Equal Justice Initiative

Last updated

Equal Justice Initiative
Formation1989 (1989)
Founder Bryan Stevenson
TypeNon-profit
PurposeProviding legal representation to those who may have been denied a fair trial
Location
Coordinates 32°22′46″N86°18′47″W / 32.37957°N 86.312983°W / 32.37957; -86.312983
Executive director
 Bryan Stevenson
Website www.eji.org

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a non-profit organization, based in Montgomery, Alabama, that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial. [1] It guarantees the defense of anyone in Alabama in a death penalty case.

Contents

Founder Bryan Stevenson was depicted in the legal drama Just Mercy, which is based on his memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. The film tells the story of Walter McMillian and, in less detail, the stories of other Stevenson cases.

The Equal Justice Initiative won the 2020 Webby People's Voice Award for Charitable Organization/Nonprofit in the category Web. [2]

History

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) was founded in 1989 in Montgomery, Alabama, by attorney Bryan Stevenson, who has served as the organization's executive director ever since. [1] Stevenson has been working on Alabama defense cases since 1989 for the Southern Center for Human Rights and was director of its center for Alabama operations. As of 2022, Alabama is the only state that does not provide state-funded legal assistance to death row prisoners; EJI has committed to representing them. [1]

Stevenson converted his operation in Montgomery by founding a non-profit, the Equal Justice Initiative. In 1995 he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, and he applied all of the money to support the EJI. [1] The EJI "guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state's death row." [3] It has worked to eliminate excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerate innocent death row prisoners, confront abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aid children prosecuted as adults. [3]

By 2013 EJI had a staff of 40, including attorneys and support personnel. [1]

On April 26, 2018, the EJI opened two new venues in Montgomery in memory of the victims of lynchings in the Southern United States: the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and The Legacy Museum. [4]

Campaign against life-without-parole sentencing for juveniles

Following the Roper v. Simmons (2005) ruling, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to sentence to death a person who had been a minor under 18 at the time of the crime, Stevenson began to work to have similar thinking applied to the sentencing of a convicted minor to life-without-parole in prison. He has argued several cases in the Supreme Court, and has been part of a movement to urge changes in extreme sentencing of juveniles convicted of crimes.

The Court has made several significant rulings to lighten sentencing of juveniles since Roper v. Simmons. In 2006 EJI started a litigation campaign to challenge the sentencing of minors to life-without-parole. Stevenson testified before the court in 2009 in one case. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court ruled that "mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger in non-homicide cases are unconstitutional." Since 2010, EJI has provided legal representation to nearly 100 people in the United States who are entitled to new sentences under Graham. [5]

At that time, there were nearly "3000 children age 17 or younger who had been sentenced to imprisonment until death through life-without-parole sentences imposed with very little scrutiny or review. Children as young as 13 were among the thousands condemned to die in prison." [5]

Most of the sentences imposed on these juveniles were mandatory, but EJI continued to argue along the lines of the Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons, that juveniles have "unique immaturity, impulsiveness, vulnerability, and capacity for redemption and rehabilitation." [5]

EJI argued in US Supreme Court cases Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs that the mandatory sentences constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" and were therefore unconstitutional. The Court ruled in these cases in June 2012 that even when cases involved homicide, mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors 17 or younger are unconstitutional. The ruling affected statutes in 29 states. [1]

In Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), the Court ruled that the decision in Miller v. Alabama had to be applied retroactively, and required those sentencing to consider "children's diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change." [5] An estimated 2300 prisoners nationwide may be affected whose sentences will be reviewed.

Campaign against the death penalty

In April 2015, EJI won the release on different grounds of Anthony Ray Hinton, a black man who had been on death row in Alabama for nearly 30 years; he had continued to maintain his innocence. He was released after being wrongfully convicted of murder due to inadequate counsel and faulty evidence. He had finally gained a new trial on appeal, as the defense found flaws in the main evidence used by the prosecution. In preparation for trial, the prosecution found that the bullets used in the crime did not match the gun they had traced to Hinton's home. There was no case, and the state dropped the charges. [6]

As of 2019, the EJI organization has prevented more than 125 people from receiving the death penalty. [7] [8] [9]

Studies

The EJI has published a number of studies, including Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, which was first published in 2015 and is in its 3rd edition. It concludes that a total of 3,959 lynchings of African Americans had occurred in the twelve states of the South from 1877 to 1950. The victims were mostly African-American men, although women and children were also killed. The report classified the lynchings as racial terrorism, designed to suppress the African-American community, especially as the southern legislatures were passing new laws and constitutions to disenfranchise most blacks at the turn of the century. Whites maintained this political exclusion, in part through regular intimidation and violence, through the mid-1960s.

The report discusses the long-term effects of the decades of violence on the African-American community and southern society, and on relations between the races. [10] [11] According to the EJI, the history of lynching and white supremacy underlies the South's history of extensive use of the death penalty and incarceration of African Americans. Stevenson and EJI staff believe this past must be acknowledged and commemorated "with memorials and monuments that encourage and create space for the 'restorative power of truthtelling' ", as has been done by other countries and communities. [12]

This new research added nearly 700 cases to previous documentation of lynchings of African Americans in this period. EJI has since published two updated editions of its summary data, which increased the total number of black racial terror victims identified to 4,084 in the Southern states, and 300 in other states in this same time period. [13]

Legacy Sites

Legacy Museum

The Legacy Museum, in Montgomery, Alabama, and the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice, opened on April 26, 2018. The topic of the museum is the post-slavery treatment of African Americans by whites. Rather than ending, according to Equal Justice Initiative's head Bryan Stevenson, slavery "evolved": sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, convict leasing, and lynching. The museum reflects "Stevenson's view that, unlike in [post-Apartheid] South Africa or post-Nazi Germany or many other societies traumatized by history, we've hardly begun to grapple with ours — and so cannot yet get beyond it." [14]

National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Opened on April 26, 2018, also in Montgomery, the Memorial is intended to call attention to "an aspect of the nation's racial history that's discussed the least", according to Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson: the 4,400 victims of "terror lynchings" black people from 1877 through 1950. "The memorial's design evokes the image of a racist hanging, featuring scores of dark metal columns suspended in the air from above. The rectangular structures, some of which lie flat on the ground and resemble graves, include the names of counties where lynchings occurred, plus dates and the names of the victims. The goal is for individual counties to claim the columns on the ground and erect their own memorials." [15] [16]

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park

Starting in 2021, EJI acquired 17 acres in Montgomery on the Alabama River to erect the National Monument to Freedom, a 43 feet tall, 155 feet long wall depicting 122,000 surnames adopted by the 4.7 million formerly enslaved African Americans listed on the 1870 United States census, the first census to list African Americans entirely as free people. [17] [18] QR codes on display near the monument allow visitors to find other African Americans listed in later censuses with the same surname. The park includes 170-year-old dwellings from nearby cotton plantations, objects made by enslaved persons, replicas of rail cars and holding pens, and audio recordings of people speaking in the Muscogee language, the language of the indigenous people of the park's area. The park also includes various sculptures created by Charles Gaines, Alison Saar, and Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Rose B. Simpson, Theaster Gates, Kehinde Wiley, and Hank Willis Thomas. The park opened on March 27, 2024. Stevenson stated to W that the idea was inspired by his 2021 visit to a former slave plantation (his first visit to any plantation), which he felt marginalized the slave experience in favor of the slaveowner's mansion's architecture. [19]

Other exhibits

In 2019, the initiative cooperated with the Levine Museum of the New South in preparing their exhibit "The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America". [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dallas County, Alabama</span> County in Alabama, United States

Dallas County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, its population was 38,462. The county seat is Selma. Its name is in honor of United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander J. Dallas, who served from 1814 to 1816.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monroe County, Alabama</span> County in Alabama, United States

Monroe County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,772. Its county seat is Monroeville. Its name is in honor of James Monroe, fifth President of the United States. It is a dry county, in which the sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or prohibited, but Frisco City and Monroeville are wet cities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital punishment in the United States</span> Legal penalty in the United States

In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 states currently have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums.

A torture murder is a murder where death was preceded by the torture of the victim. In many legal jurisdictions a murder involving "exceptional brutality or cruelty" will attract a harsher sentence if the killing is not sanctioned by authorities or carried out by state security forces themselves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letohatchee, Alabama</span> Unincorporated community in Alabama, United States

Letohatchee is an unincorporated community in Lowndes County, Alabama, United States. It has a very small population and four businesses. The community is part of the Montgomery Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The Southern Center for Human Rights is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to enforcing the civil and human rights of people in the criminal justice system in the South. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it has won cases in several states in the southeastern United States, including Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.

Cedarbluff is an unincorporated community in Clay County, Mississippi, United States. It is located in south central Clay County along Mississippi Highway 50.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bryan Stevenson</span> American lawyer and social justice activist

Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he has challenged bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system, especially children. He has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing children under 18 to death or to life imprisonment without parole. He has assisted in cases that have saved dozens of prisoners from the death penalty, advocated for the poor, and developed community-based reform litigation aimed at improving the administration of criminal justice.

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was a pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury. In the 1988 trial, under a controversial Alabama doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, although the jury had voted for a sentence of life imprisonment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Ray Hinton</span> American activist, writer, and author (born 1956)

Anthony Ray Hinton is an American activist, writer, and author who was wrongly convicted of the 1985 murders of two fast food restaurant managers in Birmingham, Alabama. Hinton was sentenced to death and held on the state's death row for 28 years before his 2015 release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Memorial for Peace and Justice</span> Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorating victims of lynching in the US

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the National Lynching Memorial, is a memorial to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States. It is intended to focus on and acknowledge past racial terrorism and advocate for social justice in America. Founded by the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, it opened in downtown Montgomery, Alabama on April 26, 2018.

Austin Callaway, also known as Austin Brown, was a young African-American man who was taken from jail by a group of six white men and lynched on September 8, 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia. The day before, Callaway had been arrested as a suspect in an assault of a white woman. The gang carried out extrajudicial punishment and prevented the youth from ever receiving a trial. They shot him numerous times, fatally wounding him and leaving him for dead. Found by a motorist, Callaway was taken to a hospital, where he died of his wounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Legacy Museum</span>

The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, that displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This includes the enslavement of African-Americans, racial lynchings, segregation, and racial bias.

<i>Just Mercy</i> 2019 American biographical legal drama film

Just Mercy is a 2019 American biographical legal drama film co-written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton and starring Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson, Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillian, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson. It explores the work of young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson who represents poor people on death row in the South. Featured is his work with Walter McMillian, who had been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a young woman. The film is based on Stevenson's 2014 eponymous memoir, in which he explored his journey to making his life's work the defense of African American prisoners.

Madison v. Alabama, 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, barring cruel and unusual punishment. The case deals with whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits executing a person for a crime they do not remember.

Elmore County is a county located in the east-central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. Throughout its history, there have been many lynchings in the county including on July 2, 1901, when a local mob lynched Robert White. In a strange turn of events, a local farmer, George White confessed in court to the killing and named five other local men as killers. Three men were convicted in the killing and sentenced to ten years in prison. On 9 June 1902, they were pardoned by Governor Jelks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynching of William Turner</span> 1921 Arkansas lynching

An 18-year-old African American named William Turner was lynched on November 18, 1921, in Helena, Arkansas, for an alleged assault on a 15-year-old white girl. Two years earlier hundreds of African-Americans were killed during the Elaine Race Riot in Hoop Spur, a nearby community also in Phillips County, Arkansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynching of George Ward</span> Lynching of a black man in Indiana

A mob of white Vigo County, Indiana residents lynched George Ward, a black man, on February 26, 1901 in Terre Haute, Indiana, for the suspected murder of a white woman. An example of a spectacle lynching, the event was public in nature and drew a crowd of over 1,000 white participants. Ward was dragged from a jail cell in broad daylight, struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer, hanged from a bridge, and burned. His toes and the hobnails from his boots were collected as souvenirs. A grand jury was convened but no one was ever charged with the murder of Ward. It is the only known lynching in Vigo County. The lynching was memorialized 120 years later with a historical marker and ceremony.

Jesse Thornton was a 26-year old African-American man who was lynched in the town of Luverne, Alabama, on June 22, 1940. Thornton was lynched for allegedly refusing to address a white man as "Mister". He was shot to death, and his body was thrown into the Patsaliga River. The Equal Justice Initiative documented that the white man Thornton had apparently offended by his Jim Crow infraction was a police officer.

Bud Rowland and Jim Henderson, two Black men, were lynched in Rockport, Indiana on December 16, 1900. The following day, Joe Holly was lynched in Boonville, Indiana for the same alleged crime.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Moorer, Regina (2013). "Equal Justice Initiative". Encyclopedia of Alabama. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  2. ↑ Kastrenakes, Jacob (May 20, 2020). "Here are all the winners of the 2020 Webby Awards". The Verge. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Bryan Stevenson" Archived 2016-08-18 at the Wayback Machine , 2014, EJI website; accessed 17 August 2016
  4. ↑ "A new lynching memorial rewrites American history". CNN Travel. April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Death in Prison Sentences for Children" Archived 2012-10-01 at the Wayback Machine , Equal Justice Initiative website
  6. ↑ Hanna, Jason (April 3, 2015). "Alabama inmate freed after nearly 30 years on death row". CNN. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  7. ↑ Jeffrey Toobin, "The Legacy of Lynching, on Death Row", New Yorker, 22 August 2016, pp. 38-47
  8. ↑ Adams, Tim (February 1, 2015). "Bryan Stevenson: 'America's Mandela'". The Guardian. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  9. ↑ Solomon, Cara (February 13, 2019). "Bringing Slavery's Legacy to Light, One Story at a Time". Harvard Law Bulletin. 70 (1): 46. Retrieved February 18, 2019.
  10. ↑ Robertson, Campbell (February 10, 2015). "History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names". The New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  11. ↑ "New Report Examines Lynchings And Their Legacy In The United States". NPR. February 10, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  12. ↑ "Conclusion". Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (Report) (3rd ed.). Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative. 2017. Archived from the original on May 10, 2018.
  13. ↑ "Introduction". Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (Report) (3rd ed.). Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative. 2017. Archived from the original on May 10, 2018.
  14. ↑ Hiatt, Fred (April 22, 2018). "The arc of white supremacy's history in America". The Washington Post .
  15. ↑ Reeves, Jay; Chandler, Kim (April 21, 2018). "New lynching memorial offers chance to remember, heal". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on April 21, 2018.
  16. ↑ Campbell Robertson (April 25, 2018). "A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It". The New York Times .
  17. ↑ "Freedom Monument Sculpture Park". Legacy Sites. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  18. ↑ Whitaker, Mark (March 18, 2024). "An Alabama sculpture park evokes the painful history of slavery - CBS News". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  19. ↑ "A New Sculpture Park Reexamines Slavery's Legacy in America". W Magazine. March 18, 2024. Retrieved March 29, 2024.
  20. ↑ Arrowood, Maddy (May 31, 2019). "Exhibit traces legacy of lynching in North Carolina through the stories of victims".
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