Ben Jacques
Driving south of Atlanta on I-75, he was on his way to Jackson. Not Jackson, Mississippi, but Jackson, Georgia, home of the state’s maximum-security prison.
Passing through farm land, he thought about his upcoming appointment, and he remembered how his grandmother would hug him tight and say, “If you want to understand things, you got to get close to them.”
A 23-year-old intern from Harvard Law School, Bryan Stevenson would soon be getting very close to a man on death row. Although he had done his homework on the prisoner, he felt totally unprepared.
This is the beginning of one of the most remarkable books I’ve read. It’s called Just Mercy, and it’s the story of how a young lawyer fought injustice in America’s criminal system. How he brought freedom to the wrongly convicted and fair sentencing to young perpetrators, who, because of their age and circumstances, had made terrible mistakes.
Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Alabama, Stevenson tells the stories of prisoners he got to know. There’s Walter McMillan, arrested, convicted and put on death row for the murder of a white woman. When Stevenson met McMillan, he was one of a hundred on death row in a Alabama, a state with no public defender system.
Even though McMillan lived in Monroeville, he had, ironically, never heard of To Kill a Mockingbird,” Harper Lee’s novel set in the same county.Son of sharecroppers, he had carved out a business harvesting pine trees for paper mills. Now on death row, within steps of the room where prisoners were executed, he steadily maintained his innocence. He told the young lawyer what it was like. “When they turned on the electric chair, you could smell the flesh burning,” he said.
As Stevenson researched his case, he found glaring flaws in the case against McMillan. The prisoner had been convicted on false testimony with no corroborating evidence. But it would take six years of painstaking investigation, hearings and appeals before his conviction was vacated and McMillan was released.
Then there was Anthony Roy Hinton, exonerated after 30 years on death row. On Good Friday in April 2015 Vinton walked out of the courthouse a free man. He has since written a best-selling book: The Sun Does Shine.
About Hinton, Stevenson writes: “Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice. I can’t think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform.”
Just Mercy is not only a call for justice, but for mercy, especially for those disabled by poverty, abuse and mental illness. “Each of us,” he writes, “is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
And again: “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, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”
The book is a powerful read. It’s available in text, e-book and audio formats at the Stoneham Public Library, or you can order it at the Book Oasis and online. Also compelling is the 2019 movie, starring, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Rob Morgan. You can find it on most cable subscriptions, as well as on Prime.
Bryan Stevenson’s story will long stay with you. It may even affect how you see the world.
Ben Jacques Stories 