Bryan Stevenson, American lawyer and founder of the human rights organisation Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), has dedicated his life to challenging America’s unequal justice system. Stevenson and EJI have successfully exonerated over 135 innocent death row prisoners, while defeating excessive and unfair sentencing, representing children prosecuted as adults, and tackling the abuse of mentally ill prisoners.
Dubbed “America’s Nelson Mandela” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Stevenson holds a plethora of awards and was appointed to report on the state of law enforcement to the US government under the Obama administration. Stevenson also possesses an innate oratory talent and often speaks publicly, holding the record for the longest standing ovation at a TED Talk. He believes in the power of identity, both within the individual and the United States as a nation, as a source of progress.
Stevenson asserts “each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done" and questions “is it healthy for America’s identity to keep [its] eyes closed?” Stevenson’s work tackling harsh sentencing and educating America on its relationship with race and justice exemplifies the power of these identities. At a time when activist lawyers have increasingly been threatened by governments across the globe, Bryan Stevenson’s career is an example of the fundamental importance of such work. In his TED Talk, Stevenson stated: “We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent.”
EDUCATION AND EARLY WORK
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bryan Stevenson worked for the Southern Center for Human Rights and was exposed to the systemic flaws in the criminal justice system. Following cuts to federal funding for death-penalty defence, Stevenson established the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989 in Alabama. At the time, Alabama was the only state not to provide legal assistance for death row prisoners, leaving many without any legal representation. One of EJI’s first cases, the story of which frames the narrative for his best-selling memoir, Just Mercy, was the post-conviction appeal of Walter McMillian. Walter was sentenced to death after spending six years on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Bryan Stevenson took on Walter’s case post-conviction where he successfully demonstrated that the state’s witnesses had lied on the stand and that the prosecution had illegally suppressed exculpatory evidence. Walter McMillian’s conviction was overturned by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in 1993, and McMillian was released from prison, signaling the magnitude of EJI’s purpose.
THE EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE
EJI has continued to challenge the flaws in the United States’ criminal justice system since, and in 2006, Stevenson and EJI organised a litigation campaign to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children. The campaign culminated in the landmark ruling in Miller v. Alabama where the Supreme Court barred mandatory life-without-parole sentences for children 17 or younger. As some states refused to apply the ruling to older cases, in 2016 the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that Miller enforces new sentencing for anyone who is serving a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for an offense committed when they were under 18. As such, EJI’s campaign has affected the lives of over a thousand people who have since been resentenced after being condemned to die in prison for juvenile offenses. Stevenson’s affirmation that “all children are children'' is reflected in EJI’s work including advocating for the abolishment of adult prosecution for any child under the age of 14, ending any juvenile under age 18 being placed in an adult jail or prison, and all excessive sentencing on children.
Through litigation, advocacy, research, and recommendations to policymakers, EJI helps shape many other aspects of criminal justice reform, including abolishing the death penalty, ending abusive and violent prison conditions, and fighting the racial disparities at the heart of these issues.
PUBLIC EDUCATION
While Stevenson has been successful in the courtroom and influential in shaping policy, he believes that a confrontation with America’s racist history is necessary in order to fully understand and progress from America’s issues of mass incarceration and racial bias within the justice system. Stevenson and EJI continue to campaign for a process of truth and reconciliation from the Slavery and Reconstruction eras and he asserts in an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein that in order to recover from human rights abuses, “you have to commit to truth-telling first. You can’t jump to reconciliation. You can’t jump to reparation or restoration until you tell the truth.” Stevenson looks to Germany and South Africa as examples of this framework of engaging with truth and reconciliaton, following the human rights abuses that occurred during the Nazi rule of Germany and apartheid in South Africa.
EJI has produced reports on the horrors of the slavery and Reconstruction eras and has launched the Community Remembrance Project to work with local communities to memorialise documented victims of racial terror and violence and encourage important dialogue between race and justice. In addition, EJI has created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and “The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration” in Montgomery, Alabama as part of the push for truth and justice within the United States. In an interview with The Guardian, Stevenson, when asked if he is surprised that this type of work has fallen to EJI, responds: “We are a bunch of lawyers with a huge case load [...] I’m not sure why this hasn’t been taken on by anyone else. But I increasingly think this is the necessary step that leads to a degree of humility around these issues.” It is this humility that Stevenson believes to be so essential to our humanity, our identity, and our progress towards retributive justice.
Sean works as a paralegal in the employment and discrimination department at Leigh Day. He studied History and American Studies at the University of Manchester and has a keen interest in international human rights issues and climate justice.