"Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.
Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of two highly acclaimed cultural sites which opened in 2018: the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law." (bio from eji.org)
Read Bryan Stevenson's full bio and link to other resources here.
Attorney Bryan Stevenson, author of the bestseller "Just Mercy," has helped to save 145 wrongly-convicted prisoners from execution, but these days the man behind Montgomery, Alabama's National Memorial for Peace and Justice might be better known his other job: educating Americans about the legacy of slavery and racial violence in this country. Stevenson talks with correspondent David Pogue about confronting history as a first step in healing, and gives a tour of the brand new Legacy Museum in Montgomery. - JAN 30, 2022
A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law by