courts. She graduated cum laude from Seattle University Law School after previously working as a journalist for The Seattle Weekly. Lynne has published articles about police accountability in the Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report [PMCRLR] a bi-monthly Thomson Reuters publication. These illuminate the legal aspects of policing issues such as body cameras, Tasers, pepper spray, police collective bargaining agreements, deadly force and de-escalation policies, racial profiling, disciplinary records, private prisons and less-lethal weapons. She has served as a neutral arbitrator for King County and Snohomish County Superior Courts.

Long involved in community affairs, Ms. Wilson served on the board of Mothers for Police Accountability for 27 years and continues to volunteer as a legal and policy advisor to Mothers. In 2023, she was appointed by the Seattle City Council to serve as the Civil Liberties Law commissioner on the Seattle Community Police Commssion.  She served on the ACLU Legal Committee for ten years in the 1990s and was also an active board member of the National Coalition on Police Accountability during that time. In 1999, she was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild's Police Accountability Project. In 2013, she helped launch the Northwest Police Misconduct Attorneys group and currently serves as its Co-Chair. The Seattle City Council appointed her to two community police task forces (1993 and 2007). She also provided expert testimony on police collective bargaining and community conflict at the Amnesty International Hearings held in 2000 on the 1999 WTO Seattle protests. She recently spoke to the Washington Association of Justice on the current status of the qualified immunity defense in federal civil rights cases and to the Washington State Bar Association regarding the use of the United Nation’s Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment to hold local police and jail officials accountable.