GRANVILLE -- The Denison University Lecture Series will host human rights proponent Stephen B. Bright to discuss "The Death Penalty: How Race and Poverty Determine Who Dies." This event, set for 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday (April 16) in Herrick Hall, is free and open to the public.

Stephen Bright

Bright is director of the Southern Center for Human Rights and teaches courses on the death penalty and criminal law at the Harvard and Yale University law schools. The Southern Center for Human Rights is a public interest legal project that provides legal representation to persons facing the death penalty and to prisoners challenging unconstitutional conditions in prisons and jails throughout the south. The Center also is engaged in efforts to improve access to lawyers and the legal system for poor people accused of crimes, bring about greater judicial independence and public education about these issues.

Bright has testified before committees of Congress and committees of the state legislatures of Connecticut, Georgia and Texas. He has served as a legal services attorney with the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund, a provider of assistance to poor people in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and a trial attorney with the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia. He also served as director of the District of Columbia Law Students in Court Program, a trial practice clinic operated by a consortium of the law schools at the American, Catholic, George Washington, Georgetown and Howard universities and on the American Bar Association task force that studied capital punishment issues in 1989-90.

Bright received the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award in 1998, the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty presented by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1991 and the Kutak-Dodds Prize presented by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in 1992. His articles have been published in numerous legal journals including the Yale Law Journal, Santa Clara Law Review, Boston University Law Review and New York University Law Review.

For press inquiries:

Name

Barbara Stambaugh

Position Title

Director, Media Relations

Primary Email

stambaughb@denison.edu

Business Phone

(740) 587-8575