CrimProf Stephen Bright Delievers Death Penalty Lecture

In conjunction with his visit to the University of Maryland School of Law, Distinguished Visiting CrimProf Stephen Bright will deliver a lecture entitled "Will the Death Penalty Survive in the 21st Century?"

Professor Bright is President and Senior Counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which provides legal representation to persons facing the death penalty and to prisoners challenging unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails throughout the United States, especially in the South. The Center is also engaged in efforts to improve access to effective legal representation for criminal defendants and prisoners, and to advance judicial independence

During his tenure, Mr. Bright has represented persons facing the death penalty at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction proceedings. He argued Amadeo v. Zant before the U.S. Supreme Court, in which a death sentence was set aside on the grounds of racial discrimination. He has also testified before committees of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as well as of a variety of state legislatures. He has taught courses on capital punishment, criminal procedure, and prisoners’ rights at Yale, Harvard, Emory, Georgetown, Northeastern, and Florida State university law schools, as well as a course on international human rights law and capital punishment at St. Mary’s University School of Law’s Institute on World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria.

Mr. Bright has received numerous awards for his work against the death penalty and on behalf of those with limited access to justice, including the ABA’s Thurgood Marshall Award; the Brandeis Medal, presented by the Brandeis Society of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law of the University of Louisville; the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty of the American Civil Liberties Union; and the Kutak-Dodds Prize of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association [Mark Godsey]