Last week I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Bryan Stevenson who is the founder and the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.
Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. 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. He has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional.
Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 125 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. He has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation.
Born in 1959 and raised in rural Delaware, Stevenson was the first in his family to attend college earning an undergraduate degree from Eastern College, St. David’s, PA and a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School. In addition to his responsibilities at EJI he is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.
According to the New York Times, Stevenson’s TED Talk entitled, We Need To Talk About An Injustice is one of the top five TED Talks of all time.
Please click here to listen to the 23-minute talk in its entirety.