Just Mercy
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
By: Bryan Stevenson
[Fulfilling “A book written by an author with the same initials as you” as part of the 2021 Spring/Summer Reading Challenge]
Dear Alabama,
You’re kinda the worst.
This is one of those books that infuriates you because it seems insane that injustices like this exist in the world.
[It’s worth mentioning that this book was published in 2014 so I’m not up to speed on what changes we have seen since then. Certain information/stats found here may not be accurate anymore.]
Just Mercy is a book with two purposes:
to share the story of Walter McMillian, wrongly convicted man on death row
to bring awareness to the dangers of capital punishment and the overall brokenness in the criminal justice system, especially in treatment of racial minorities, the poor, children, and the disabled
[Much of this book, in content and in writing style, reminded me of Jemar Tisby’s book The Color of Compromise— especially in terms of opening our eyes to injustices that have been ignored, hidden, or downplayed.]
To the purpose of sharing Walter’s story, Stevenson did a fantastic job of drawing the reader in—we feel Walter’s pain and have an almost visceral reaction to the gross injustice blatantly conducted on his case.
However, I wasn’t a big fan of the formatting of this book and the way they inserted somewhat unrelated chapters and split up Walter’s story. I understand the purpose of the non-Walter chapters as they speak to purpose 2 of this book, but it was disjointed and I think took away from the punch of Walter’s story. Intermixing all the different people and cases in conjunction with the legal jargon was often hard to follow and keep straight, often requiring a few minutes to get my bearings.
I’m not sure if I could propose a better suggestion as probably a lot of people read this book specifically for Walter’s story, so by mixing the material, it forces people who want to finish Walter’s story to read through the rest of the book in the process. I get it. I just didn’t like the flow.
To the purpose of bringing awareness to an unjust justice system, I have mixed feelings about it. Of course, my gut reaction reading this book is outrage. How are these things happening?! Where is the accountability?! How could authorities let these fools get away with this or, themselves, purposely hide the truth?! Why are children treated this way!? Everything is corrupt!
There are many shocking things I learned about mass incarceration, prison, and the law. Capital punishment is a common ‘debate’ topic in high school debate or speech classes. But I realize now as an adult how little we know in high school about the implications of many of the arguments. Plus you argue a side without seeing the humanity of those it affects.
That’s one thing I think Stevenson whole-heartedly accomplished— to help us see the humanity of people who are considered convicts. Whatever convictions you have about the death penalty or the justice system, this book will cause you to really think about it all and to consider all the factors.
If this book does nothing else but to force you to think about the criminal justice system and prison and the people subjected to them, then I think it’s worth reading because those things are worth thinking about.
He says “The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” And I agree that it is all too easy, to dehumanize “criminals.” Instead we need to see each and every person as an image-bearer of God.
I will share some of these shocking things I learned because I think awareness is essential to holding our justice system accountable. But I will disclaim that as much as we hold on to people’s humanity, we must also hold to wisdom and think critically when presented with this information. More on that later.
The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. 2.3 million people today. 1 in 15 people born in us in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison.
The US is the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonments without parole: nearly 3000 juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison. [I believe this is no longer]
A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found 46% support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40% oppose and 14% undecided
Black people were regularly struck from juries for no reason other than to maintain all-white juries which led to unfair trials
Florida and Alabama allow judges to override jury sentencing and impose their own sentence
Electric chair and lethal injection executions can fail and it’s borderline cruel
By the mid-1980s nearly 20% of the people in jails and prisons in the US had served in the military
A correctional officer raped a female prisoner (age 16) and was only fired; he faced no criminal charges.
Today over 50% of prison and jail inmates in the US have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that if the general adult population.
Mace or fire extinguishers were (are?) used on inmates having seizures so guards could “safely” go in and help.
Dr. Ed Seger made up his credentials. Before his fraud was uncovered, he masqueraded at a hospital for eight years conducting competency evaluations on people accused of crimes that often resulted in long criminal sentences, sometimes death
Confederate Memorial Day was declared a state holiday in Alabama at the turn of the century and it is still celebrated
A judge in Alabama asked when people were going to start protecting “the rights of Confederate Americans”
People with drug convictions are banned from public benefits and welfare aka public housing and food stamps. This affects many women with minor children.
Many poor women who had no health care and experienced stillbirths ended up convicted of killing their babies, being sentenced to life without parole or even death
The amount of sexual assault in prisons (both men’s and women’s) is astronomical
22 states offer no compensation to the wrongly imprisoned. And prosecutors and judges receive special immunity from being sued for their, often times deliberate, miscarriage of justice and failure to do their job
So here’s what’s challenging to me reading this book. I know that Walter’s story is true. He was wrongly convicted and many people purposefully hid or ignored any and all evidence in order to carry out this conviction. I in no way question the veracity of Walter’s story. Or many of the other stories Stevenson included in this book.
But we have to use critical thinking when we start putting heavy weight on stats or using broad strokes about laws and sentencing. Many of the things listed above are straightforward and would be hard to view any other way, but some are not so simple.
For example, Stevenson calls out the US for their high incarceration rates. But we must consider all explanations. Maybe the US does incarcerate too many people, I find Stevenson’s critique of drug sentencing disparities compelling. But there could be other correlations to consider. Does the US have a larger police force to cover more ground and handle more arrests and investigations? Does the US have more money/space to have more prisons to house more prisoners while other countries don’t have the capacity to incarcerate everyone they would like to? Asking these questions is not excusing the injustices, but can better inform our understanding of the facts.
Another example would be the stat that says 50% of incarcerated persons have a mental illness. That sounds really bad. How can we incarcerate so many people that potentially don’t really understand what’s going on or not provide them with proper treatment? I think medical care for prisoners, especially with mental illness needs to be reformed, but we must ask the question of this stat- did these persons have this mental illness prior to their trial and imprisonment? Or did so many prisoners develop mental illnesses as a result of the experience and trauma of prison? The answer to this tells us whether the bigger problem is in failure to recognize the mental illness in proper sentencing and treatment during the trial or whether the bigger problem is the conditions and treatment after incarceration. Neither is excusable, but Stevenson doesn’t explain this caveat.
The point here is basically, I’m realizing that I need to do more research on the topic of sentencing, capital punishment, and prison reform. Just Mercy is a valid resource, but it’s not able to present the full story. I’d like to hear the ‘whys’ behind a lot of the laws Stevenson was fighting against. It would at least help us to understand which laws are blatantly discriminating or cruel and which ones were not intended that way but end up working out that way because of other reasons.
To this point of ‘the full story’ it would be hard to deny that the things being shown in the media today affect how we view trials and crimes. Walter’s story shows us firsthand how media’s coverage and narrative of a person or a crime can really truly ruin people’s lives. Irresponsible and biased reporting highly influences the public opinion and belief of what is true.
I think today’s media coverage has caused me to question everything more. There are always two sides to a story. That is why we have a prosecution and a defense. Hopefully by the end of a trial we get both the information trying to be revealed and the information trying to be hidden. And I think the media has done a severe injustice for stories like Walter’s because they are championing many people that were not innocent like Walter. We believe them to be innocent but then we learn more information and we see the complexities of the issue. And they are taking coverage away from the real injustices done to the innocent like Walter that need to be heard.
I know this is not a popular opinion but as Tisby proclaims on the cover of his book, ‘There can be no justice without truth.’ We must doggedly pursue truth, even if it means admitting things we don’t want to admit.
I think asking questions to these claims is important to determining the truth and identifying the real problems in order to fix the right problems. The book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth emphasizes this necessity of asking the right questions so that we are enacting social justice that actually helps
This book was very eye-opening for me and it ignites a fire to fight for justice. At the same time, it overwhelms me to think about how we can fix it. As we read, how can we trust a justice system when judges can overrule a jury’s sentencing decision and impose the death penalty, when correctional officers can get away with rape with basically no consequences, when prosecutors can illegally fail to share evidence with the defense that would exonerate a defendant and then be immune from lawsuits filed against their extreme misconduct? This shows a purposeful pursuit of injustice. How can we hold the authorities accountable?
The question I keep coming back to as I ponder all of these things is this:
How do we maintain a proper picture and treatment of someone’s humanity and status of image bearer while still carrying out justice for crimes done (past/present/future) against other image bearers? Can we do both?
I’ve never had a passionate stance either way on capital punishment. For premeditated murderers that evidence can clearly convict, I don’t necessarily see a problem with that. But what this book has done is shown me that the method and process in which we’ve given people trials that have put people on death row have not been thorough or fair. I don’t know the full stats of how many people who have actually been executed for a crime they didn’t commit, but there’s been over 150 people freed from death row which seems significant. It has at least shaken my faith in trusting prosecutors and judges to acknowledge errors and seek truth free from their own biases.
The idea of the death penalty is to acknowledge the sanctity of life. This concept is found in the very first chapters of the Bible when God sanctions man to be killed for shedding the blood of another [not as a civilian right to carry out but as a governmental duty]. If the consequences of purposefully killing another person are too little, it would seem to be sending the message that life is not worth that much after all.
Our actions should rightfully have consequences. At some point people must take moral responsibility. We can’t displace all the blame on background, environment, circumstances, especially in the case of murder, though they aren’t to be ignored. There are conflicting studies on whether or not capital punishment is an adequate deterrent, partly because the appeal process can take years, affecting our ability to truly track it appropriately. And at some point we can’t really know how many lives are saved from potential future offenders or how many people are actually deterred from crime. We must weigh the benefits and risks.
On another note: the widespread and rampant rape and sexual assault found in both men and women’s prisons is just appalling to me. Both prisoners and correctional officers being frequent offenders. I don’t understand how this is allowed to happen. Rape is right up there with murder as far as violation of bodies go and there is no excuse for prisons’ inability to do something about it and treat it like the crime it is regardless of who the victims are.
I find this intensely relevant today when we hear groups passionately advocating for men who identify as women to be allowed in women’s prisons (and locker rooms, etc.) There has already been instances of violence and rape from men who have been moved into women’s prisons. Considering how uncontrolled rape is, especially in prisons, I find it completely and utterly unconvincing that this is a good idea. I think that is an injustice we can add to our list of things to fight against.
In this same vein, I found it interesting when Stevenson provides this information when he argued at the Supreme Court to ban capital punishment and life without parole sentences for children/adolescents. There are true injustices done to adolescents in sentencing that are appalling, especially in light of this:
“Contemporary neurological, psychological, and sociological evidence has established that children are impaired by immature judgment, an underdeveloped capacity for self-regulation and responsibility, vulnerability to negative influences and outside pressures, and a lack of control over their own impulses and their environment…Young teens lack the maturity, independence, and future orientation that adults have acquired…Young adolescents lack life experience and background knowledge to inform their choices; they struggle to generate options and to imagine consequences; and, perhaps for good reason, they lack the necessary self-confidence to make reasoned judgments and stick by them.”
This justly defends adolescents’ right for second chances and rehabilitation in terms of crimes committed. And I’ll do you one further— I believe this research also needs to be applied as we navigate the waters of adolescents claiming transgender identities. Abigail Shrier brings up these facts in her book Irreversible Damage. I think the protection of youth from their own [scientifically] poor judgement that Stevenson is advocating for in this book is significant to the gender identity and transgender discussion. It was not his intention when supplying this information in this book, yet I find it compelling to draw attention to in other culturally relevant ways.
There is so much to be discussed within this book. I have so many questions and comments but I’ve already gone on too long. I know I will be contemplating it for awhile and will continue to read more about these topics.
There are clearly lots of problems in our criminal justice system that are worth fighting. There is mistreatment of racial minorities, children, mentally ill, and disabled defendants. We must work to advocate for them and seek truth and proper treatment on their behalf. And we must do it all with a sober mind, critically thinking and asking the right questions.
[Sidenote: I’m still slightly confused about the title- Just Mercy. Mercy= not getting what we deserve. Justice= getting what we do deserve. I feel like most of what he was fighting was for people who didn’t deserve what they were subjected/condemned to. He says, “Mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given.” But I’m still not seeing the connection here… am I overthinking this…?]
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