Classic Desert Island Discs - Bryan Stevenson
Kirsty Young's castaway is the American lawyer Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, working on death penalty cases, and cases of children sentenced as adults.
Kirsty Young's castaway is Bryan Stevenson.
An American lawyer, he is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a private, not-for-profit organisation working on death penalty cases, cases of children sentenced as adults, prison and sentencing reform, and issues of race and poverty.
His great grandparents were slaves and he himself went to a segregated school in southern Delaware. Although from a poor African American background he made it to Harvard Law School. Since then he has secured relief for over a hundred prisoners sentenced to death. He has argued in front of the Supreme Court six times and won landmark rulings about the sentencing of children for both homicide and non-homicide offences. His TED talk from March 2012 has been viewed over two million times.
The programme was first broadcast in 2015.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
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