Equal Justice Initiative

On November 12, 2009, Herbert Williams was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Mr. Williams’s death sentence last year after finding that his trial lawyer failed to provide effective representation because he did not investigate or present powerful evidence of abuse and psychological trauma at trial.

Ohio is poised to become the first state in the country to change to a single-drug lethal injection. The new protocol comes in the wake of several botched executions, including the state's unsuccessful attempt to execute Rommell Broom in September.

Today EJI argues at the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Petitioner Joe Sullivan in Sullivan v. Florida, which challenges the imposition of life-without-parole sentences on young adolescents.

Over a dozen national and international organizations representing teachers, scientists, adolescent development experts, physicians, and corrections professionals have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida, which challenge sentences to life imprisonment without parole imposed on children.

EJI lawyers Bryan Stevenson and Brandon Buskey, seated, argue before the Supreme Court.

On October 8, 2009, the Alabama Supreme Court and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals heard oral arguments at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the court system's outreach and education efforts. EJI attorneys were asked by the courts to participate in both oral arguments.

More questions about the reliability of the death penalty were raised when Yancy Douglas, 35, and Paris Powell, 36, were released from Oklahoma's death row on October 2, 2009, after being exonerated in the 1993 capital murder for which they have spent 14 years in prison.

In the wake of scientific evidence documenting that the State of Texas executed an innocent man when it put to death Cameron Willingham in 2004 for the deaths of his three children in a house fire, Texas Governor Rick Perry has stirred more controversy and criticism by replacing members on a commission reviewing the arson investigation which led to Mr. Willingham’s conviction.

With state and local budget crises emerging and intensifying across the recession-wracked United States, jurisdictions are re-examining the death penalty's high price tag, growing evidence of unreliability and concerns about wrongful convictions. Alabama is a counter-example, as its execution rate increases and careful review of death penalty cases is being restricted.

On September 4, 2009, the Alabama Supreme Court reversed the conviction and sentence imposed on Marsha Colby, who was convicted of capital murder after giving birth to what doctors believe was a stillborn baby.

On August 24, 2009, attorneys with the Equal Justice Initiative filed a petition in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Alabama death row inmate Michael Carruth challenging the state courts' decision that death row inmates like Mr. Carruth have no right to counsel on appeal to the state's highest court.