Just Mercy — A Book Review and Reading List
**In light of recent events and protests sweeping the country that have shed light on inequities in the United States justice system, we will be regularly posting on the issues in the coming weeks.**
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 (pg. 293)
Author and attorney Bryan Stevenson is well aware of the cost of a harsh and punitive system of justice, having spent decades challenging inequality in the American justice system. His book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption tells how Stevenson, as a young Harvard law graduate, got involved in defending people facing economic and social inequity within the justice system. He went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative out of Montgomery, Alabama. In the book we get to share in Stevenson’s explanation of the project to civil rights icon, Rosa Parks, telling her the project was about stopping the death penalty, changing prison conditions, challenging excessive punishment, and stopping racial bias. Stevenson has helped release more than 100 people from death row.
Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated. (pg. 14)
Just Mercy tells how client Walter McMillian spent six years on death row for a murder conviction before an appeal, led by Stevenson, won his release for wrongful conviction. McMillian was convicted even though dozens of witnesses said he was at a church fundraiser during the murder. Stevenson’s investigation uncovered audio tapes of a coerced witness and McMillian’s fifth appeal was successful.
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. (pg. 18)
Just Mercy was also released in December 2019 as a feature film starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the film is streaming at no charge throughout the month of June from a variety of services including Amazon, YouTube and Google Play. Just Mercy won the 2020 Silver Gavel Award for Drama & Literature from the American Bar Association.
You can learn more by listening to Stevenson’s March 2012 TED Talk: We need to talk about an injustice and watching the 2019 HBO biopic True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality which is currently available for streaming on the Equal Justice Initiative website.
Just Mercy will be available for check-out when the Washington State Law Library opens for curbside service by appointment beginning June 18th. Many local public libraries also have the book available in print and as an e-book. Search the Washington State Library’s directory of libraries database for your local public library.
For more reading on civil rights and criminal justice topics, the books below are available in print from the Washington State Law Library.
Beyond These Walls : Rethinking Crime and Punishment in the United States [2019]
Charged : The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration [2019]
Ferguson’s Fault Lines : The Race Quake That Rocked a Nation [2016]
Killing with Prejudice : Institutionalized Racism in American Capital Punishment [2019]
Locking Up Our Own : Crime and Punishment in Black America [2017]
Policing the Black Man : Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment [2017]
Separate : The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation [2019]
The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [2010]
The Supreme Court and Corrections : The Landmark Cases That Have Shaped America’s Prisons and Jails [2019]
Unusual Punishment : Inside the Walla Walla Prison, 1970–1985 [2016] (WB)
