Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson is memoir of sorts from a lawyer who works primarily on death penalty cases. One of my ACT students recommended it to me and she sort of jokingly commented that as a person of color, she'd rather just be shot dead while being arrested by police than end up as an innocent person stuck in the continual wheel of death row, court appeals, and lack of hope that many of the people in this book went through. I was very moved by her comments and repeatedly checked this book out of the library, but just couldn't bring myself to actually read it because it sounded so bleak.  And it is bleak. It's bleak, powerful, scary, and a complete condemnation of the criminal justice system.

I feel like I was once a fence sitter about the death penalty. I sort of understood the emotional impulse of an eye for an eye sort of justice. But as more and more innocent people were released (164 as of right now) after spending years and years of lives on death row, as the costs of the death penalty increase, both in terms of dollars and cents and international reputation, and most importantly, as I became more and more uncertain of the morality of forcing someone to take a human life, I have become less of a fence sitter and more of a confused mess about why we, as a nation, allow this to continue.


Anyway, here we are.  Stevenson  writes about cases in which he was pivotal in getting someone released from prison, but he goes beyond that. He talks about the cost of those years in prison. The failed marriages, the children who don't know their parents, the years of income lost, the relationships that drifted apart, the dreams deferred and lost. It's about so much more than the process of filing legal briefs and arguing before the Supreme Court. It's about people and lives.

The book was pretty riveting.  Stevenson is a solid writer. I don't always think lawyers write particularly well, but every page of this book held my attention and kept me wanting to turn the page. I highly recommend this book, maybe especially if you're a fence sitter.