Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Allen Stevenson (born November 14, 1959) is an American lawyer, social justice activist, and law professor at New York University School of Law. He is also the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he has challenged bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system, especially children. He has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing juvenile offenders to death or to mandatory life terms without parole.

Stevenson was depicted in the 2019 legal drama film Just Mercy, based on his 2014 memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. In the memoir, he recounts his work defending Walter McMillian, who had been unjustly convicted and sentenced to death.

Stevenson initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, which honors the names of more than 4,000 African Americans lynched in the twelve states of the South from 1877 to 1950. He argues that the history of slavery and lynchings has influenced the subsequent high rate of death sentences in the South, where it has been disproportionately applied to minorities. A related museum, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, offers interpretations to show the connection between the post-Reconstruction period of lynchings and the high rate of incarceration and executions of people of color in the United States.

Early life

Bryan A. Stevenson was born on November 14, 1959, in Milton, a small town in southern Delaware. His father, Howard Carlton Stevenson Sr., had grown up in Milton, and his mother, Alice Gertrude (Golden) Stevenson, was born and grew up in Philadelphia. Stevenson has two siblings: an older brother, Howard Jr. and a sister, Christy.

Both parents commuted to the northern part of the state for work, with Howard Sr., working at a General Foods processing plant as a laboratory technician

Education Stevenson attended Cape Henlopen High School and graduated in 1978. He played on the soccer and baseball teams. During law school, as part of a class on race and poverty litigation with Elizabeth Bartholet, he worked for Stephen Bright's Southern Center for Human Rights, an organization that represents death-row inmates throughout the South. It also has the highest per capita rate of death penalty sentencing.

One of EJI's first cases was the post-conviction appeal of Walter McMillian, who had been confined to death row before being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Stevenson was able to discredit every element of the prosecution's initial case, which led to McMillian being exonerated and released from jail in 1993.

Stevenson has been particularly concerned about overly harsh sentencing of persons convicted of crimes committed as children, under the age of 18.

As of 2022, the EJI has saved over 130 people from the death penalty. In addition, it has represented poor people, defended people on appeal, overturned wrongful convictions, and worked to alleviate bias in the criminal justice system.

Acknowledging slavery

The EJI offices are near the landing at the Alabama River where slaves were unloaded in the domestic slave trade; an equal distance away is Court Square, "one of the largest slave auction sites in the country."

Associated with the Memorial is the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which also opened on April 26, 2018. Exhibits in the former slave warehouse include materials on lynching, racial segregation, and mass incarceration since the late 20th century. Stevenson articulates how the treatment of people of color under the criminal justice system is related to the history of slavery and later treatment of minorities in the South.

Author

Stevenson wrote the critically acclaimed memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, published in 2014 by Spiegel & Grau. It was selected by Time magazine as one of the "10 Best Books of Nonfiction" for 2014, and was among The New York Times "100 Notable Books" for the year. It won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction , the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction, and was voted an American Library Association Notable Book in 2015.

A film based on the book, called Just Mercy, starring Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson with Stevenson himself executive-producing, premiered on September 6, 2019, at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theatres on December 25, 2019.

Speaker

Stevenson maintains an active public speaking schedule, in large part for fundraising for the work of EJI. His speech at TED2012 in Long Beach, California, brought him a wide audience on the Internet. Following his presentation, attendees at the conference contributed more than $1 million to fund a campaign run by Stevenson to end the practice of placing convicted children to serve sentences in adult jails and prisons. By April 2020, his talk had been viewed more than 6.5 million times.

Stevenson has been a commencement speaker and received numerous honorary degrees, including from the following institutions: University of Delaware, 2016, honorary Doctor of Laws degree; Williams College, 2016, honorary doctorate; Loyola University Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine, 2011, Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa; College of the Holy Cross, 2015; Wesleyan University, 2016, honorary degree; University of Mississippi, 2017s fall convocation; Northeastern University, fall 2017 convocation; Emory University, spring 2020 commencement and honorary doctor of laws degree.

In June 2017, Stevenson delivered the 93rd Ware Lecture at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Stevenson is featured in episode 45 of the podcast Criminal by Radiotopia from PRX. Host Phoebe Judge talked with Stevenson about his experiences during his 30 years spent working to get people off death row, and about his take on those deserving of mercy.

On May 24, 2018, Stevenson delivered the Commencement address for the Johns Hopkins University Class of 2018.

On May 20, 2019, Stevenson delivered the Commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania.

On May 21, 2021, Freedom, Justice, and Hope with Bryan Stevenson premiered on Jazz at Lincoln Center where he provided reflections on the American narrative of racism and performed pieces on the piano such as "Honeysuckle Rose".

On May 8, 2022, Stevenson delivered the Commencement address at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He became the second person to receive an honorary doctorate from the university, the other being Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee.

On May 7, 2023, Stevenson delivered the Commencement address for the Ohio State University Class of 2023.

On October 5, 2023, Stevenson spoke at the President's Leadership Forum held by Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, where he received an honorary doctorate.

Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence The Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence (BASSE), a free public charter school in Georgetown, Delaware, was founded by Alonna Berry, an educator and cousin of Stevenson in August 2024. Stevenson gifted the school a $100k grant.

Awards and honors In November 2018, Stevenson received the Benjamin Franklin Award from the American Philosophical Society as a "Drum major for justice and mercy." In 2020, he shared the Right Livelihood Award with Nasrin Sotoudeh, Ales Bialiatski and Lottie Cunningham Wren.

In 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

1991 ACLU National Medal of Liberty 1995 MacArthur Fellow 2000 Olof Palme Prize 2009 Gruber Prize for Justice 2011 Four Freedoms Award in Freedom From Fear 2012 Smithsonian magazine's American Ingenuity Award in Social Progress 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction 2015 Time 100: The 100 Most Influential People 2016 Honorary Doctor of Laws degree conferred by Princeton University 2017 Honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree, conferred honoris causa by the University of Oxford 2017 The Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice 2018 People's Champion Award from the 44th People's Choice Awards 2018 The Benjamin Franklin Award for distinguished public service from the American Philosophical Society 2019 Honorary Doctor of Laws degree conferred by the University of Pennsylvania 2020 Right Livelihood Award 2020 National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Lifetime Achievement Award 2020 Global Citizen Prize for Global Citizen of the Year 2021 The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence 2021 National Humanities Medal 2023 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree conferred by Whitworth University 2025 Stockholm Prize in Criminology 2025 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership, conferred by The University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.

Personal life Stevenson is a lifelong bachelor and has stated that his career is incompatible with married life. He has resided in Montgomery, Alabama since 1985.

Publications By Bryan Stevenson:

By EJI:

Adaptations Just Mercy (2019), film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, based on book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption