Equal Justice Initiative
Annual Report
2014
The Equal Justice Initiative is a nonprofit human rights organization providing legal services to the
poor, incarcerated, and condemned. We challenge over-incarceration, excessive punishment, and
unconstitutional conditions of confinement in American jails and prisons. EJI fights against abuse
of children in the criminal justice system and the criminal prosecution of kids as adults. We are
working to reform how police, prosecutors, and prisons treat the mentally disabled and other
disfavored and vulnerable people, and we provide services to formerly incarcerated people.
EJI is changing the way we talk about racial injustice in the United States by re-examining our country’s
history of slavery, racial terror, segregation, and racial subordination. We produce reports, studies,
documents, and interactive tools designed to advance social justice and protect human rights, and we
work with communities across the country to support criminal justice reform and improve the status
of the poor and people of color.
Cover photo (c) Corbis
In 2014, EJI won relief for several wrongfully convicted death row
prisoners, secured the release of people condemned to die in prison when
they were children, and won a ruling from the United States Supreme
Court that protects the rights of poor people who face criminal
prosecution. We are representing more than 200 people as part of our
effort to implement Miller v. Alabama, a landmark ruling won by EJI
attorneys in the United States Supreme Court in 2012 that bans
automatic condemnation of children to die in prison.
(c) Txking, Dreamstime.com
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Bernard Troncale
In the last year, EJI issued a major report on the legacy of slavery in
America and transformed the visual landscape of Montgomery, Alabama,
by erecting public monuments about the domestic slave trade. In the city’s
most popular spots, we established markers that reveal Montgomery’s status
as having been one of the most active slave trading spaces in America.
Slavery and its legacy have largely
been ignored in many parts of this
country. Prior to EJI’s work this
year, there were 59 monuments and
markers in Montgomery celebrating
the Confederacy but almost no
mention of slavery or its impact.
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Above, community leaders joined EJI staff in ceremonies surrounding the erection of markers about slavery. For
our forthcoming report on racial terror in America, EJI staff spent hundreds of hours over the last year investigating
lynchings that occurred throughout the South during the period from Reconstruction until World War II. We are
planning to mark locations where lynching and racial violence have undermined racial justice as part of our effort
to confront the continuing challenges created by America’s legacy of racial inequality.
Bernard Troncale
Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos
EJI has distributed more than 160,000 calendars that
teach racial history in English and Spanish to communities all over the nation. EJI hopes to create muchneeded discourse about the legacy of racial inequality
in the United States.
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EJI is working to stop the adult
prosecution of very young children.
Thirteen states have no minimum age
for prosecution as an adult: Alaska,
Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho,
Maine,
Maryland,
Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South
Carolina, Tennessee, and West
Virginia. Several other states permit
the prosecution of children as young
as 8, 10, or 12 years of age.
We believe there should be a
minimum age enforced by the
Constitution that bars adult
prosecution of underage children.
EJI is also working to ban the
placement of children in adult jails
and prisons—an abuse that is
practiced today in 28 states.
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Steve Liss
EJI is representing scores of
people condemned to die in
prison after being convicted of
crimes when they were children.
In the last year, we won the
release of several people who
had been sentenced to life
imprisonment without parole
for juvenile offenses.
We continue to represent
people who need legal assistance
to obtain relief
from
unconstitutional convictions
and sentences.
AP Photo
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In February 2014, EJI won a unanimous ruling from the United States Supreme Court finding that
the conviction and death sentence imposed on Anthony Ray Hinton, a man on Alabama’s death row,
was improper. The Court ruled that Mr. Hinton’s right to a fair trial was violated when his attorney
failed to obtain an expert who could have shown that he is innocent. A trial court has since ruled
that Mr. Hinton is entitled to a new trial after 28 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he did
not commit.
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Most capital defendants are indigent and cannot afford to pay for skilled legal representation. In
many states, people are sentenced to death because the quality of legal assistance they receive is
inadequate. EJI believes that poverty, racial discrimination, and politics make capital punishment
deeply flawed and unreliable.
EJI has won new trials, reduced
sentences, or release for over 115
people on death row. We provide
legal assistance to more than 100
people sentenced to death, and we
train and support lawyers
recruited to assist the condemned.
Execution protocols that result in
barbaric and torturous executions,
bias against the poor and racial
minorities, and the shocking rate
of error demonstrated by the
dozens of innocent people who
have been sentenced to death are
some of the problems that EJI
challenges in our work on behalf
of people on death row.
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EJI has investigated conditions of confinement and issued several reports documenting corruption,
beatings of handcuffed prisoners by correctional staff, unsafe and inadequate security conditions, and
cruel mistreatment of mentally disabled prisoners.
In September 2014, EJI filed a class action lawsuit against St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville,
Alabama, after several prisoners were murdered. Cell doors at the prison do not work and corruption
and abuse is widespread. In the last few years, EJI has worked with United States Justice Department
officials to document unconstitutional abuse of prisoners like Rocrast Mack, a young nonviolent
prisoner who was beaten to death by correctional officers at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton,
Alabama. As a result, several officers were successfully prosecuted in federal court in 2013.
In May 2012, EJI issued a report documenting widespread sexual violence and abuse of women
incarcerated at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. Women were being raped, sexually
assaulted, and subjected to horrific violence and abuse by correctional staff. After EJI initiated
complaints with the Justice Department, federal investigators this year found that women at Tutwiler
“live in a sexualized environment with repeated and open sexual behavior” and concluded that the
conditions at Tutwiler are unconstitutional.
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The number of women in prison in the United States has increased 640 percent in
the last 20 years.
Montgomery Advertiser 11
12 Montgomery Advertiser
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Many prisons
are overcrowded, dangerous, and terrifying places where imprisoned men, women,
and children are illegally abused and victimized.
Ameen Thomas, Stanley Washington, and David Garlock are formerly incarcerated men who participated in EJI’s
re-entry program. Ameen Thomas was sent to an adult prison in Georgia when he was 13; today, he works with a
re-entry program in San Francisco. Stanley Washington was sentenced to die in prison for nonviolent drug crimes
until EJI successfully challenged his sentence. He now works with EJI to provide support services to other formerly
incarcerated people. David Garlock was abducted and abused before being sentenced to 20 years in prison. After
EJI won his release in 2013, he graduated from our re-entry program and is now a college student at Eastern
University in Pennsylvania.
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The Post-Release Education and Preparation
(PREP) project at EJI works with people
released from prison, some of whom have been
incarcerated for decades. EJI provides housing,
jobs, education, counseling, and a range of
services to help the formerly incarcerated stay
out of prison and become contributing
members of society.
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Through EJI’s Justice Fellowship program,
recent college graduates join our staff for two
years. Justice Fellows are very involved in our
PREP work. Above, Justice Fellows Kiara
Boone, Nia Holston, Ian Eppler, Korbin Felder,
and Alayah Glenn.
EJI social workers Ursula Hill
(left) and Maria Morrison do
extensive work with PREP clients.
EJI staff attorney
Sia Sanneh
Last year, we hosted film screenings,
roundtable discussions, big and small public
meetings, and several sessions with
community leaders to work on effective
strategies for advancing social justice and
confronting racial inequality.
Community members gather in EJI’s meeting room.
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Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy,
premiered in October as an instant
New York Times Bestseller. Just
Mercy presents the story of EJI, the
people we represent, and the
importance of confronting injustice.
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Bryan Stevenson talks about Just Mercy at a bookstore in Washington, D.C.
Photos by Angela Davis.
“Searing, moving . . . Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela.”
—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
“The message of the book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be
made.”
—Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review
“A modern-day Atticus Finch . . . This is a book of great power and courage.”
—Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns
“The stories told within these pages hold the potential to transform what we
think we mean when we talk about justice.”
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
“Words such as important and
compelling may have lost their force
through overuse, but reading this
book will restore their meaning, along
with one’s hopes for humanity.”
—Tracy Kidder,
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
Mountains Beyond Mountains
“Bryan Stevenson is America’s young
Nelson Mandela.”
—Desmond Tutu,
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
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EJI is conducting programs and services for community
groups, schools, civic organizations, churches, and a crosssection of the public about the history and legacy of racial
inequality and strategies for confronting structural poverty.
Above, community leaders discuss a presentation on racial
history by staff at EJI.
EJI staff attorney Jennifer
Taylor
Bryan Stevenson and
Aaryn Urell
Randy Susskind
Lynda Black
Jennifer Taylor, Jeff Hall, Noam Biale, Alison Mollman, Jennae
Swiergula, and Alicia D’Addario
Jackie Jones-Peace, Zachary
Katznelson, and Charlotte
Morrison
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Robert Fouts
BRYAN STEVENSON, Executive Director ● EVA ANSLEY, Operations Director ● RANDY
SUSSKIND, Deputy Director ● ALICIA D’ADDARIO, Senior Attorney ● JACQUELINE
JONES-PEACE, Senior Attorney ● ZACHARY KATZNELSON, Senior Attorney ●
CHARLOTTE MORRISON, Senior Attorney ● AARYN URELL, Senior Attorney ●
CATHLEEN PRICE, Cooperating Senior Attorney ● RYAN BECKER, Staff Attorney ●
ANDREW CHILDERS, Staff Attorney ● STEPHEN CHU, Staff Attorney ● CARLA
CROWDER, Staff Attorney ● JOHN DALTON, Staff Attorney ● BENJAMIN MAXYMUK,
Staff Attorney ● KATHRYN MILLER, Staff Attorney ● ALISON MOLLMAN, Staff Attorney
● SIA SANNEH, Staff Attorney ● BENJAMIN SCHAEFER, Staff Attorney ● JENNAE
SWIERGULA, Staff Attorney ● JENNIFER TAYLOR, Staff Attorney ● MARIA MORRISON,
Social Worker ● URSULA HILL, Social Worker ● CATHERINE COLEMAN-FLOWERS, Rural
Development Manager ● LYNDA BLACK, Staff Assistant ● RENEÉ CLEVELAND, Staff
Assistant ● LAURA JOHNSON, Deputy Program Manager ● IVAN HUGLEY, Facilities ●
RAMONA THORNTON, Staff Assistant ● JAMES WARREN, Executive Assistant ● BEN
HARMON, Law Fellow ● ESTELLE HEBRON-JONES, Law Fellow ● KATHERINE
HUBBARD, Law Fellow ● MICKEY HUBBARD, Law Fellow ● RACHEL JUDGE, Law Fellow
● EVAN PARZYCH, Law Fellow ● JEANNE SEGIL, Law Fellow ● ERICA SELIG, Law Fellow
● JENNIFER WILLIAMS, Law Fellow ● KIARA BOONE, Justice Fellow ● IAN EPPLER, Justice
Fellow ● KORBIN FELDER, Justice Fellow ● ALAYAH GLENN, Justice Fellow ● NIA
HOLSTON, Justice Fellow
Equal Justice Initiative
122 Commerce Street
Montgomery, Alabama 36104
334.269.1803
www.eji.org
EJI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.