A Brief Note On Greetings From The Equal Justice Initiative

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To whom this may concern,

Greetings from the Equal Justice Initiative. The EJI is an organization based in Alabama that provides legal representation for those who have been wrongly convicted. I am the Senior Attorney & Director of Development here at the EJI. Many people in underprivileged and impoverished areas around the world have been accused and sentenced to death row, merely due to their race and level of wealth. I am here writing this letter to ask you to think about the people that are going to die for crimes they didn’t commit. Imagine yourself being sentenced to death and knowing you were falsely convicted. For most accused, their lives come to a close, but if we have any chance of saving others and fighting the injustice in our …show more content…

“We Need To Talk About Injustice.”).

Unfortunately, race affects the chance of execution and it happens more than it should. As a society, we have made so many improvements throughout history. The abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement has immensely improved our society but every day when we incarcerate innocent black individuals and send them to death row, we as a society are setting ourselves back sixty years. Do you want that? Do you want to repeat history? Well, I don't. Bryan Stevenson states, “The death penalty is, of course, a fantastically important issue, but the way we frame the question is important. One way of asking is, “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they’ve committed?” But another way is, “Do we deserve to kill?” (Stevenson, Bryan. “We Need To Talk About Injustice.”) If you're mortified by the thought of an innocent person being …show more content…

A case where Walter Mcmillan a black man was convicted and sentenced to the death penalty for the murder of a young white woman named Ronda Morrison in 1986, “ Mr. McMillian was with his family 11 miles away from the dry cleaning store where Ms. Morrison was murdered at the time of the crime. Dozens of black people could testify to his innocence but they were ignored. The nearly all-white jury convicted Mr. McMillian of capital murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole.” (EJI) Since Walter McMillan was a black man he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death row. When Bryan Stevenson took on the McMillan case in 1988, he began working on the case and found lots of evidence that proved McMillan innocent. Evidence was found that the state's only eyewitness had been persuaded into lying during his testification. Walter McMillan was released in 1993 after spending 6 years on death row. Since Walter Mcmillan was sentenced to death because he was black and his alibi witnesses were black which is why he was wrongly accused. Due to the work of the EJI Walter McMillan was one of the first released from death row, today more than 160 people have been proven innocent (EJI). By donating to the EJI you will be saving lives. In the words of Walter McMillan himself, “Justice is forever shattered when we kill an innocent man” (EJI) Donate to the EJI and fight the injustices in the world and