Bryan Stevenson, and acclaimed public interest attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has committed his life to justice -- and especially to the task of closing the gap between how the criminal justice system operates for poor people and people of color, and America's purported ideal of equal justice for all.
But for more than 30 years, Stevenson has embarked on a mission to try. He successfully argued a case in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors aged 17 and under were unconstitutional. Along with his EJI staff, Stevenson has obtained reversals, relief or release for more than 125 wrongfully convicted prisoners on death row. And this spring, in Montgomery, Alabama, EJI opened the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, built on the grounds of a former warehouse where enslaved people were imprisoned, in the capital of what was once among the largest slave-owning states in America. The narrative museum is coupled with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the nation's first to honor and document black people who were victims of racial terror lynchings. In 2014, Stevenson published "Just Mercy." It's part memoir, part an account of his work and EJI's development. It centers on those Stevenson represents: people who are most vulnerable to the lack of justice in the criminal justice system. It was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.
[For more on this story by RACHEL LEAH, go to https://www.salon.com/2018/09/...k-is-just-beginning/]
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