Bryan Stevenson has spent four decades doing what many lawyers claim they want to do, but few actually commit to doing: fighting for the powerless.
As founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, a state with the highest per capita rate of death penalty sentencing, Stevenson has dedicated his career to challenging mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial injustice in the American legal system.
Few can match the number of US Supreme Court victories Stevenson has secured, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia, and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Stevenson and the staff of EJI 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. His work has literally saved lives.
