This Friday, I’d like to feature the Equal Justice Initiative, an important non-profit headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, and which works to reform the criminal justice system and defend those on death row. The organization’s about page states that EJI “provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.” EJI also litigates “on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation,” and other members of marginalized and disenfranchised communities in the U.S. EJI uses the tools of litigation, policy reform, and advocacy to transform the justice system into a more fair one.
The organization’s mission and vision is clearly inspiring, but perhaps what sets it apart even further is the incredible passion and unwavering dedication of the organization’s founder, Bryan Stevenson. After reading this compelling and well-written profile – “Bryan Stevenson’s Death Defying Acts” – in the NYU Law School Magazine, I was amazed by his deep commitment to serving some of the most abused and impoverished populations within the U.S. – and that too, in the South, where attitudes towards prisoners and criminal defense work can be even more hostile and demoralizing.
Bryan Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 1985, and he could have had any job in the world. If he so desired, he could have become partner at any one of the nation’s top corporate law firms and made millions. Instead, he chose to work as a death penalty lawyer for a southern human rights organization, deciding upon a career with long hours and low pay. And maybe even few truly rewarding moments. According to the article,
Stevenson stresses how important near-poverty became to him. “Nobody got paid any money, or at least very little,” he says, “and that struck me as the ultimate measure of something genuine.” In contrast to the fancy corporate law firms that charmed so many of his Harvard classmates, he says, “it became clear to me that these death-penalty folks were real. They were serious.”
Later on, when the board of the Capital Representation Center in Montgomery offered him a salary of $50,000 – he refused it. Instead, he only accepted a salary of $18,000. His commitment was so deep that capital representation was not simply a job for him – it was a calling. What a refreshing viewpoint this is, particularly looking at the materialistic and consumer-driven state of our society and education today.
Since founding the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has become a professor at NYU Law and received numerous awards and honorary degrees celebrating his accomplishments. Still, he doesn’t rest, because he knows that there is much work yet to be done in reforming our racially-biased and unjust criminal “justice” system. I’ll leave you with this quote by Stevenson, which I think epitomizes the underlying belief that drives the work of every public defender and death penalty lawyer:
Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done…if you tell a lie, you’re not just a liar. And if you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you’re not just a thief. Even if you kill somebody, you’re not just a killer. And so I think that there’s an obligation to defend the basic human dignity of every human being.
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