Review | Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

First off, let me just say: this might be the book most recommended to me this year. Or last year. Every time I ask for recommendations from the social media crowd, at least one or two folks will list and recommend it. And after reading it, I understand why. Bryan Stevenson has a compelling subject and tells a sympathetic story and tells it well.

So thanks. I appreciate the recommendations, everyone. This is one book I appreciated, even if the subject is heavy and, occasionally, completely depressing. Stevenson handles his topic adroitly and with a closeness only possible through proximity and personal experience.

Starting his story early in his law school career (Harvard, FWIW), Stevenson tells of going to Alabama to intern with the Southern Poverty Defense Center (SPDC). Sent one day to deliver a message to a prisoner on death row (that the prisoner would not be executed over the next year), Stevenson awkwardly delivers the news, befriends the prisoner (Henry), and recognizes a passion for justice and begins a lifelong fight against the death penalty, especially for those unjustly convicted, or sentenced to what he calls “death in prison.”

After his internship and completion of law school, Stevenson returns to work for the SPDC and then later starts the Equal Justice Initiative (or EJI). Stevenson centers the book’s narrative around a prisoner named Walter McMillian who is wrongfully accused and convicted of murder in Alabama in the 1980s. He intersperses sections about McMillian’s case with other stories on others who are treated unjustly by the criminal justice system, mostly in the deep south, but also in other parts of the country.: women in prison, juveniles on death row or life without parole, treatment of prisoners, the mentally ill, and others.

Stevenson also writes about the history of minority and marginalized groups through American history, from the Reconstruction era to the present, arguing that while laws have changed, other institutions have sprung up to repress black people. Mass incarceration, Stevenson argues for example, disproportionately the poor and marginalized.

It’s a beautifully told story that ends with a moving personal anecdote involving Rosa Parks and Johnnie Carr (a Civil Rights activist) and Stevenson. He returns home to continue the work, renewed in his determination.

In that moment, I am reminded of the story of the man told by God to push against the rock:

“The Lord told a man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of the man’s cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might. This the man did, day after day. For many months he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock, pushing with all his might. Each night, the man returned to his cabin sore and worn out.

“In the midst of battling discouragement, the man decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Lord. “Lord,” he said, “I have labored long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which You have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock by half a centimeter. I am failing You.”

“To this the Lord responded compassionately, “My friend, when I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to me, with your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled, your back sinewy and sturdy, your hands are callused from constant pressure, and your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven’t moved the rock. But, son, I did not ask you to move the rock. I simply asked you to push. It is my job to move the rock.””

In many ways, Stevenson’s battle is all of ours. Last week was Independence Day, and yet there are still many ways that the promise of the Declaration of Independence remains unfulfilled. Much of American history has been a history of peoples struggling to obtain access to the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” While I think we’ve come a long way since 1776, and even since President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, we are in many ways still perfecting the experiment. Stevenson’s battle is a noble and worthy piece of that work.

If I were to make any critique of Just Mercy, and I’m loath to do so, it would only be that Stevenson’s effort tells just one side of the story (though, to be honest, is often difficult to see how it could be much wrong, he tells it so well). In addition, by relying heavily on anecdote and sympathetic cases, interspersed with emotionally charged stories, he turns the reader emotionally towards support for his main point. It’s clever, but it doesn’t always account for the dual nature of the cases, the occasional unreliability of personal stories in these cases.