Just Mercy (45 page)
Authors: Bryan Stevenson
I felt the need to explain to people what Walter had taught me. Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter’s case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. I told the congregation that Walter’s case had taught me that the 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?
Finally and most important, I told those gathered in the church that Walter had taught me that mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. 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. Walter genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him, the people who convicted him, and the people who had judged him unworthy of mercy. And in the end, it was just mercy toward others that allowed him to recover a life worth celebrating, a life that rediscovered the love and freedom that all humans desire, a life that overcame death and condemnation until it was time to die on God’s schedule.
After the service, I didn’t stay long. I walked outside and looked down the road and thought about the fact that no one was ever prosecuted for Ronda Morrison’s murder after Walter’s release. I thought about the anguish that must still create for her parents.
There were lots of people who came up to me who needed legal help for all sorts of things. I hadn’t brought business cards, so I wrote my number down for each person and encouraged them to call my office. It wasn’t likely that we could do much for many of the people who needed help, but it made the journey home less sad to hope that maybe we could.
In memory of Alice Golden Stevenson,
my mom
I want to thank the hundreds of accused, convicted, and imprisoned men, women, and children with whom I have worked and who have taught me so much about hope, justice, and mercy. I’m especially appreciative of and humbled by the people who appear in this book, victims and survivors of violence, criminal justice professionals, and those who have been condemned to unimaginably painful spaces and yet have shown tremendous courage and grace. All the names of people who appear in these pages are real with the exception of just a few whose privacy and security needed to be protected.
I’m extremely grateful to Chris Jackson, my extraordinary editor, for his thoughtful guidance and kind assistance. I feel very, very fortunate to have worked with an editor as insightful and generous. I’m also deeply thankful to Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau whose tremendous support and feedback has genuinely inspired me in ways I never imagined. One of my great joys with this project has been the privilege of working with and learning from all my new friends at Spiegel & Grau and Random House who have been so wonderfully encouraging. I want to also thank Sharon Steinerman at New York University School of Law for her excellent research assistance for this project.
All my work is made possible by the exceptional staff of the Equal Justice Initiative, each of whom fearlessly contributes to the cause of justice every day with enough hope and humility to make me believe that we can do the things that must be done to serve the least of these. I want to especially thank Aaryn Urell and Randy Susskind for feedback and editing. Additionally, I’m grateful to Eva Ansley and Evan Parzych for research assistance. Finally, I cannot say enough about Doug Abrams, agent extraordinaire, who persuaded me to take on this project. Without his invaluable guidance, encouragement, and friendship, this book would not have been possible.
With more than two million incarcerated people in the United States, an additional six million people on probation or parole and an estimated sixty-eight million Americans with criminal records, there are endless opportunities for you to do something about criminal justice policy or help the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. If you have interest in working with or supporting volunteer programs that serve incarcerated people, organizations that provide re-entry assistance to the formerly incarcerated or organizations around the globe that seek reform of criminal justice policy, please contact us at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. You can visit our website at
www.eji.org
or email us at
[email protected]
.
1
One in every fifteen people born …
Thomas P. Bonczar, “Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974-2001,” Bureau of Justice Statistics (August 2003), available at
www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=836
, accessed April 29, 2014.
2
one in every three black male babies …
Bonczar, “Prevalence of Imprisonment”; “Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System,” The Sentencing Project (August 2013), available at
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_ICCPR%20Race%20and%20Justice%20Shadow%20Report.pdf
, accessed April 29, 2014.
3
Some states have no minimum age …
In twenty-three states, there is no minimum age for which children can be tried as adults in at least some circumstances. Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, “Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report,” National Center for Juvenile Justice (March 2006), available at
www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/nr2006/downloads/NR2006.pdf
, accessed April 29, 2014.
4
There are more than a half-million people …
“Fact Sheet: Trends in U.S. Corrections,” The Sentencing Project (May 2012), available at
www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Trends_in_Corrections_Fact_sheet.pdf
, accessed April 29, 2014; Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King, “A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society,”
The Sentencing Project
(September 2007), 2, available at
www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/dp_25yearquagmire.pdf
, accessed April 29, 2014.
5
We ban poor women …
Federal law bars states from providing SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, to those who have been convicted of a drug-related felony, although states may opt out or modify this ban. Currently
thirty-two states have some sort of ban based on prior drug convictions, including ten states that have permanent bans. States may also evict or deny individuals from receiving federal benefits related to housing assistance, whether through the Section 8 program or placement in public housing, based on drug convictions. Maggie McCarty, Randy Alison Aussenberg, Gene Falk, and David H. Carpenter, “Drug Testing and Crime-Related Restrictions in TANF, SNAP, and Housing Assistance,” Congressional Research Service (September 17, 2013), available at
www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42394.pdf
, accessed April 29, 2014.
6
Some states permanently strip people …
Twelve states permanently disenfranchise all or some felony offenders. Thirty-five prohibit parolees from voting, and thirty-one prohibit those on probation from voting. The Sentencing Project, “Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States” (June 2013), available at
www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_Felony%20Disenfranchisement%20Laws%20in%20the%20US.pdf
, accessed April 30, 2014.
7
as a result, in several Southern states …
In Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee more than 10 percent of African Americans cannot vote. In Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, more than one in five African Americans cannot vote. Christopher Uggen, Sarah Shannon, and Jeff Manza, “State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010,” The Sentencing Project (July 2012), available at
http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/fd_State_Level_Estimates_of_Felon_Disen_2010.pdf
, accessed April 30, 2014.
8
Scores of innocent people have been exonerated …
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that 144 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973. “The Innocence List,” Death Penalty Information Center, available at
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row
, accessed April 25, 2014.
9
Hundreds more have been released …
According to the Innocence Project, there have been 316 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. Eighteen of the exonerated prisoners spent time on death row. “DNA Exonerations Nationwide,” The Innocence Project, available at
www.innocenceproject.org/Content/DNA_Exonerations_Nationwide.php
, accessed April 25, 2014.
10
Presumptions of guilt, poverty, racial bias …
John Lewis and Bryan Stevenson, “State of Equality and Justice in America: The Presumption of Guilt,”
Washington Post
(May 17, 2013).
11
Spending on jails and prisons …
In 2010, the latest year for which statistics are currently available, the cost of incarceration in America was about $80 billion. Attorney General Eric Holder, American Bar Association Speech (August 12, 2013); Tracey Kyckelhahn and Tara Martin, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts, 2010–Preliminary” (July 2013), available at
www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4679
, accessed April 30, 2014. By comparison, that figure was about $6.9 billion in 1980. Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Justice
Expenditure and Employment Extracts—1980 and 1981 Data from the Annual General Finance and Employment Surveys” (March 1985), available at
www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=3527
, accessed April 30, 2014.
1
Thirteen of the state’s sixteen pulp and paper mills …
Conner Bailey, Peter Sinclair, John Bliss, and Karni Perez, “Segmented Labor Markets in Alabama’s Pulp and Paper Industry,”
Rural Sociology
61, no. 3 (1996): 475–96.
2
“The evil tendency of the crime”…
Pace & Cox v. State
, 69 Ala. 231, 233 (1882).
3
The State of Idaho banned interracial marriage …
U.S. Census Office,
Fourteenth Census of Population
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920).