A friend, a labor union president, recommended
the book, Just Mercy. He said, “It
offered me a new perspective that I never imagined.” The book is written by Bryan Stevenson, a
defense attorney who specializes in defending death row prisoners and others
with patently unjust sentences.
The setting for the book is Monroe County,
Alabama, the home of Walter McMillian, an innocent man, convicted of murder. The
story tells of his redemption, but is interspersed with other capital cases
that violate a basic understanding of justice, yet are perpetuated by ‘the
government of the people.’ Ultimately
the book explores the themes of justice and mercy.
In the
first chapter Stevenson points out parallels of the Walter McMillian story to
the famous book and movie, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee. Walter’s
story takes place in the racist south, Monroe County, Alabama (named Maycomb in
Mocking Bird); it’s about a Black
man falsely convicted of murder, but conscientiously defended by a local lawyer
Atticus Finch. In the Mocking Bird, however, the innocent man, Tom
Robinson, is convicted and is killed trying to escape prison. After years of imprisonment Walter McMillian was
exonerated through the legal efforts of Bryan Stevenson.
Stevenson writes:
This book is about getting closer to
mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America. It is about how easily we condemn people in
this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger and distance
to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us. [1]
He goes on
to note that this is a national psychological problem. Let’s call it a collective
sickness. Stevenson is asking: how can we treat fellow human beings in this
way?
Just Mercy also relates to Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman.
To Kill a Mocking Bird was
published in 1960, but the recently published Watchman was written before Mocking Bird.
Watchman takes place in the 50’s and predicts
the turbulence ahead for the South and the work of Bryan Stevenson. In Watchman, Scout – Jean Louise, challenges her father Atticus, who is a just
man in the southern U.S. culture. She
notes that Atticus’s concept of justice is an abstract notion. “You love
justice, all right, abstract justice written down item by item on a brief.” [2]
Stevenson writes:
Paul Farmer, the renowned physician
who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people,
once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of
broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being
broken is what makes us human.[3]
How do we move forward after reading Just
Mercy? The
story of Stevenson’s experience with the legal system and with Walter McMillian
leads the reader of his work, to agree with him that mercy and compassion are requisites
to true justice. To acquire the potential for mercy requires getting in touch
with both the prison system and the people it treats unjustly. Political action
should follow.
“Mercy is where justice is meant to
terminate.”[4]
Artwork from a young
immigrant detained in a Wisconsin prison.
Rules there do not allow colored
pens, pencils, crayons.
He created color
by rubbing it from magazines and using alcohol extracted from his deoderant.
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