An unflinching look into the flaws in America’s criminal justice system, told through gripping accounts of a lawyer’s quest to “beat the drum for justice”.
Title: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Author: Bryan Stevenson
Genre: Nonfiction (Memoir)
Originally published: 21 October 2014
Finished reading: 6 April 2020
(Image from The New York Times)
I first discovered Bryan Stevenson through his TED talk, We need to talk about an injustice. It is, without a doubt, one of the most well-delivered and inspiring TED talks I’ve ever watched.
Stevenson was only a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit, and dedicated his life’s work to defending the vulnerable and the wrongly condemned—including prisoners on death row.
After listening to him speak for 20 minutes straight, I sat completely speechless.
With his persona larger-than-life in my mind, I had high hopes for this book. Stevenson exceeded my expectations a thousandfold.
I was hooked from the very first line (“I wasn’t prepared to meet a condemned man.”). Stevenson is a masterful storyteller. And his story is a profoundly compelling one. The subsequent pages read like a novel, with one of the most high-profile cases that Stevenson had fought—that of Walter McMillian—running throughout the course of the book.
Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own.
There were triumphs but also tragedies. Imagine holding a young boy utterly broken by the violence and sexual assault that had been inflicted upon him by prison guards. Imagine watching jolts of electricity being shot through a man as he sits bound to an electric chair till his heart finally stops—all in the name of ‘justice’.
It takes guts to go into that battlefield. It takes great fortitude and an almost mulish pertinacity to keep pushing for justice where it cannot be found.
You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.
Stevenson has shown me, above all, that if you have deep conviction for a cause, then fight for it. Don’t let anything stop you. Not when institutional support and office space is withdrawn, not when denied state funding—and not even when the lack of compassion thoroughly exhausts you. If you hold on to your belief and devote yourself to it completely, you will eventually get somewhere.
At the same time, Just Mercy opened my eyes to the subconscious prejudice that we all harbour. It is this prejudice that blinds us, that pushes us to convictions of guilt even when the hard evidence clearly indicates otherwise. It engenders, in Stevenson’s words, a “presumption of guilt assigned to the poor and people of color”.
This is perhaps more prominent in the United States, where the criminal justice system can only be understood through what Stevenson calls “our history of racial injustice”. Words from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me flashed through my mind, as did those in a TIME article I’d once read exploring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. I remembered scenes from Angie Thomas’ novel, The Hate U Give. And of course, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
John Grisham alluded to Harper Lee’s enduring classic in his review of Just Mercy:
Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Though larger than life, Atticus exists only in fiction. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.
Reading Stevenson’s book, I was once again rendered utterly speechless—this time not just at its close, but at so many points along the way. My heart was pounding; my mind racing.
All told, this eye-opening book will astound you and inspire you. It’s probably time to pick it up and start reading.
My favourite quotes from this book
(All quotes are arranged in chronological order as they appear in the book, with the chapters indicated in parentheses.)
Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Introduction: Higher Ground)
Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Introduction: Higher Ground)
We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. 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, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Introduction: Higher Ground)
I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Chapter Fifteen: Broken)
But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Chapter Fifteen: Broken)
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. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Chapter Fifteen: Broken)
[T]he death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Epilogue)
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.
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Epilogue)