US lawyer depicted in ‘Just Mercy’ wins ‘alternative Nobel’
Associated PressBIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama human rights attorney whose work fighting racial injustice was depicted in the Hollywood movie “Just Mercy” was among four activists awarded a global honor sometimes referred to as the “alternative Nobel” on Thursday. Bryan Stevenson, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989 while working to free wrongly convicted people from prison and was the driving force behind a national memorial to the victims of lynching, was named a recipient of annual Right Livelihood Award. The Swedish Right Livelihood Foundation cited Stevenson for “his inspiring endeavor to reform the U.S. criminal justice system and advance racial reconciliation in the face of historic trauma.” “His compassion has shown that each human being is worth fighting for,” the foundation said in honoring Stevenson and the other recipients. Stevenson’s work was the subject of the 2019 movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, based on Stevenson bestselling book “Just Mercy.” The film tells the story of Stevenson’s successful work to win the freedom of a Black man wrongly convicted of murder, Walter McMillan, from Alabama’s death row in 1993.
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