Sunny Eaton

“A huge part of my work now involves looking carefully at assumptions—assumptions made by investigators, prosecutors, experts, jurors, and sometimes entire systems,” Sunny Eaton tells GO. “Being LGBTQ+ sharpened my awareness of how often people are flattened into narratives that erase complexity.” As director of the Conviction Review Unit for the District Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Tenn., Eaton investigates systemic failures and wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system. Thus far, her work has contributed to the exoneration of five wrongfully convicted people. Eaton is also an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Law School, an author, and a national speaker on trauma-informed advocacy, bias, and justice reform. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, and The New York Times Magazine. Outside of the legal field, Eaton’s mental health advocacy work includes serving on the boards of Healing in the Margins, an organization that provides therapy for queer and BIPOC individuals, and Oasis Center, an emergency shelter for teenagers where Eaton herself was once a resident. “A difficult divorce and my own experiences with trauma changed me profoundly,” says Eaton. “They made me more reflective, softer in some ways, and far more aware of how deeply survival shapes people. I think that personal healing work ultimately made me a better advocate, a better leader, and a more compassionate person.” –LE