Equal Justice Initiative

EJI's largest funder, the JEHT Foundation, will shut down at the end of this month and will not be able to provide grants committed to EJI for the next three years because its funds were stolen by money manager Bernard Madoff.

Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett spent one night in federal custody after evidence showed that inmates in his jail were not being adequately fed, in violation of his agreement to properly care for prisoners.

Joe Sullivan, now 31 and confined to a wheelchair, was sentenced to die in prison for an offense that happened when he was 13.

Attorneys from EJI have filed a petition in the United States Supreme Court asking it to find that Joe Sullivan's sentence to die in prison for a crime that occurred when he was 13 years old is cruel and unusual punishment.

Mississippi Supreme Court Presiding Justice Hon. Oliver E. Diaz Jr. last week in a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Graves held that the death penalty is unconstitutional.

In an address to the Prison Reform Trust in London on December 8, 2008, EJI Director Bryan Stevenson warned that building American-style prisons to warehouse thousands of prisoners could fatally undermine the British justice system’s ability to cut crime by reforming offenders and instead set England and Wales on a fast-track to a damaging and discredited prison system.

In the next five months, Alabama seeks to execute an unprecedented number of people. The Alabama Supreme Court announced on December 3, 2008, that it has scheduled five executions for the first five months of 2009. If these executions are carried out, next year will see the most executions in Alabama in a single year since 1949.

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Phillip Shaw is a free man today. He was released from prison in Missouri after his conviction and sentence to life imprisonment without parole -- for an offense at age 14 -- were overturned.

Analysis of votes cast for president on November 4, 2008, shows that the percentage of white Alabama voters who supported President-Elect Barack Obama was the lowest in the country, at only 10%.

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, appointed by Governor Martin O'Malley to examine the state's death penalty, concluded on November 12, 2008, that Maryland's capital punishment system is too costly, makes too many mistakes, and fails to deter crime.

On October 31, 2008, Equal Justice Initiative attorneys filed a brief in the Alabama Supreme Court on behalf of Alabama death row inmate Michael Carruth, in which it argued that Mr. Carruth is entitled to an out-of-time appeal because the lawyer appointed to represent him on the appeal of his conviction failed to file a mandatory petition for review in the Alabama Supreme Court.