Equal Justice Initiative

On Thursday, September 11, 2008, EJI Director Bryan Stevenson will testify before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security during hearings on H.R. 4300, the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act.

In a decision released on Friday, September 5, 2008, the Alabama Supreme Court reaffirmed that juror misconduct claims may be raised for the first time in a Rule 32 petition.

After Alberta Turner's home in White Hall, Alabama, was severely damaged by storms (click here for photos of the damaged home), EJI Rural Development Manager Catherine Flowers assisted the Turner family to obtain a new home (click here for photos of the new home).

EJI is challenging the ruling of a Houston County, Alabama, trial judge, which refused to shield death row prisoner Jerry Jerome Smith from execution even though he is mentally retarded.

Bobby Waldrop was sentenced to death in Randolph County, Alabama, even though his jury decided that he should be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, by a trial judge who said he was overriding the jury and imposing death because all of the other defendants he had sentenced to death were black.

A study entitled "State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges" and published in the April 2008 American Journal of Political Science found significant links between public opinion and judicial decision-making in states that elect their supreme court judges.

On May 26, 2008, United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism Doudou Diene heard testimony from EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson as part of his field mission to examine racism in the United States. Mr. Stevenson detailed evidence of racial bias against African Americans, Latinos, and other racial minorities, from the administration of the death penalty to the treatment of children in the criminal justice system.

The Equal Justice Initiative examined death sentences imposed in Alabama counties since 1978 and found surprising differences between counties in the rate of sentencing people to death.

On April 8, 2008, EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution on "The Adequacy of Representation in Capital Cases." Using specific cases involving drunk, abusive, inexperienced and underfunded trial and appellate lawyers, he illustrated how inadequate legal representation undermines the reliability and fairness of convictions and sentences in death penalty cases.

On Monday, March 24, 2008, Oklahoma death row prisoner James Fisher won reversal of his capital murder conviction and death sentence because his trial counsel's performance failed to meet constitutional requirements.