Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Just Mercy: A Resilient Attorney, Winning People’s Lives Back In 2014, Bryan Stevenson published an oscar worthy memoir touching on the lives of the unjustly convicted, sentencing death. As a new, eager, inexperienced attorney we are shown first hand the amount of courage and endurance it takes to stand by impoverished, hopeless people using the courthouse as a battle field to win their lives back. Stevenson gives us authentic detailed insights into the world of an attorney, with the purpose of sharing the key theme of mercy. “Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy” This memoir bounces back and forth between a multi dimensional, emotionally impactful case of Walter McMillian, and supplementary cases, involving deeper issues that are untouched amongst women, children and disabled. Bryan Stenson is an American lawyer who graduated from John F. Kennedy school of government, Harvard University. His early role as an attorney was not taken seriously, but through his determination to challenge the bias against the poor and the minorities in the Justice system, he finds himself against a rock and hard place. As competitive as his field is, very few were interested in taking the time to investigate further into what could be done for wrongly accused death row inmates. It seems as if money and credibility is the sole thrust for achieving support in the courthouse. These cases are some of, if not the most challenging to work on, because even if you have proofable evidence, the judge and justice system might still push back to save their reputation and the repercussions that would come from the media blowing such an event up. Walter McMillian is wrongly accused of sodomy. He is accused of raping another man along with being questioned for the murder of a woman named Ronda Morrison. When “said to be” witnesses came into the picture, they themselves contribute to the falsity of the crime. McMillian is sentenced to death due to the collection of trackless evidence. Stevenson caught wave of this case six years later as McMillian was weeks away from his execution. Stevenson, as a young attorney is not taken seriously and feels entirely inadequate to make any effective efforts on a death penalty case. He quickly realizes that if he doesn't at least try no one else will. This is just the beginning to a long, strenuous journey towards exoneration of McMillian. Being the focal point of the book, the reader is able to step foot into our justice system and empathize with the people being affected by our complex and erroneous justice system. As readers we are given glimpses of other individual cases representing women, children and disabled being victimized in the justice system. In the United States, the death penalty for children is above the age of fifteen. A fourteen year old boy, Charlie was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. He is a well rounded, and looked upon highly, although an uncomely event occurred when he shoots his mother's boyfriend, George. George is an alcoholic who one day comes home drunk and punches Charlie's mom in the face, leading her to bleed an obsessive amount. Charlie tries to help, but the bleeding continues. He strongly questions whether his mother is still alive, as she is lying unconscious on the floor. Before dialing 911 he grabbes a gun that is in a nearby drawer and shoots George. He then proceeds to dial. After Stevenson works with several cases like this he begins to represent juvenile cases whose violent acts have lead them behind bars. In the mid - 1980’s he established the equal justice institute in Montgomery, AL. From that point on there were changes in the way the criminal justice system dealt with youth. They realize that full development of an individual is at 18, and youth should not be penalized like an adult for their uncontrolled lack of development. Stevenson addresses how many cases involving mentally ill or disabled are handled in the same way as any other case. Stevenson goes on to say “Mass incarceration has been largely fueled by misguided drug policy and excessive sentencing, but the internment of hundreds of thousands of poor and mental ill people have been the driving force in achieving our record levels of imprisonment.” Inmates who have medical records or mental illnesses, are out of touch with reality, unable to identify right from wrong. Therefore, the jury has to exempt them from the execution. In another example young mothers are being accused for lack of evidence regarding their stillborn births.“Communities were on the lookout for bad moms who should be put in prison. About the same time as Marsha’s prosecution, Bridget Lee gave birth to a stillborn baby in Pickens County, Alabama. She was charged with capital murder and wrongfully imprisoned.” Stevenson goes on to describe the over crowded female regulated prisons and the manipulative promiscuous correctional officers amongst them. Stevenson is very declamatory with his writing style, with an idiomatic approach, which can appeal to all types of readers. His vast array of personal anecdotes and gut enthralling stories glue readers to the pages. His thoughts are crisp and innovative, allowing our eyes to see the justice system in a new light, and in many instances through the shoes of the accused. Stevenson gives us authentic detailed insights into the world of an attorney, with the purpose of sharing the key theme of mercy. By the end of this book you will have gained a new understanding of what mercy looks like and how we can take part in being more merciful to others.

I heard about this book a number of times before I finally bought it. But it wasn’t the number of people who mentioned it that impressed me; it was the way they spoke of it, definitely in admiration, almost in awe, always with a tone that suggested they had been changed by the experience. What better recommendation could there be? I had to read it. The book follows Stevenson’s career first as a Harvard law student, and continuing after he received his degree, defending people (primarily in Alabama) who would otherwise have little hope of justice. Even with the efforts of Stevenson and others working to bring the ideal of equal justice closer to reality, there are aspects of a person’s life, some of which that person cannot control, that demonstrably affect his or her interaction with the massive machinery of justice in America. To summarize Stevenson’s argument: If you are poor, black, or mentally ill, your chances of receiving fair treatment in the justice system are much worse, especially if the victim is white. Of course, racial discrimination is still present in American society and still causes untold damage, but one thing that struck me while reading this book was the reminder of how recent the history of overt racial discrimination is in our country. By this I mean discrimination that doesn’t even hide itself, that isn’t even subtle, that is just right there in your face, never mind what the law might say. This history runs deep in America, and it still has the effect of denying many people the benefits of a nation that promises “liberty and justice for all.” In particular, as it relates to Stevenson’s book, African Americans who are caught up in the justice system have to carry a heavy burden of history, whether they are guilty or not. Addressing this burden is the aim of Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson and his colleagues don’t only defend African Americans who have no access to good legal representation. They have worked with white convicts as well, in addition to showing a special interest in the mentally ill and children convicted of serious crimes and thrown in together with the general prison population. But race and the history of race relations, including a history of state-sanctioned violence against African Americans, are the broad context for the work. It is a context that I think is difficult for white Americans, especially privileged white Americans, to fully understand. The frame story for Stevenson’s book, the story that encompasses all the others and provides a thread of continuity, is the saga of Walter McMillian. McMillian was convicted and sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, based on flimsy and highly questionable evidence that was contradicted by other evidence and testimony available to police and prosecutors at the time of the original trial. Imprisoned on Alabama’s death row in 1987 before the trial even began, McMillian was eventually released in 1993 through the efforts of Stevenson and the EJI. But while McMillian’s case is described from beginning to end over the course of the book, Stevenson describes many other cases, some successful, some not, that he handled over the years. As infuriating as McMillian’s story is, though, the main point of the book is not that a man named Walter McMillian was unjustly imprisoned and prejudicially sentenced to die. Yes, his exoneration was a belated correction of a grievous error, and it saved an innocent man from death, but there are two larger messages embedded in these accounts of underfunded attempts to right past wrongs and, in the case of children, to ensure that they are not permanently damaged by being incarcerated with hardened criminals. First is that there is a real human being at the core of each of the stories Stevenson tells, and each of them deserves the fair treatment that any of us would expect, even demand, of the justice system. It is said so often that it can sound corny, but even one innocent person wrongfully convicted is too many, and if that person is put to death it is inexcusable both legally and morally (especially if the case was mishandled). Stevenson notes in a Postscript that when Anthony Ray Hinton was freed from prison in 2015, after being “locked down in solitary confinement at Holman Correctional Facility [in Alabama] for three decades in a 5x7 cell” for a crime he did not commit, he was the “152nd person in America exonerated and proved innocent after having been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death” (p. 315). One hundred and fifty-two people! How can we as a nation continue to argue that the death penalty is a useful part of a system of justice when over 150 innocent people have been condemned but had the good fortune to be proven innocent before the process could reach its culmination in their death? It is unknown how many innocent people have actually been executed, but if this many have been freed after being proven innocent, we should lose some sleep—lots of it—over that unanswerable question. It’s not good enough to say that because in the end they were exonerated, the cases of these 152 people prove that the system works. The point is that they never should have been convicted in the first place. Far too many of these people were convicted due to incompetent representation, withheld evidence, and prejudicial hearings, and were only saved because a lawyer somewhere had time to take their case (most likely for little or no pay, since those wrongfully convicted tend to be poor). For those not so lucky, the execution chamber awaits. The second message is that it does not weaken our justice system to remember that justice tempered with mercy is not a lesser form of justice. I have great faith in the American justice system, a faith that has been reinforced by living in countries that have different systems. Yes, it takes a little longer to look objectively at all the evidence. And it is difficult for all of us to look beyond our preconceptions and see the person in front of us rather than the category into which we would place them. But that is what our common humanity requires of us. And when fallible human beings, including the state’s representatives (judges, prosecutors, juries of one’s peers), are making decisions that could end a person’s life, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that we do all we can not to allow mistakes to be made that cannot be undone once the sentence is carried out. False charges can be reversed. Unjust imprisonment can end. But nothing ends the gas chamber, the electric chair, or the lethal injection until the heart and lungs stop functioning. Stevenson isn’t suggesting that killers go free, or that criminals should not be punished. His larger message about mercy is simply this: We all need it from time to time, and we may even need more than we deserve. As he puts it, “we are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent” (p. 289). But it’s not just that we all have our often-hidden sources of pain. It’s that we most often need mercy when we deserve it least. “The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering” (p. 294). Some would ask, but what about people who don’t deserve mercy? What about people who, by their own actions, have put themselves beyond the bounds of human decency and thereby forfeited their right to continue living among us? One response would sound a bit like a Sunday School lesson, at least if you’re a Christian. By that doctrine, none of us deserves mercy. It’s always a gift, given because of the love and grace of the Giver, not because of the merits of the one to whom it is given. But it’s hard to apply such a lesson to the criminal justice system, because the great Lawgiver isn’t dispensing justice in that system. We are. And I mean that “we” literally. We are all implicated when any decision is made in the courts, since the foundation on which those courts rest is the idea that in determining guilt and innocence, and setting punishments in the case of the former, they act as our surrogates, expressing the unacceptability of certain acts but also accepting the possibility that sometimes, the person in the dock just might be innocent. At the conclusion of his story of Walter McMillian, Stevenson concludes with a lesson he said he learned from the experience. “Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.” He’s not talking about Walter McMillian’s liberation from prison, though. He’s talking about Walter’s own forgiveness of “the people who had judged him unworthy of mercy” (p. 314). So what is required of us as citizens of a country with a legal system designed to protect us from the depredations of those who would harm us while also protecting us as much as possible from the perversions of justice that will be part of any imperfect system administered by imperfect people? We might start with this: To do justice and love mercy. In practice, the systems of state power cannot be expected to operate perfectly, but we can insist on certain things from those systems: a fair, impartial hearing; consideration of all the evidence, whether or not it supports one side’s vested interest in a particular outcome; refusal to apply the law any differently regardless of race or prior history. When those in a position to decide on our behalf decide that the ultimate penalty is to be applied, we can refuse to let the human thirst for vengeance make us callous to the tragedy that has unfolded for everyone, from the victims to the perpetrator. And when a wrongly-convicted person is freed, we can find within us a willingness to accept him or her as we would like to be accepted, as one whose failings are part of the enormous burden of our common, fallible humanity.

This is such a powerful book, one that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, one that makes you feel both hope and despair. I had an inkling that our justice system in the United States is broken and disproportionately punishes poor people and people of color, but reading this really opened my eyes. I truly had no idea just how broken it is. Bryan Stevenson is such an inspiring and altruistic human being. He is a lawyer who has dedicated his life to the fight for justice, serving as an advocate for those who have nobody to fight for them. The work that he has done and continues to do is nothing short of amazing. He and his non-profit organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, have helped so many people who found themselves, as a result of tragic circumstances, on death row or serving life sentences: people wrongly accused and convicted, people of color suffering racial injustices at every turn of the judicial process, poor people, people who had to stand trial although they were too mentally impaired to do so, and people who were children at the time of their conviction and incarceration. This book made me incredulous, and then appalled, and then angry; how do we allow such corruption and bias in a system that is supposed to be about justice, but is really about how much money you have and who you know? It’s insane that, not only are innocent people on death row and serving life sentences, but the process of getting them released even after they are proven innocent is so difficult and can take years, if it ever happens at all. How Mr. Stevenson was able to persevere through all the times when many people would have thrown in the towel is a testament to the amazing person he is. He helps the broken, the people outcast by society, the people who don’t have anyone else to help them. The main story line followed Walter McMillan, a black man on death row who is completely innocent of the murder he was accused of committing. The state of Alabama’s entire case was based on the false testimony of a man who was coerced and threatened by law enforcement and the prosecution to lie. Walter had an iron-clad alibi, but no representation to speak of, and he was sentenced to death row. The chapters that told Walter’s story were interspersed with the stories of many, many others in similar predicaments. While it wasn’t my favorite format, it did allow Stevenson to give the reader a more complete picture of the injustices in our judicial system, putting human faces on the anecdotes, while also building suspense in the narrative about Walter. This is such an incredible, well-written book. It is a difficult, heavy read, but an important one. I am so glad that people like Bryan Stevenson exist, and that he has gotten to tell his story.

My coworker sent me an urgent text. Not that it was marked urgent, I just mean the language used in the text. It was urgent that I read the book titled, "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson. "OK," I said. I generally read and watch things that are recommended to me by people I know. So, after I finished the book I was reading at the time I started on "Just Mercy". Within the first 20 pages I recognized the theme. It was a theme I was all too familiar with from other books--one of injustice at the hands of those in charge of meting out justice. The author, Bryan Stevenson, is an attorney that graduated from Harvard Law School. Before finishing school he started working for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee which was a non-profit organization designed to provide legal counsel to primarily death row inmates that didn't have or hadn't had proper counsel. He continued in that line of work even after graduating and this book chronicles some of the more saddening cases of prisoners--of all types--that weren't getting a fair deal. The book mainly focuses on the case of Walter McMillian. His was a particularly saddening and infuriating case of gross injustice. Walter was wrongly convicted of killing a woman and it seemed no amount of evidence would convince the sheriff, district attorney, local media or the various judges otherwise. Bryan takes us through Walter's story and really yanks at the heart-strings when detailing the Alabama way of doing things. But don't fear; the book is not all doom and gloom. There are some very uplifting and positive stories interspersed within the book around Walter's story. The book is a rallying cry for real change in the justice system--particularly the Southern justice system. It is a call for the abolishment of the Death Penalty, if not a major overhaul of the Death Penalty. It is books like these that give me pause and make me reconsider my own capital punishment position. After reading so many true crime books I was an ardent proponent for capital punishment. I've read about so many sickos that I saw nothing less than erasing them from existence as the solution. I still hold those beliefs, but now not so ardently. After reading about the egregious miscarriages of justice it's hard for me to say that capital punishment as it stands should continue. I'm too afraid of the number of wrongly convicted or even the over-punished to feel comfortable about capital punishment as it is today. That is the power of this book. It has given me something of substance to think about and chew upon.

Jesus once told a cabal of religious leaders anxious to stone a woman caught in adultery: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her” (John 8:7, NIV). In his bestseller, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel and Grau, 2014; Amazon Kindle edition), New York University School of Law Professor Bryan Stevenson calls us to a different task, that of catching the stones cast by others. Just Mercy recounts Professor Stevenson’s founding of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a legal aid organization based in Montgomery, Alabama that advocates for those who are victims of shortcomings in the U.S. criminal justice system – the wrongfully convicted, prisoners on death row, and juveniles tossed into the chaos of the adult prison population. Caring about prisoners is a biblical mandate – “Remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them…” (Hebrews 13:3a, ESV) – so books like Mr Stevenson’s invite the Church to engage an issue too often shunted aside. Well-told stories seize the reader’s heart and won’t let go, stories like Walter McMillan, exonerated after having spent 6 years on death row for a murder he couldn’t have committed. Then there’s Joe Sullivan, convicted at 13 years old for a non-violent crime yet sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, what Stevenson calls “death in prison.” These and a dozen other vignettes – bolstered by troubling statistics of the sheer number of incarcerated Americans, disproportionately African-American – tell the story of sectors of a criminal justice and prison system tainted by racism and sexual abuse, desperately needing reform. Underlying the conversation is a question long overdue for renewed public debate: Should the purpose of imprisonment be punitive or rehabilitative? It is here that the word “redemption” in the book’s title gives the reader a clue. While Stevenson is in favor of abolishing the death penalty – a view that I share – he is not arguing that offenses should be overlooked, only that redemption should be our objective. Sentences must be tempered by a compassion arising from the knowledge that each of is “broken” in some way. He observes (location 4485): "I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion." Just Mercy wears its religion lightly. No doubt this is intentional, to appeal to a broader audience. Yet as a Christian theologian, I wonder: Is justice alone enough? Put differently, is a wrong ever completely righted merely by setting the wrongfully imprisoned free or reducing the sentences of those punished too harshly? One key ingredient is lacking: reconciliation. What is striking in Just Mercy is how rarely victims of injustice and those who inflicted it ever make peace with each other. Yet if the Gospel teaches anything, it is forgiveness, Christ on the cross praying: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34) Mr. Stevenson is the expert, not I, but I wonder: Is it possible to forgive someone then turn around and sue for millions? Sometimes it is argued that this will prevent crooked prosecutors and judges from inflicting the same harm on others, but can this be when – should any damages be awarded – they are shouldered by the taxpayer and not the perpetrator? Even if the award were only $ 100,00.00, if it were levied directly on the official at fault and not upon the government entity who employs them, would that not be a greater deterrent than the current system? What lesson does a prosecutor who suppresses evidence or a judge who abuses his or her power learn when someone else bears the brunt? Surely more creative solutions are possible, including dismissal of crooked officials or (as merited) prison time. Unfortunately, Just Mercy suffers from tunnel vision, focusing only on monetary awards and never questioning whether the current system of who-pays- what short-circuits the reconciliation that is inseparable from redemption, both for victim and perpetrator. The Church needs to challenge the darkness that overshadows too many parts of the criminal justice and prison system. Books like Just Mercy should convict us about how little we have done for those who need our help. Particularly, we must do more to engage adolescents at-risk before they are caught-up in a too-often heartless criminal justice machine. Professor Bryan Stevenson has gifted us with a masterful and moving book, a clarion call to stop throwing stones and start catching them. Rocks are jagged and our hands will get bloody, but can we as the People of God do any less?

Bryan Stevenson has written an extraordinary memoir in which he describes his career as a lawyer and activist. For more than 30 years, Mr. Stevenson has taken on the mantle of defending the poorest among us. On this book, he skillfully chronicles his relentless fight to raise public awareness of the biases and racism that are so embedded in the United States Justice system, a system that at times seems unable or unwilling to correct even its most glaring mistakes. His clients include prisoners in death row, neglected children prosecuted as adults and placed in adult prisons as well as mentally disabled people unable to receive attention to their special needs. This book will probably shock and upset you, maybe even make you mad, but by the end it'll also leave you with a sense of hope and optimism, after you learn how activists like Stevenson are tirelessly working in improving and helping correct important aspects of the legal system in the United States. For a book that’s non-fiction, “Just Mercy” it’s a real page turner. It is written in simple, accessible language and although it’s categorized as a memoir, Stevenson spends little time on the book talking about himself or his background. The majority of the book is dedicated to recounting the details of some of the cases he’s been involved in throughout his career. Although “Just Mercy” details more than a dozen cases, it focuses in particular on Stevenson’s fight to free Walter McMillan, an African-American man, who was falsely accused and convicted of killing Ronda Morrison, a young store clerk, white woman. McMillan’s crime was basically having an affair with a white married woman. When the community grew impatient with the lack of developments in the case of Morrison’s death, the police found in McMillan, who was a married himself, a perfect suspect. They ignored that McMillan had not connection or knew the victim, had an alibi in the form of several people that were with him at the time of the crime, and was, the romantic affair non-withstanding, a well-liked and exemplary citizen with no criminal record. Ironically, these events took place in Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. It’s almost poetic (in) justice. Walter McMillian’s trials and appeals took place in the 1980's and 1990's, not in the 1930’s, but one can’t help drawing parallels between Bryan and Walter and their fictional counterparts Atticus and Tom. Unlike Harper Lee’s fictional character and fortunately for McMillan, Stevenson did win the case to free him. But the road to get there was certainly a long and painful one. During the next few years, Stevenson and his colleagues investigated the McMillan case and, in the process exposed how corrupted authorities at every level conspired to build a false case. It wasn't until CBS's 60 Minutes and other national news outlets called attention to the story, that the State Prosecutor decided to open his own inquiry. After re-examining the case, the investigators concluded that “There is no way that Walter McMillan killed Ronda Morrison”. Six weeks later the Alabama Appeals court reversed McMillan's conviction and shortly after dismissed all charges. Walter McMillan died in 2013, only 10 years after he was exonerated from death row. He was in bad health but as Stevenson’s remarks “He remained kind and charming until the very end, despite his increasing confusion from the advancing of dementia”. Stevenson is today, along with his mentor, Stephen Bright, one of the nation’s most influential and inspiring advocate against the death penalty. He and his EJI colleagues have obtained relief for over one hundred people on Alabama’s death row, and won groundbreaking Supreme Court cases restricting the imposition on juveniles of sentences of life without parole. Several times while reading this book, I broke down in tears, sometimes due to a deep sense of empathy with so many people that have endured so much pain for so long, the realization that probably many have died without having a chance at receiving justice, but also shame at my own ignorance and indifference to these issues. And yet reading this memoir gave me hope. As Stevenson’s says “No one is as bad as the worst thing they've ever done”, it is that kind of perspective that makes this such an inspiring read. This book is recommended for anybody who is interested and cares about equality, reconciliation, racial and social justice in the United States.

Whoa. This book has been sitting in my TBR for a long time. I chose it for a challenge, and I’m so glad I did. Even if each page broke my heart just a little bit more. Mr. Stevenson shares many stories about a lot of the people he’s helped over the past several decades. Some successfully, some not so successfully. He has worked tirelessly to get wrongfully-convicted people off of death row, to set new precedent for sentencing guidelines for juvenile offenders, to provide assistance to those coming out of the prison system, and so much more. I have to wonder when the man sleeps. I will never understand the judgment of someone based solely on the color of their skin. It makes no sense to me. This didn’t help me understand that more clearly, but did help me to see more clearly that our country still has a long way to go. One might think this is a highly political memoir, but it is not. There are a couple of remarks about changes in policies, but not commonly with a party listed. Please don’t skip this book if you’re afraid of that. You should read it, and maybe think about what you can do to change your corner of the world.

certainly, an eye opener and an excellent read. Communication, history, and resilience, culture and racism in its state of pain but of pride!