Professional in the Spotlight: 
Stephen B. Bright

This month’s “Professional in the Spotlight” is president and senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights. As a passionate defender of the constitutional right to counsel for all people accused of crimes, Steve Bright has worked tirelessly for more than 32 years to ensure that all people receive substantive legal counsel no matter their social, economic or racial status. In particular Steve focuses on the right to counsel with regard to poor people and inadequate legal representation in death penalty cases. Steve is also involved in fighting against unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails, and racial discrimination within the legal system. I am proud to have worked with Steve back in 2008 when his office was challenging the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council and honored to call him a friend.

Q:  What type of business are you in?  
A:  Human rights law and teaching. I have been with the Southern Center for Human Rights for 32 years representing people in death penalty cases as well as class actions regarding the right to counsel for poor people accused of crimes and unconstitutional conditions and practices in prisons and jails. I have been teaching at Yale Law School since 1993 and have taught at several other law schools, including Georgia and Emory, during that time. At Yale, I teach a four-unit course on the death penalty, emphasizing racial discrimination and the right to counsel in all kinds of criminal cases, including death cases, and issues regarding the death penalty for intellectually disabled and mentally ill people. 

I’m also one of three people who run the death penalty clinic at the law school. Students who have participated in the clinic work on capital cases with us and lawyers from the Southern Center and the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. I have recently completed an online version of my course, available to anyone for free, at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNez7ZuPRY3KNJ2ef16qebyZe and https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/capital-punishment-race-poverty/id942696735 . I hope that it will help inform people about the issues I’m concerned about.

Q:  What was the last experience that made you a stronger person?
A:  In the ongoing work we do at the Center with regard to the right to counsel, we continue to discover children and adults who receive no representation at all, others who receive only perfunctory representation, and people who are thrown in debtors’ prisons without counsel. Georgia executed Robert Holsey on December 9, even though his lawyer was drinking a quart of vodka a day during his trial and was preoccupied with being on the verge of being indicted and disbarred for stealing client funds. No system that pretends to be about justice should have allowed that execution. It is immensely discouraging that so many people still do not receive adequate representation 51 years after Gideon v. Wainwright, but it strengthens our resolve to continue our efforts to make the right to counsel and equal justice a reality in the courts.

Q:  If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
A:  Thurgood Marshall.

Q:  When you have 30 minutes of free-time, what do you like to do?
A:  Read The New York Times.

Q:  What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you regarding your profession or career?
A:  I learned growing up from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that nothing was more important than eliminating racism and poverty and nothing was less important than one’s income. These lessons have served me well during my life in the law.