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Bryan Stevenson - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

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New York Times Bestseller | Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times The Washington Post The Boston Globe The Seattle Times Esquire Time
Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction | Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction | Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award | Finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize | Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize | An American Library Association Notable Book
A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justicefrom one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didnt commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanshipand transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyers coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
Praise for Just Mercy
Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.David Cole, The New York Review of Books
Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be Americas Mandela.Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times
You dont have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review
Inspiring . . . a work of style, substance and clarity . . . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, hes also a gifted writer and storyteller.The Washington Post
As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.The Financial Times
Brilliant.The Philadelphia Inquirer
Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Though larger than life, Atticus exists only in fiction. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing Gods work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.John Grisham
Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. The stories told within these pages hold the potential to transform what we think we mean when we talk about justice.Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Bryan Stevenson: author's other books


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Just Mercy is a work of nonfiction Some names and identifying details have - photo 1
Just Mercy is a work of nonfiction Some names and identifying details have - photo 2

Just Mercy is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Copyright 2014 by Bryan Stevenson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

S PIEGEL & G RAU and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

ISBN 978-0-8129-9452-0
eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9453-7

www.spiegelandgrau.com

Jacket design: Alex Merto
Jacket photograph: Martin Barraud/Getty Images

v3.1

Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.

R EINHOLD N IEBUHR

Contents

Introduction Higher Ground I wasnt prepared to meet a condemned man In - photo 3

Introduction

Higher Ground I wasnt prepared to meet a condemned man In 1983 I was a - photo 4

Higher Ground

I wasnt prepared to meet a condemned man. In 1983, I was a twenty-three-year-old student at Harvard Law School working in Georgia on an internship, eager and inexperienced and worried that I was in over my head. I had never seen the inside of a maximum-security prisonand had certainly never been to death row. When I learned that I would be visiting this prisoner alone, with no lawyer accompanying me, I tried not to let my panic show.

Georgias death row is in a prison outside of Jackson, a remote town in a rural part of the state. I drove there by myself, heading south on I-75 from Atlanta, my heart pounding harder the closer I got. I didnt really know anything about capital punishment and hadnt even taken a class in criminal procedure yet. I didnt have a basic grasp of the complex appeals process that shaped death penalty litigation, a process that would in time become as familiar to me as the back of my hand. When I signed up for this internship, I hadnt given much thought to the fact that I would actually be meeting condemned prisoners. To be honest, I didnt even know if I wanted to be a lawyer. As the miles ticked by on those rural roads, the more convinced I became that this man was going to be very disappointed to see me.

Picture 5

I studied philosophy in college and didnt realize until my senior year that no one would pay me to philosophize when I graduated. My frantic search for a post-graduation plan led me to law school mostly because other graduate programs required you to know something about your field of study to enroll; law schools, it seemed, didnt require you to know anything. At Harvard, I could study law while pursuing a graduate degree in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, which appealed to me. I was uncertain about what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it would have something to do with the lives of the poor, Americas history of racial inequality, and the struggle to be equitable and fair with one another. It would have something to do with the things Id already seen in life so far and wondered about, but I couldnt really put it together in a way that made a career path clear.

Not long after I started classes at Harvard I began to worry Id made the wrong choice. Coming from a small college in Pennsylvania, I felt very fortunate to have been admitted, but by the end of my first year Id grown disillusioned. At the time, Harvard Law School was a pretty intimidating place, especially for a twenty-one-year-old. Many of the professors used the Socratic methoddirect, repetitive, and adversarial questioningwhich had the incidental effect of humiliating unprepared students. The courses seemed esoteric and disconnected from the race and poverty issues that had motivated me to consider the law in the first place.

Many of the students already had advanced degrees or had worked as paralegals with prestigious law firms. I had none of those credentials. I felt vastly less experienced and worldly than my fellow students. When law firms showed up on campus and began interviewing students a month after classes started, my classmates put on expensive suits and signed up so that they could receive fly-outs to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, D.C. It was a complete mystery to me what exactly we were all busily preparing ourselves to do. I had never even met a lawyer before starting law school.

I spent the summer after my first year in law school working with a juvenile justice project in Philadelphia and taking advanced calculus courses at night to prepare for my next year at the Kennedy School. After I started the public policy program in September, I still felt disconnected. The curriculum was extremely quantitative, focused on figuring out how to maximize benefits and minimize costs, without much concern for what those benefits achieved and the costs created. While intellectually stimulating, decision theory, econometrics, and similar courses left me feeling adrift. But then, suddenly, everything came into focus.

I discovered that the law school offered an unusual one-month intensive course on race and poverty litigation taught by Betsy Bartholet, a law professor who had worked as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Unlike most courses, this one took students off campus, requiring them to spend the month with an organization doing social justice work. I eagerly signed up, and so in December 1983 I found myself on a plane to Atlanta, Georgia, where I was scheduled to spend a few weeks working with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC).

I hadnt been able to afford a direct flight to Atlanta, so I had to change planes in Charlotte, North Carolina, and thats where I met Steve Bright, the director of the SPDC, who was flying back to Atlanta after the holidays. Steve was in his mid-thirties and had a passion and certainty that seemed the direct opposite of my ambivalence. Hed grown up on a farm in Kentucky and ended up in Washington, D.C., after finishing law school. He was a brilliant trial lawyer at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and had just been recruited to take over the SPDC, whose mission was to assist condemned people on death row in Georgia. He showed none of the disconnect between what he did and what he believed that Id seen in so many of my law professors. When we met he warmly wrapped me in a full-body hug, and then we started talking. We didnt stop till wed reached Atlanta.

Bryan, he said at some point during our short flight, capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment. We cant help people on death row without help from people like you.

I was taken aback by his immediate belief that I had something to offer. He broke down the issues with the death penalty simply but persuasively, and I hung on every word, completely engaged by his dedication and charisma.

I just hope youre not expecting anything too fancy while youre here, he said.

Oh, no, I assured him. Im grateful for the opportunity to work with you.

Well, opportunity isnt necessarily the first word people think of when they think about doing work with us. We live kind of simply, and the hours are pretty intense.

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