News & Events
John Thompson, subject of US Supreme Court decision, Connick v. Thompson speaking in Washington, DC December 3, 2011
John Thompson spent eighteen years on Louisiana’s Death Row for a crime he did not commit. He walked out of prison with ten dollars and a bus fare, and he vowed to never go back. His intimate familiarity with what people experience behind prison walls as well as the great obstacles they must overcome after being released led him to launch Resurrection After Exoneration. Thompson’s murder conviction was overturned in 1999—just weeks before his scheduled execution—when a hidden blood test was uncovered by a private investigator. In his retrial, his lawyers also discovered eyewitness reports that didn't match Thompson's description; he was acquitted and subsequently won the $14 million in damages. His lawyers showed that at least four prosecutors knew about the blood test, and that evidence had been hidden in other cases as well.
Stephen B. Bright to speak at SPDTC Winter Training/Graduation ceremony January 28, 2012
Stephen B. Bright has been a fellow or visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School since 1993. He is also president and senior counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights, a human rights organization that deals with human rights in the criminal justice and prison systems. He served as director of the Center from 1982 through 2005. His subject area is capital punishment and he has represented people facing the death penalty at trials and on appeals and prisoners in challenges to inhumane conditions and practices; written essays and articles on the right to counsel, racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, judicial independence, and other topics that have appeared in scholarly publications, books, magazines and newspapers; and testified before committees of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In addition to Yale, he has taught courses on criminal law and capital punishment at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Emory, Georgetown, Northeastern, and other law schools. Mr. Bright has a B.A. and a J.D from the University of Kentucky.
Eric Holder Speech
"I know that many of you are working closely with our Access to Justice team. And – as I’ve often told my good friend Jim Sandman, the President of the Legal Services Corporation, who I’m glad to see here tonight – with the assistance and engagement of our partners, I have no doubt that we can build upon the progress that’s been made in protecting funding for – and expanding access to – legal services. And we can do even more to raise awareness about the challenges that current – and future – lawyers must help to address.
I also want to mention another historic step that the Justice Department took last year – in awarding a $700,000 grant to launch the Public Defender Corps, a partnership between Equal Justice Works and the Southern Public Defender Training Center. This innovative program selects highly qualified new lawyers to work in public defender offices – and provides them with the training and support that they need to be effective."