Equal Justice Initiative
| Formation | 1994 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Bryan Stevenson |
| Type | Non-profit |
| Purpose | Providing legal representation to those who may have been denied a fair trial. |
| Location | |
|
Executive director
|
Bryan Stevenson |
| Website | www |
The Equal Justice Initiative (or EJI) is a non-profit organization, based in Montgomery, Alabama, that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial. It guarantees the defense of anyone in Alabama in a death penalty case.
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) was founded in 1994 in Montgomery, Alabama, by attorney Bryan Stevenson, who has served as the organization's executive director ever since. He had been working on Alabama defense cases since 1989 for the Southern Center for Human Rights and was director of its center for Alabama operations. It had received federal funding to provide legal representation to prisoners on death row. Congress ceased funding these centers in 1994, after Republicans gained control in a mid-term election. Alabama is the only state that does not provide legal assistance to death row prisoners; EJI has committed to representing them.
Stevenson converted his operation in Montgomery by founding a non-profit, the Equal Justice Initiative. In 1995 he was awarded a MacArthur grant, and he applied all of it to support the EJI. The EJI "guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state’s death row." It has worked to eliminate excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerate innocent death row prisoners, confront abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aid children prosecuted as adults.
By 2013 EJI had a staff of 40, including attorneys and support personnel.
Following the Roper v. Simmons (2005) ruling, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to sentence to death a person who had been a child under 18 at the time of the crime, Stevenson began to work to have similar thinking applied to the sentencing of a convicted child to life without parole in prison. He has argued several cases in the Supreme Court, and has been part of a movement to urge changes in extreme sentencing of children convicted of crimes.
The Court has made several significant rulings to lighten sentencing of children since Roper v. Simmons. In 2006 EJI started a litigation campaign to challenge the sentencing of children to life-without-parole. Stevenson testified before the court in 2009 in one case. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court ruled that "mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger in non-homicide cases are unconstitutional." Since 2010, EJI has provided legal representation to nearly 100 people in the United States who are entitled to new sentences under Graham.
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