Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama and is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. He is widely acclaimed as one of the most effective public service lawyers in America. A graduate of both the Harvard Law School, where he was awarded the Harvard Fellowship in Public Interest Law, and of the Harvard School of Government, where he was awarded the Kennedy Fellowship in Criminal Justice, Mr. Stevenson has devoted his life to helping disadvantaged people in the deep south. He and his staff have been largely responsible for reversals or reduced sentences in over 65 death penalty cases. In 1985 Mr. Stevenson joined the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia as a staff attorney. From 1989-1995, he represented capital defendants as the Executive Director of the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center. As Executive Director of EJI, Mr. Stevenson represents indigent defendants, death row prisoners and juveniles who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system. Mr. Stevenson is committed to informing policymakers in the critically important work of reforming the administration of criminal justice, and he assists counsel representing death row inmates by providing training materials and consultation. Mr. Stevenson’s work on behalf of condemned prisoners has attracted national recognition and acclaim from the Washington Post, the New York Times, People magazine, LIFE magazine and several national television programs including Nightline and 60 Minutes, which featured a case where he and his staff achieved the release of a death row prisoner who spent six years on death row for a crime he did not commit.