Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy was published in 2014 by Spiegal and Grau and won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

ALLISON:

I am a pop-law addict. Like millions of people all over the world, I listened each week with bated breath to the podcast Serial, hosted by journalist Sarah Koenig, and it’s successor,  Undisclosed, created by lawyer/bloggers committed to overturning the murder conviction of Adnan Syed. I watched all of the “Paradise Lost” documentaries which followed the post-conviction trials and eventual release of the West Memphis Three—and Damien Echols' narrow dodge of execution. I watched Ken Burns’ film, “The Central Park Five,” which documented the interrogation and conviction of five teenagers in the rape of the Central Park Jogger, which thirteen years later was confessed to and collaborated by DNA evidence as to have been committed by a one serial rapist, not amongst those charged. I’ve watched “The Staircase,” “The Jinx” (holy cow, what an ending), “Making a Murderer,” and my fair share of Datelines.

What I’ve not done, is analyze why I choose to fill my downtime with this subcategory of “entertainment” even though it mildly embarrasses me. It’s uncomfortable to think about why I might be simultaneously drawn and repulsed by the true crime genre and what my limitations for comfort are. The first inkling of this threshold came when I forced myself to read In Cold Blood about a decade ago. It was too good, it scared the daylights out of me and I knew suddenly that I’ve no real curiosity about why or how someone kills. For example, I have not, nor will I, read or watch anything to do with Columbine or the book One of Us about Anders Breivik and the Norway massacre. As I was setting up the Top 10 books of 2015 display at work around Christmas, of which One of Us was included, I remember saying, quite surprised: “There is nothing I would want to read less than this,” and its prominence amongst the new nonfiction books still haunts my peripheral as I move about the store. No, I don’t want to read about violent criminals. But, I do sort of have a compulsion for the spectacle of the courtroom, which might be why I chose this book for book club.

That, and I like the title. I like to think about the elegant play of the words Just Mercy:  just as fair, just as simple. Just Mercy was also a NYT Top Ten Book of its publication year (2014) and its relevance and brilliance has been murmured about the bookshop for quite a while now, with many on staff reading and recommending it. Full disclosure—the editor of this book, Chris Jackson, is not only a tremendous force in the publishing world as you can read here, but also a family friend of the bookshop. Kudos to Chris for bringing this book to fruition because it is a remarkable read. I’d go as far as to say one of the most important books I’ve read in my life.

So, I liked this book, but it was hardly what I’d expected. I was prepared for the statistical evidence of our prison infrastructure to outrage and to frustrate me, but what I didn’t anticipate was to being so profoundly moved by Bryan Stevenson’s plight. This book is less of a political text than it is a straight-forward memoir. Stevenson’s narrative is engaging and intimate. And surprisingly emotional. There are plenty of stereotypes that go with the moniker “lawyer” and he only satisfies the good ones. He is courageously optimistic, he is exhaustive, he is, first and foremost, concerned with justice. His version of justice is merciful and redemptive. I say “his version” because it is clear that there is no solid definition of “justice” in this country. Our legal system, our laws and their enforcers—from the beat cops, to detectives, to district attorneys, and judges, even the jurors—is a mutable, arguable apparition. It’s a game. A game about winning and losing. And there are many variables stacking the deck. Consider this essay, written about being a juror in a New York City murder trial. The writer, one of only two men of color selected for the jury of an accused black man (there is only one black juror, a woman), details all of the pressures to succumb to the group and convict, despite little evidence and a dubious signed confession. This is a nice companion piece to Stevenson’s chapter on jury selection, the practice of striking black jurors from service, and what it is we ask a jury to do—convince each other. Nonconformity is not a popular choice and when you are the sole dissenter, it can be agonizing. Tim Sullivan puts it frankly in his book, Unequal Verdicts, regarding the jury in the Central Park Five cases: “There’s always a danger that jurors will try to come up with something, because at some point they feel like prisoners. If a jury is in there for ten or twelve days (deliberation), as these were, people start looking for a way to get out.” The choice to convict can be born of any number of prejudices, or it could be a mere matter of convenience.

Stevenson is a black man, and this is definitely a book about the racial discrepancies represented in the access to legal services, sentencing, and incarceration of black people in this country.  He presents his experience as a lawyer and architect of the Equal Justice Initiative as exhausting, emotionally taxing, humbling, but also sometimes humiliating. As a black man, fighting for the rights of all underrepresented, be it minority, the poor, the young, or the mentally ill, he has faced outrageous obstacles related to his own skin color. This stuff was hard to read. The anecdote of the racist white guard, who forced Stevenson into a strip search in order to gain access to a prospective client, is particularly inflaming. I wondered why Stevenson relented to such treatment. I was infuriated for him, but he says:

I thought about trying to find an assistant warden, but I realized that that might be difficult, and anyway an assistant warden would be unlikely to tell an officer that he was wrong in front of me. I had driven over two hours for this visit and had a very tough schedule over the next three weeks; I wouldn’t be able to get back to the prison any time soon if I didn’t get in now. I went inside the bathroom and removed my clothes.

It’s upsetting to me that he would succumb so easily to an act of aggressive indignity, but Stevenson has a higher purpose and the take away is: As comfortable as many of us are not considering those who might very literally be rotting in prison in violent and inhuman conditions over tenuous convictions, Stevenson can’t. He can’t waste a single minute.

And he can’t turn it off, he can’t get hardened, or deaden to all of the pain he has worked his life to immerse himself in. He couldn’t ignore the cries of a grandmother for his attention to her tiny, fourteen year old grandson who had killed his mothers’ abusive boyfriend after a brutal pummeling that left the boy thinking his mother was dead. This part of the book—young Charlie’s chapter—hurt the most. Like a sucker punch it caught me off guard that so many prison staffers would stand idle as this child, weighing under 100 pounds, was left unattended with adult men in a cell. How is that not cruel and unusual? How is it not just as criminal? If we think Stevenson’s documentation of prison sexual abuse might be exaggerated, we only have to look at Michigan’s history of paying out hundreds of millions dollars in reparations due to rampant sexual violations by prison guards and employees in their women’s prisons. In contrast, the state recently threw out lawsuits regarding male juveniles’ claims of sexual abuses in adult facilities, sending the message that a prisoner’s right to bodily integrity might be protected against state employees (sometimes), but meaningless against the conduct of incarcerated peers.

I am dancing around the biggest through line of the book, the wrongful conviction and horrifying treatment of Walter MacMillian, who was placed on death row before he was even tried for the crime for which he was accused. It is unbelievable. And shameful. It makes me feel ashamed—that I never knew about this case before picking up this book, that every time I have voted, I haven’t really considered the death penalty. I should be ashamed. I had no idea the prison system was this massive monetary industry. Who would want to make money on this suffering? (Stevenson doesn’t go into the prison money machine too much, but for an example of how judges and prosecutors can financially gain from incarcerations watch the documentary “Kids for Cash”—rest easy that the judge in this film was just sentenced to 28 years for his corruption). Stevenson’s had some triumphs. He saw the Supreme Court ban sentencing juveniles convicted for non-homicidal crimes for life. And he has woken me up to that which I had closed my eyes. I can’t unlearn what I’ve witnessed through his book, nor do I ever again want to ignore it. I can do better and I most certainly will.

I give this book an easy 2 on the scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the highest).

WES:  

This month’s book is Just Mercy – A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. This is a true story of a young Harvard-trained attorney who, after working a summer with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC), decided to devote his career to gaining justice for prisoners on death row and those in other terrible circumstances in southern prisons. The book revolves around Stevenson’s efforts to forestall the death penalty of Walter McMillian who was convicted of murder under appallingly false circumstances with a racially motivated sheriff, prosecutor, and judges. McMillian had many witnesses to validate his alibi but all mitigating evidence was negated by two white men’s testimony whose “witness” was proven as coerced. Stevenson had to first convince several appellate courts that the evidence was tainted and get a new trial – all before the exorable death penalty would claim the life of a patently innocent man. Ironically, this all takes place in Monroeville, Alabama, the same fictional scene of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird where another innocent man was accused of a crime in a racist society.

The purpose of this book is not to highlight any one especially horrible case, as the McMillian case certainly was, but to highlight a general tendency in many southern states to continue to foster post-Jim Crow era values throughout the southern criminal justice systems. The history and morals of the south consistently lack any mercy even where the evidence that poverty and severe upbringing has led people to mistakes that would ruin their lives forever. His design is probably best expressed in the author’s own words, “We’re supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances, but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get the legal assistance they need – all so we can kill them with less resistance.” The author highlights four types of cases he sees as most serious. These include: convictions where the perpetrators are sentenced to death; those cases where juveniles are sentenced to “death in prison” (i.e., those tried in adult court and sentenced to life sentences with no chance of parole); those clearly mentally ill who are sentenced to death/life in prison; and, women sentenced to life for allegedly killing a stillborn child. 

Walter McMillian eventually is exonerated but he never recovers from his experiences. His story weaves throughout the book with Stevenson introducing other judicial malfeasance cases from the examples above which, though terribly unjust on the surface, may be truly outliers or cases that had fallen through the cracks in the judicial system. Stevenson outlines what his legal objectives are in a conversation he had with Rosa Parks, of all people. These objectives are:

1)      Stop the death penalty.

2)      Stop the tendency toward excessive punishment and racial bias in criminal justice.

3)      Free people wrongly convicted.

4)      Help the poor and provide defense for the indigent.

5)      Stop putting children in adult jails and prisons.

6)      Put more diversity in the criminal justice decision-making roles.

7)      Educate the public on the plight of the poor.

8)      Confront abuse of power of police and prosecutors. 

I would say that these are all important in this book with the need to educate the public on the plight of the poor and black lost in the callous southern justice system foremost. Interestingly, Ms. Parks’ comment to him after hearing the goals was, “Ooooh, honey, all that is going to make you tired, tired, tired.” An apt response in this case as Stevenson often complains of all the time he spent on the road and the overwhelming nature of the paperwork, interviews, depositions and discovery activities that his work entails with hundreds of cases suspected of potential official abuse. His most serious point is the lack of legal resources especially after prisoners are convicted. He indicts the US Supreme Court for hurrying along death cases and limiting the appeals in death penalty cases. His group spends tremendous time, patience, and work to save those prisoners unjustly accused and those whose penalty is too severe. It appears they are not getting the necessary help except through groups like Stevenson’s. Instead, things are worsening, the accusation being that a “prison-industrial complex” has been foisted on the public designed for mass incarceration of the poor and helpless.

Reading this book, which seems to evoke emotion against the state for lacking mercy, Stevenson has it all wrong. People display mercy. The state does not. Nor do we want it to for when it does it picks winners and losers and justice for someone is denied. The state is required to enforce the laws as written. People are expected to obey or face the consequences. People are entitled to a speedy trial and to face their accusers in open court. All the examples in the book feature corrupt people corrupting the system and using their authority wrongly. This only shows the brokenness of individuals in the world, be they the accusers or the accused. Stevenson says that everyone is broken referring of course to the poor he champions. He has no comment for those broken people who are tasked to enforce the law. Justice under our system is supposed to be blind. In fact the Bible says in Leviticus 19:15, “You must not act unjustly when rendering justice. Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich; judge your neighbor fairly.”

The problem behind all the difficulties in this book is sin. All have fallen short of the Glory of God and all will be judged individually and personally by a holy God. He will show mercy on those who have accepted His free gift of mercy or as it is more widely known, grace. Those who won’t ultimately don’t want His free gift and will get what they have decided they want, a life away from God. For this though, they will pay God’s appointed penalty. This book wants the government to be something it isn’t. It wants mercy from government whereas God’s role for government is to restrain the wicked and to strike terror into the hearts of the evil doers. This is what is being done by the government in this book; however, incorrectly it may look. On the other hand, Stevenson and his firm are doing what God, and good government, should want: sacrificing their time, money and effort to help those weak and wounded among us. I heartily commend him for it. But the Left’s drive to have the government remove all restraint and lessen all penalties is totally misapplied effort.

I particularly disagree that the death penalty should be abolished. While the author’s snide comment that we would never rape or assault a rape/assault perpetrator (eye for eye comment, I guess) may be apropos in some circles, but premeditated murder is in a completely different category. That person when destroyed has had his life snuffed out. He/she will never have a future and will never breathe again on this earth. If unsaved, they will never have a chance for salvation. That person has been created in the image of the Almighty and created by Him. The murderer with evil intent has, in effect, cursed God by destroying his highest creation. The penalty of death is exquisitely fair – to sacrifice one’s life for the life taken maliciously. To let the intentional murderer survive is an affront to God (i.e., man has again, as he is always wont to do, inserted his will as better than God’s). The death penalty is not one to be taken lightly and it surely is not in the US. One fellow in the book has been on death row for over 30 years yielding many chances for judicial and appellate review. The death penalty must be preserved because if it is not, life will continue to be cheapened everywhere this mantra to abolish the death penalty wins favor. 

Overall, although this book’s appeal was mostly to emotion seeking, by outrageous but intentionally selective case examples, to overturn major law and policies voted on by the people, the book was interesting reading. I applaud all that the author has done. He has truly used his skill and talents to help the helpless but I also see where much of the current “Black Lives Matter” comes from and probably where it is going. One point entirely missing from the book’s discussion of the increase in prison spaces and population is that the crime rate went down in almost exact proportion. The trend is now in the other direction with the BLM movement and the mass release of so-called drug prisoners around the nation. I think this book can furnish a lot for further discussion on this page! Although it was an easy read, the problems I had with the overly emotional descriptions with little or no fairness toward the victims’ and the government’s plight lead me to rate it as a 4 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best).