Criminal Defense Attorney Allyson Quay: Fighting Injustice from the Inside

​​“I’ve always been interested in the theories behind punishment,” said criminal defense attorney Allyson Quay ’10. “How do we punish people in our society? What is the reason for it? Is it morally right to punish someone? Does it help the person? Does it help society? Does sending someone to jail help them or the community? These are the questions that interest me as well as the theories behind them.”

Quay is a graduate of RIC’s justice s​tudies program, who has worked for the Law Offices of Richard S. Humphrey since 2015.

Although reserved and extremely soft-spoken, there’s a strength and resoluteness that immediately ignites in her eyes when she points out the flaws in the criminal justice system. For instance, how punishment extends far beyond doing time. 

She stated, “Probation is not only a form of monitoring an offender, it’s a form of punishment. In Rhode Island, if a person is convicted of a crime or pleas to a crime and receives probation, after the probation ends, the offense is still on their record for at least five years, 10 if it is a felony. This can affect their ability to get a job in the future or to get student loans if they want to go to school. The punishments we enact affect all areas of people’s lives – their employment, their housing, their family, their future.”

Raised by her father, a single parent, Quay never intended to become a lawyer. She married at age 19, took classes at Community College of Rhode Island off and on for eight years while raising her first child and eventually earned an associate’s degree in paralegal studies. By the time she enrolled at Rhode Island College, Quay was 27 years old. Her oldest daughter was five and her youngest daughter only a year old.

“I just wanted to get a bachelor’s degree before I was 30,” she recalled, “and I wanted my girls to see that I had something that was mine.”

Quay graduated from Rhode Island College in two years and went on to earn, with honors, a J.D. at Roger Williams University School of Law. Yet she qualified her achievements by commenting, “If it hadn’t been for Dr. Mikaila Arthur [RIC Associate Professor of Sociology] and Dr. Pam Jackson [​RIC Professor of Sociology], I don’t know if I would have gone on to law school.”

“Dr. Arthur supported me at every step,” she said, “from how to go about taking the LSAT to how to apply to law school. Any time I had a question, she was there to answer it. She talked about the world and our role in it and how best to exercise the talents that we have.”

“I had many other inspiring sociology professors, as well,” she said. “Along with Arthur and Jackson, there was Professor Jill Harrison and former Associate Professor Khalil Saucier. I learned things I didn’t know about the justice system from these professors. I learned history that I hadn’t been taught before, such as the history of policing, of criminalizing certain behaviors and of criminalizing certain people in this country.”

Quay’s coursework included an internship at the office of the Rhode Island Public Defender, where she interviewed citizens who had been arrested to see if they qualified for a public defender. 

Quay noted the massive caseloads of public defenders and the disparities in thorough legal representation depending on a person’s financial means. “Though money isn’t everything, it definitely means a lot when you’re poor and you’re trying to navigate the judicial system,” she said. “Everything is much harder when you’re poor, or you’re a person of color and you’re poor.” 

Quay initially intended to become a public defender, but when a potential position in Massachusetts fell through and her current position opened she accepted. 

As a private attorney, Quay is in court almost every day​, litigating misdemeanors, felonies and civil cases. And then there are the cases she seeks out herself – “protestor cases,” referred to her by the National Lawyers Guild. In 2015 one of her cases made headlines. 

Advocating for the city’s homeless, Shannah Kurland, a lawyer and activist, was arraigned on two counts of disorderly conduct after police said she blocked a doorway to a CVS store, refused police orders to move and then incited others on the street to do the same. 

Speaking outside the courtroom after the arraignment, Quay said her client was guilty of nothing more than “standing on a public sidewalk and discussing the Constitution of the United States.” She said a video of the arrest made by police and provided to Kurland shows that she was 15 feet or more away from the entrance.

The case resulted in a “not guilty filing.” 

When Quay is asked how she conciliates the conflict between the rule of the ​law and its sometimes​ flawed implementation and how, as a lawyer, she reconciles being part of an often unjust justice system, she replied, “I think that’s the issue for many activist attorneys. Whether or not the outcome is ultimate justice, I know that without my help things would be worse for my clients. It might mean they aren’t arrested that day or that their record stays clean so they can get a job in the future.” 

Her advice to RIC students, many of whom, like Quay, are first-generation college students, juggling work, school and family life, is to keep going​.

“Keep going, even if you can take only one class at a time,” she said. “Balance is important. Working hard is important. But what’s most important is that you show up. Every day.”​

Click below to read other articles in this series:​

Miriam Contreras-Morales: The Heart of an Activist

​​Attorney Katelyn Medeiros: ​Defending the Rights of Children​

The Mayor’s Deputy Director of Policy: Leonela Felix​​​