Equal Justice Initiative

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the October 25, 2007, execution of Danny Siebert just hours before it was scheduled to take place. The State of Alabama had attempted to execute Mr. Siebert, who is suffering from advanced terminal cancer, even though it conceded that he will die within months. Newspapers across Alabama have criticized the State for seeking to execute Mr. Siebert.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama granted federal habeas relief to Alabama death row prisoner William Glenn Boyd on September 28, 2007.

On September 25, 2007, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Baze et al. v. Rees et al., No. 07-5439, to address whether the lethal injection execution procedures used in most death penalty states violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

For the first time in the modern death penalty era, an Alabama governor has granted a reprieve shortly before an Alabama prisoner was scheduled to be executed. Thomas Arthur's execution, scheduled for September 27, 2007, was suspended over concerns about Alabama's lethal injection procedures.

Saturday night's verdict in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin once again makes clear a serious problem relating to race in America. It is a problem that will victimize more young people of color until we address it honestly. Too many people in America are burdened with a presumption of guilt. Their race, their ethnicity, their religion, their nationality, and sometimes their poverty is seen as an indicator of danger, a basis for distrust or suspicion that marks them as someone to be feared, someone to be closely monitored.

EJI has filed a complaint that documents severe physical and sexual abuse and violence perpetrated by several correctional officers and officials in three Alabama prisons for men. EJI has made allegations to the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) of widespread physical abuse and misconduct at the Elmore Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama. EJI reports that in the last six months there have been nearly a dozen instances where prisoners at Elmore have been handcuffed, stripped naked, and then beaten by several guards. EJI also has uncovered evidence that male officers sexually abused male prisoners at Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama, and Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama. EJI is now asking ADOC to investigate and protect prisoners from physical and sexual violence by prison employees at these facilities.

On June 19, 2013, two weeks after the North Carolina legislature voted to overturn the Racial Justice Act, Governor Pat McCrory signed the repeal of the historic law, which prohibited the use of race in the imposition of the death penalty.

Former prison supervisor Michael Smith was convicted in federal court on June 25, 2013, of fatally beating inmate Rocrast Mack at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Alabama. Smith was convicted of violating Mr. Mack’s civil rights, conspiring to cover up what happened, and obstruction of justice.

It was a crime in Virginia for Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, to marry in 1958, so they married in Washington, DC, only to be arrested in a police raid when they returned home. They were charged with interracial marriage and miscegenation, punishable by five years in prison. The Lovings pleaded guilty, received a suspended sentence, and were ordered to leave the state.

Today, the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, No. 12-96, struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act and effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and successful civil rights laws.