THE GIFTS THAT KEEP ON GIVING
Empathy in Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy”
What we learn about the ‘other’ when we get closer
“How do you know that’s how Black people feel?” my mom asked, as we winded through Oregon’s coastal forests in a rental car. Our family vacations often include sightseeing, nature hikes, and impromptu discussions about systemic racism.
I had finished my rant about the criminal justice system, its disproportionate stranglehold on Black Americans, and the ways marginalized people now experience inordinate pain and suffering under slavery’s newest form, mass incarceration. She listened as I expressed indignation over the fact that an increasing number of children, women, and men live and die in cages, while many Americans buy into “get tough on crime” rhetoric.
She wasn’t buying it.
Her vocal inflection on “you” was loaded with “You’re white. What gives you the authority to speak on racism?” Good question, Mom.
In effect, she posed a critical philosophical dilemma: can we ever know what it’s like to be someone else? Is interracial empathy possible, or are we doomed to live a kind of solitary confinement, trapped in our narrow subjective experiences? The answers to these questions hinge on how willing we are to get close to people who appear dissimilar to us.
That’s one of the problems with our justice system: it entombs prisoners in impenetrable layers of concrete, steel, and bureaucracy. It obstructs interpersonal connections and our ability to get to know each other on a fundamental, intimate level. How can people on the outside empathize with those confined inside when there’s hardly a point of contact between them?
Getting closer in proximity to mass incarceration’s human details spurs the empathetic connections necessary to empower individuals.
Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), works within a formal legal framework to put a complex, human face to each “criminal” the system creates.
Since 1989, EJI has worked diligently to carry out public education, racial justice, and criminal justice reform initiatives. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit group provides legal representation to people without adequate economic resources, stays and conviction reversals for unfairly treated and wrongly convicted individuals, and re-entry assistance to previously incarcerated people.
Developing a more equitable justice system, Stevenson argues, largely depends on finding ways to encourage familiarity with and, therefore, empathy for the current system’s victims.
Stevenson embarks on a philosophical exploration of empathy and its social upshots in his 2014 book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. He achieves this by 1) opposing a disconnected, impersonal justice system against an individual’s story and struggle, exposing the system’s inherent injustices; and 2) complicating a loose concept of empathy within the context of victims’ advocacy groups and unequal distribution of justice.
Stevenson exhibits the power of empathy in Just Mercy most clearly in a case involving a Vietnam War veteran with PTSD. On paper, Herbert Richardson’s crime appears horrendous. He plants a bomb on a woman’s porch, which explodes, killing a ten-year-old girl and injuring her friend. Yet, in context, his actions reflect those of a man deeply troubled by the psychological stress of war, abuse, and neglect.
Stevenson explains that “his identity as an outsider, a Northerner, and the nature of the crime seemed to generate heightened contempt from law enforcement officials.” In other words, his PTSD was merely a catalyst for prosecutors to tack on more “othering” traits.
Without meaningful knowledge of the historical and personal context revolving around the events leading up to Herbert’s creating the bomb, the prosecutor argued Herbert “was not just tragically misguided and reckless; he was evil.”
Tagging him as “evil,” the prosecutor places a wedge between Herbert, a complex individual, and the rest of “normal” society. Stevenson describes the dehumanizing labeling process, explaining:
We’ve institutionalized policies that reduce people to their worst acts and permanently label them ‘criminal,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘rapist,’ ‘thief,’ ‘drug dealer,’ ‘sex offender,’ ‘felon’ — identities they cannot change regardless of the circumstances of their crimes.
Employing the age-old, racist tactic of peremptory strikes, an all-white jury presides over the case and quickly accepts the prosecutor’s bid to tie Herbert to Black Muslims from New York City. Again, the prosecutor distances Herbert from the jury’s collective understanding of a “proper” citizen.
Attributing rigid identities to individuals based on a single, misguided action creates a dangerous distance between people. This mechanism remains a key issue in the unjust sentencing of hundreds of people to death.
Stevenson describes the many factors that amass against Herbert and the possibility of obtaining a stay from the court. Legal formalities pose outrageous obstacles, particularly for People of Color.
Herbert’s troubled past never surfaces as evidence that he was mentally unstable at the time of his actions. The appointed defense lawyer put little-to-no work into uncovering these details, as court-appointed lawyers in Alabama at the time were capped at $1,000 for out-of-court preparation. This formality invites little effort in cases that ought to receive adequate attention and care. A person’s life is on the line.
Yet as Steve Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, tells Stevenson, “capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment.’” That is, because Herbert is black, poor, and mentally unstable, the all-white jury quickly condemns him to die without taking into account his story.
The Supreme Court’s attitude regarding executions changed between the 1980s and now. Justices, like William Rehnquist, doubled down on their apathy toward life. The Court became more and more impatient with lawyers’ attempts to challenge capital punishment cases, throwing the notion “death is different” out the window. It created tougher protocols concerning federal habeas corpus review, rendering most appeals “too late” once the court reaches a decision.
Stevenson describes the effect this has on Herbert’s case:
I asked several courts to stay Herbert’s execution because of his ineffective lawyer, racial bias during the trial, the inflammatory comments made by the prosecutor, and the lack of mitigation evidence presented. Each court said, ‘Too late.’
Even after Stevenson presents a written petition explaining Herbert’s condition, law enforcement officials proceed with the execution, indifferent to the knowledge.
Years later, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Court recognizes executing “mentally retarded” individuals is unconstitutional, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. This epiphany, for hundreds of condemned individuals at the time, comes too late. Exposing the formal hurdles involved in securing a stay and convincing a courtroom to consider an individual’s story, some people, or systems, go to extremes to resist empathy and compassion.
Stevenson then takes us past the indifferent legal formalities and into the devastating emotional flurry that is execution. By painting the moments before Herbert’s death in detail, he calls on us to bear witness to the State’s inhumane practices in light of immense personal loss.
Like a nightmare, Stevenson’s description builds with tension and urgency — executioners loom like vultures over the final moments between Herbert and his wife.
She put her arms around his neck and refused to let him go. After a couple of minutes, her crying turned into groaning, distressed and desperate.
The reader experiences Stevenson’s scene on a visceral, emotional level. Here, an individual’s embrace symbolizes a desperate attempt to hold onto a soul the State vows to extinguish.
Through his narrative form, Stevenson solicits empathy from us, bringing us closer to the details and imparting new knowledge in the process. That knowledge is different from facts and figures, like the Prison Policy Initiative’s reported 2.3 million people in prison today. It’s a subjective, emotional knowledge which we learn only through close proximity to people and their stories.
Things hit a particularly low point for Herbert, as Stevenson describes, “They had shaved the hair off his body to facilitate a ‘clean’ execution.” Contrasting the actual, formal process of execution with poignant descriptions of human suffering, he exposes a faulty logic inherent in the criminal justice system.
That law enforcement strips a person naked and shaves their body to ensure an effective dose of electrocution speaks to the lack of empathy that plagues the system.
After Herbert’s execution, Stevenson admits:
I couldn’t stop thinking that we don’t spend much time contemplating the details of what killing someone actually involves.
Just Mercy is Stevenson’s plea to contemplate the personal details of the criminal justice system, get to know the so-called “killers” and “superpredators,” and question the legitimacy of an institution that murders “murderers.”
But injecting the justice system with individualized, personal stories and details doesn’t always elicit just outcomes. The Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling in Payne V. Tennessee, for instance, reversed a previous decision which claimed, “all victims are equal.” In other words, the earlier ruling held that the socioeconomic status of any given victim holds no weight in the conviction process. The Payne ruling, however, enables states to consider victims’ characters, personalities, and histories, contextualizing their death and its impact on their families and communities.
Equipped with the knowledge of murder victims’ personal details, one might assume that justice follows in tow. In practice, however, the decision only favors some groups. It’s unequally administered across color and class lines. Millions of state and federal dollars, because of the ruling, go to victim advocacy groups, creating a new national attitude that favors the victims of particular racial, ethnic, and class-based groups. Stevenson explains:
Many [poor and minority victims] weren’t included in the conversations about whether a plea bargain was acceptable or what sentence was appropriate.
Racial disparities persist, as 65 percent of homicides in Alabama involve black victims, yet 80 percent of people facing capital punishment murder whites. Coming to terms with these disparities, it’s clear the little empathy that does surface within the criminal justice system heavily concentrates on white, wealthy victims.
Payne enables states to look into victims’ stories, humanizing their cases with individualized histories and personal details. In a society plagued by persistent racism, however, even empathy remains a double-edged sword.
Stevenson’s Just Mercy tackles the criminal justice system by infiltrating its cold, concrete walls and drawing complex individual details to the surface. His narrative form breathes life into the dark corners of the execution chamber, shedding light on society’s weakest groups, giving them a voice.
He employs empathy as a tool for knowledge, relaying each condemned individual’s story in such a way as to render incarceration, at the very least, obsolete. Legal formalities too often whitewash complicated human stories, preferring “law and order” and finality to equitable treatment and justice.
Empowering the faces at the bottom of the well serves to develop a truly just society, one that acknowledges dignity as universal, which is paramount to a healthy nation. This bottom-up approach to justice often remains elusive, yet Stevenson’s EJI exemplifies the crucial work being done to right vast wrongs plaguing the criminal justice system.
Not only does proximity breed empathy, it draws the truth of human dignity out from the clutches of rigid, often oppressive structures of power.
Gaining deep knowledge of any individual’s story contextualizes that person in a way that renders mass incarceration and extreme punitive “justice” absurd.
Confronting the racist roots of mass incarceration is a collective project that relies on empathizing with millions of people hidden away in small cells. It doesn’t take much to acknowledge the cold-bloodedness in our current criminal justice system.
On our way back to Portland from Tillamook, I wanted nothing more than to convey that kind of emotional knowledge to my mom, to really get her to feel it. We drove past the South Fork Forest Camp, a minimum security labor facility for “well-behaved” inmates.
“I don’t claim to know what it’s like to be incarcerated and marginalized because of the color of my skin,” I told my mom. “I certainly don’t claim any grand authority on the issue, either.
“But what do you make of the fact that prisoners in that building we passed are forced to cut trees and handle toxic chemicals for pest control? Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?” Her silence bespoke a deeper emotional response.
Empathy doesn’t require authority; it only insists on embracing our shared dignity.
