Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy” – A review

Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his entire career to the pursuit of justice through his dedication to the poor, the incarcerated (with a specific interest in the juveniles who are incarcerated), and those that are condemned to life in prison and death row. Through this dedication, he was led to the creation of the equal justice initiative (EJI), where he works as the executive director, establishing his headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama. All of this is chronicled in his book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, where he details not only the realities of being an African American male interested in law in America from a social justice standpoint but also the lives of those he chooses to serve and their journeys to freedom or their own demise.

The most important aspect of this book is it’s ability to humanize a group(s) of people that are not only members of marginalized populations when it comes to race and class, but also further marginalized from the public by the law and the ways it operates in their social circles and communities. He masterfully does this by incorporating many stories with the stories of Walter McMillian, a 14-year old boy named Charlie, Avery Jenkins, and the chilling story of the execution of Herbert Richardson at the hands of the state of Alabama. These characters (and I use this term lightly, as these are living, breathing human beings) represent the intersectionality created in America thanks to crime. Walter’s story highlights inequalities in race and class, Charlie’s condemned to an extremely meager existence due to his age, race, and class, His experiences as an African American male who practices law are highlighted through him recanting his experience getting withheld by police in front of his apartment and his work with Avery Jenkins, and lastly Marsha Colbey’s story highlights the unspoken plight of poor women and the law. Each of these groups and cultures have the common denominator of the law and differ in the reasons it fails them.

I feel as though all Americans can stand to learn a thing or two from this book. More than anything, this book highlights the prison industrial complex, the way Americans are trained to throw away those who have been accused of crime, and the realities of working in that system. Being exposed to the experiences in this book could drastically change the way Americans view our relationship with prison, more specifically with death row inmates, and it could also change our understanding of the legal process involved in these cases. There is also this effort to highlight the way people with disabilities are handled within the prison system, which basically boils down to a slow, methodical, passing through process where those involved aren’t really allowed the opportunity to have any input on the ways their lives are going to be drastically changed by the outcomes of their cases.

Lastly, Stevenson highlights the ways women’s bodies are violated in regard to the way the law interceded on what they are allowed to do with their bodies and how the female body is viewed by the law as well when it recounted the Alabama Supreme Court interpreted environment to include the womb in the case of Marsha Colbey and the book also teaches the reader briefly about the rape culture allowed within the prison system as well. There is a lot to be unpacked in this book and the emotion that it pulls out of these experiences and its ability to make these people human for a country that has made it all to normal to disregard the humanity of those in these positions is transformative and well worth the read.