About the Defendant Aid Society
We are a 501(c)(3) charity and a national network of attorneys, paralegals, and citizen volunteers. We stand with people facing the government — in a courtroom, or from inside a prison — and we help families protect their freedom before the trouble ever arrives.
Our Mission
The Defendant Aid Society is a national network of attorneys, paralegals, and citizen volunteers. Some of the people we help can pay a little; most cannot pay at all. We help them anyway. Everything we do falls under three words: we Defend the accused, we Educate families and communities, and we Liberate the incarcerated.
We created D.A.S. because of personal experience — and our service is still rooted in that core.
Where We Began
The Defendant Aid Society began with a family. Our Executive Director, Jewel K. Franklin, and her husband have been enmeshed in a long, grinding battle with the federal government. After a series of public political conflicts, he was indicted on financial charges. In the course of that fight, a federal judge made a finding that almost never happens: that prosecutors had violated his constitutional rights to obtain the indictment in the first place. The court dismissed the entire case with prejudice.
Most people would assume that ends a prosecution. It did not. What followed was a fight that has stretched nearly two decades — and continues to this day, with her husband in prison. That ordeal taught our founders, firsthand, how desperately ordinary people need real help when the government comes for them, and how few ever find it. Out of that conviction, the Defendant Aid Society was born.
Why This Work Matters
Americans spend enormous energy on elections and almost none on the place where the law actually lands on a human being: the courtroom. But every statute, every regulation, every act of the state is ultimately enforced by a prosecutor and tested before a judge. That is where freedom is real or it is nothing.
Most people never learn how any of it works — the rules, the procedure, the law itself — until the day they are standing in it, or watching someone they love standing in it. By then, surrender usually looks like the only sane option. Take the plea. Stop fighting. Save what you can. And so people who might have prevailed give up, because no one ever showed them they had a chance, and because fighting alone is unbearable.
That moment — when a person decides to fight for their freedom and discovers how alone they are — is why we exist. It doesn’t matter whether it’s early or late in the case: we help defendants and inmates all the same. We also work to help people avoid trouble with the government in the first place, and to be prepared if it ever comes. There are very few resources left in America built to help someone mount a real defense. We strive to be exactly that.
No one should have to walk in alone.
What Drives Us
We are a faith-driven charity. Our conviction is rooted in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe, as the Lord declared in scripture, that He “established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom [He] raised up unto this very purpose” — and that it was to be “maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh.” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:80, 77)
To us, defending liberty is not a cause beside the gospel. It is part of it — as fundamental as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison.
Our first commitment is to serve Latter-day Saints who find themselves facing the government — and then to help anyone else who reaches out. We help people of every faith and no faith, and our own attorneys and volunteers come from many traditions.
We are not formally affiliated with the Church; we are a private organization of Latter-day Saints, Christians of other denominations, and others who simply believe this work is holy. Wherever we can, our help is free. Where it cannot be, the cost is small.
Learn More
The small staff and Board of Directors who govern and operate the Defendant Aid Society.
Meet the team →
Education, legal help, and advocacy for individuals, families, businesses, and inmates.
See our services →
Real cases and real outcomes — the years of freedom we have helped return to families.
Read the stories →Whether you need help or want to help, there is a place for you in this work.
