Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama

Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson has been representing capital defendants and death row prisoners in the deep south since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989, he has been executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human… See full bio.

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Story: In the United States, dozens of 13- and 14-year-old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole after being prosecuted as adults. While the United States Supreme Court recently declared in Roper v. Simmons that death by execution is unconstitutional for juveniles, young children continue to be sentenced to imprisonment until death with very little scrutiny or review. A recent study by EJI documented 73 cases where children 13 and 14 years old have been condemned to death in prison. Nearly all of these children currently lack legal representation and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences has never been reviewed. Most of the sentences imposed on these children were mandatory; the court could not give any consideration to the child’s age or life history. Quantel Lotts spent the first seven years of his life in a violent St. Louis neighborhood. His mother sold and used crack cocaine in their house and he saw his uncle gunned down in his front yard. Quantel was removed from his mother’s home and lived in three different foster homes before moving with his father to rural, predominantly white St. Francois County. Quantel’s father moved his three children into the home of his white girlfriend and her children. Quantel loved his older stepbrother Michael and spent a lot of time with him. One day, when Quantel was 14, the two boys got into an argument. Michael was stabbed with a knife and died. Despite objections from the victim’s mother, Quantel was tried and convicted as an adult. Without considering Quantel’s age, psychological state, or family background, and against Michael’s mother’s wishes, the court imposed a mandatory death-in-prison sentence. EJI is challenging Quantel’s mandatory sentence in state and federal court.

Evidence of Impact Summary:

The Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama Inc. has become a national leader in providing legal representation to death row prisoners, pursuing policy reform through litigation, and raising awareness about issues such as capital punishment, life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders, and racially disproportionate juries.
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Organization Strengths Summary:

The Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama has been praised for its successful litigation strategies, its effective marketing, and its efficient use of resources. Experts have consistently credited the group’s success to their excellent staff and leadership, notably their charismatic and committed executive director, Bryan Stevenson.
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Areas for Improvement Summary:

According to experts, the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama could improve by striving for more of a national presence, by increasing support for staff members, and by expanding their services into more advocacy, collaboration, and community education.
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Bryan Stevenson has been representing capital defendants and death row prisoners in the deep south since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989, he has been executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. Stevenson's work has won him national acclaim. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award Prize. He is also a 1989 recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the 1991 ACLU National Medal of Liberty, and in 1996, he was named the Public Interest Lawyer of the Year by the National Association of Public Interest Lawyers. In 2000, Stevenson received the Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights and in 2004, he received the Award for Courageous Advocacy from the American College of Trial Lawyers and the Lawyer for the People Award from the National Lawyers Guild. In 2006, NYU presented Mr. Stevenson with its Distinguished Teaching Award. He has also received honorary degrees from several universities, including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Georgetown University School of Law. Stevenson has served as a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan School of Law. He has also published several widely disseminated manuals on capital litigation and written extensively on criminal justice, capital punishment and civil rights issues. A 1985 graduate of Harvard, with both a masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from the School of Law, Stevenson joined the clinical faculty at New York University School of Law in 1998.

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