Southern Center for Human Rights (SCHR)

SCHR has won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court overturning death penalty rulings by lower courts, including at least one directly related to proving racial bias in jury selection. ³ It also partners with like-minded organizations to change public opinion about various matters related to the criminal justice system. ⁴ Its reports are often widely cited by the press, including a 2022 report about the Fulton County jail where it claimed malnutrition, neglect, and abuse are widespread. ^{5 6}  

Left-of-center foundations make up a significant portion of SCHR’s funding. ^{2 7 8 9 10 11 12}

Background

The Southern Center for Human Rights was founded after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. The group moved its headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1982. It describes itself as responding to alleged slavery after the U.S. Civil War which it says was informally instituted by “Southern aristocracy” through policing, punishment work, and other law enforcement and criminal justice practices. ¹³

While it was started to oppose the death penalty in the South, it has since expanded into other areas of criminal justice. Its self-published book about its history highlighted helping a man whose public defender didn’t realize he was in jail after charges were dismissed, and helping a woman leave a detention center because she was too poor to pay a $705 fine that resulted in her being imprisoned in an overnight state facility. ¹³

In an op-ed written for Inside Philanthropy, Solidaire Network executive director Rajasvini Bhansali claimed that his organization had provided “urgent security funding” in 2020 while proving legal representation for bail fund organizers and protesters. ¹⁴

Major Cases

The Southern Center for Human Rights claims credit for five U.S. Supreme Court cases which overturned death penalty decisions and one Georgia Supreme Court case which led to ending the use of the electric chair to carry out the death penalty. ¹⁵ Three of those cases were won by longtime president Stephen Bright, including a 2015 case where a mentally disabled black man was given a new trial after Bright proved racial discrimination by the prosecution. Bright’s client spent 28 years on death row before the Court ordered a new trial. ³

It also played a significant research and litigation role in the state of Georgia creating a statewide office for public defenders for the first time in 2003. ¹⁶

Other Initiatives

The Southern Center for Human Rights opposes construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Facility, also called “Cop City” by opponents, signing a letter along with other left-of-center groups who claim that opponents’ signatures for a ballot referendum about construction of the Safety Facility may have been illegally invalidated. ¹⁷

After police were found innocent in the shooting of an environmentalist protester who opposed clearing forest to construct the Safety Facility, SCHR was one of three organizations which submitted a claim to an international court claiming that the protester’s human rights were violated. ¹⁸ Police claimed the protester fired on them first, injuring an officer. The protester’s family hired an outside investigator whose report claimed that the protester was sitting with his hands up. ¹⁹

SCHR has also used former U.S. President Donald Trump’s election interference trial in Fulton County, Georgia to generate attention about allegedly poor conditions at the prison where Trump was formally booked. Its 2022 report claiming malnutrition, lice outbreaks, unnecessary inmate deaths, and other issues was cited by major media outlets after the booking. ^{5 6} SCHR praised the U.S. Department of Justice for investigating the jail after a woman’s death in 2023, saying it had been filing lawsuits about conditions at the institution for years. ²⁰

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which ended the national purported right to abortion in America, a spokesperson for SCHR was quoted at length about how being on probation risked women’s ability to cross state lines to abort a baby. ²¹ That spokesperson, Page Dukes, is a former convict who spent 10 years in prison for an armed robbery she blamed on a heroin addiction and who was able to secure the right to vote in 2020 after a lawyer helped her secure early release from probation. The Southern Poverty Law Center quoted Dukes as saying that because felons are counted in the Census, they should never lose the right to vote. ²²

Influence

Former Southern Center for Human Rights SCHR attorney Lauren Sudeall joined the organization as a Soros Fellow, then as a staff attorney, then as a board member after having worked as a law clerk for then-left-of-center U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She was announced as a Vanderbilt Law faculty member in 2023, a role which included launching a program to expand poor Americans’ access to legal representation. ²³

In 2021, former SCHR executive director Sara Totonchi was named director of research and policy for Stacey Abrams’s Georgia gubernatorial campaign. Abrams was the Democratic Party’s nominee. ²⁴

In 2003, a former SCHR employee became a Program Manager for an Open Society Foundations-affiliated group, The Gideon Project. ²⁵

Leadership

Terrica Redfield Ganzy is the Southern Center for Human Rights’ executive director. A longtime attorney, she previously focused on SCHR’s death penalty representation in Georgia and Alabama. She has received several awards for her advocacy and sat on numerous law group boards. ²⁶

Allen Garret, Jr. is SCHR’s board chair. His career has largely focused on consumer protection and corporate law. ²⁷

Stephen Bright has been SCHR’s president for 40 years. A visiting professor at Yale and Georgetown law schools, he is the author of Too Much Justice. In a 2023 law school lecture, he said the justice system discriminates based on income. ²⁸ The book itself also examines the impact of race on America’s justice system, including application of the death penalty. ²⁹

Financials

The Southern Center for Human Rights earned $5.93 million in 2022, spent $5.71 million, and held $13.5 million in assets. ³⁰

Over its existence, it has received donations from left-of-center nonprofits such as The Proteus Fund and the Open Society Institute, as well as $150,000 from Blaustein Philanthropic Group, $1,750,000 from The Atlantic Philanthropies, and $500,000 from the Public Welfare Foundation. ^{7 8 9 10 11 12}

Foundations provided over one-third of SCHR’s 2021 revenue, which was over $7 million. ²