Just Mercy....

The measure of a society is found in

how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances

that protect our human rights and our religious freedom,

but for many people around the world,

deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

- Former President Jimmy Carter

 

A family friend from Detroit and I have grown up apart - him primarily on the West Coast and me primarily on the East - but through the magic of Facebook, it's clear that we share a certain 'progressive' sensibility and worldview.  So when he invited me into a virtual book club via the site, I happily and readily accepted.  After some back and forth among the coterie of invited prospective members, Derrick nominated Bryan Stephenson's Just Mercy to be our first book.  Great, I thought: I'd heard of the pioneering civil rights attorney's admirable work and was interested in learning more about it.

 

Goodness, do I rue and prize this decision.  Simply put, only five chapters in, this book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, is both as disturbing and depressing as any book I've ever read (including Viktor' Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning in which he details his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp) and it's also an inspiring testament to the human spirit and a few people's dedication of their lives to the true pursuit of justice in our supposedly modern society.

 

As an educated, successful middle-/upper-middle class Man Of Color, I've mostly been shielded from the vagaries of our criminal justice system, though I, too, have been subjected (wrongly) to a couple of situations in which my life was threatened by officers of the law conceptually sworn to serve and protect me.  This is a reality that our society chooses to ignore: few if any of us Black males are immune to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and thus subject to potentially fatal interactions with police officers.  It doesn't matter that you're educated and law-abiding, it only matters that you're Black.  There are few experiences more sobering in life than to realize that who you are is irrelevant and what you are - determined by circumstances and agents beyond your control and/or the vagaries of fate - is the sum total of your existence at certain moments.

 

So, suffice it to say that I was prepared to accept that many of the stories in the book involved mainly other Men Of Color who were less fortunate in terms of family background, education, life chances, etc.  In sum, I realize that my middle class upbringing and upper-middle class adulthood have helped me 'overcome' many of the challenges to which most other members of my race - and especially members of my gender and race - are subjected in modern America.  In a word, relative to all but a very few Black folks in America, I've had it good.

 

What I was not prepared for was the level of institutional abuse to which so many of our fellow citizens - especially those who are darker and poorer - are subjected.  Make no mistake, this is about race, but it's also about class - which is why it's not a Black or white problem but an American (and, truly, world) one - as we demonize the poor almost as much as we demonize the Other in our society now.

 

At this point, given that Mr. Stephenson's primary focus is on representing condemned ("death row") inmates in Alabama, I think it fair to disclaim my historical view on capital punishment: I've been for it, in (very) limited circumstances.  First, I don't believe that it's acceptable for an individual to take another's life unless his or her own life is clearly and imminently in danger.  Beyond this, if someone proactively takes a life, I believe that he or she should punished severely, preferably via a long prison sentence that holds out the possibility for parole only after several decades at the earliest (if at all).  The only circumstances in which I've been comfortable in allowing imposition of the death penalty have been those in which multiple murders were committed.  Once you've killed several people, it's hard for me to conceptualize that you value others' humanity and thus I'm not totally uncomfortable with you leaving our earthly company.

 

Also, I haven't believed that the mentally ill or handicapped should face the ultimate sanction.  Nor should juveniles (except in the case of multiple pre-meditated murders [as opposed to manslaughter]).  (Though I support voluntary euthanasia of the terminally ill [more out of compassion than by right].)

 

And I'm especially troubled by the realities of race and class when they intersect with the death penalty: simply put, if you're poor you have a much higher chance of facing capital punishment, if you're Black it's even higher and if you're poor and Black it's the highest - and multiple times more likely than your poor, poor and white or, especially, white fellow citizens.  Accordingly, I've been reluctant to support the death penalty - much less its expansion - and, in fact, have tended toward believing that it should be (and become) more limited in its application.

 

Until Just Mercy.  Now I just think that it's wrong, and wrong all of the time....

 

No, I don't want multiple murderers being kept around for decades in our prison system at our expense.  And yet, given the realities of our criminal 'justice' and prison system in America - including our ridiculously high incarceration rate, the expansion of the private, for-profit prison industry and the statistically demonstrable existence of the "cradle to prison pipeline," especially in poor Communities of Color - I actually question whether it's not already "cruel and unusual" in (too) many ways that render it in violation of the very Constitution that gives it its basis.

 

But I can't in good conscience accept what passes for "justice" in our society currently.  Since most folks don't become involved with the criminal justice system in any significant way, they don't realize its pernicious and often perverse quirks ... and thus are quite comfortable not giving the issue much thought or concern.  I can't believe, however, that if they were (more) aware, they could accept it either.

 

Most self-considered 'good people' don't realize that indigent defendants in many jurisdictions in this country face an almost vertical uphill battle to prove themselves innocent and are, in fact, presumed guilty in ways that lead to this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy far too often.

 

For example, can you imagine being a indigent defendant facing a murder charge in a state court but having little to no legal representation?  I can't either, but it happens all of the time right now.  Do you have enough familiarity with the legal system to defend yourself in such a situation?  Do you think that a few innocent people are victimized by this reality every day in our country?  If so, then you accept that thousands of people each year are put in the unenviable position of having to defend themselves - and their very lives - against a well-oiled, experienced system with which they have little to no experience, right?  How do you think that this turns out for most of them?  So, are all of them really guilty of the crimes of which they've convicted or many of them victims of a system that seeks retribution always and justice occasionally?  Imagine being given a court-appointed lawyer who does little to no research on your case, doesn't mount much of a defense (if any) and then suggests that your best chance is on appeal ... and then recuses him/herself from your case so that you have to seek volunteer appellate attorneys to represent you in this byzantine facet of the process.  Oh, that can't happen much we say to ourselves ... but it's routine in many jurisdictions in our country (especially in the South) and happens all of the time, every day, here and now.  (Many of those on death row currently are truly victims of just such an experience.)

 

To put it too nicely, our criminal justice system is stacked against the poor and innocent Of Color (while too often favoring the rich, guilty and white).  But it's only when we delve into just how stacked against the average poor defendant that we understand that it begins to violate our ideals too regularly to continue.  And when you add in that many of these (supposedly) unintended 'mistakes' are being made in capital cases, you understand that our failure to address this issue has lethal consequences for more than a few of our fellow citizens.  Of course, unless one of these unfortunate souls is known to you, your willingness to accept the fallible humanity of our system is a lot higher, which is where we find ourselves today.

 

What Just Mercy does is to humanize just a few of the myriad such cases and describe the lives and put human faces on those whose fortunes are so destroyed by this inhumane system on the fringes of our society....

 

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we get rid of our judicial system - we will always need it due to our human fallibility - but I am saying that we need to reform it greatly and far more than most of us realize.  My guess is that the 'comfortable middle' (class) of American society is largely unaware of the problem, existing as it does in peaceful, lawful bliss (and the 'insulated upper' class is unconcerned by virtue of its privileges and resources).  But those who are more urban or more poor or more Black/Brown/etc. have a disproportionately different experience and its to these less fortunate among us that we owe our commitment, too.  So, what I am saying is that we need to inject more justice into our judicial system....

 

What Mr. Stephenson has reminded me and us is that we own the responsibility to insure that President Carter's words ring true for each and every one of our fellow citizens and, ultimately, for each and every one of our fellow human beings.  As, sadly, today and on our own watch, they do not....