Reflections: "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson- A Story Of Justice And Redemption is the second book our College Hill Peace & Social Justice Ministry has read with members of Harmony Creek Church. The format remained the same as the previous book review, four sessions, alternating between the two congregations. The group was diverse but majority white. Harmony Creek also has a Justice and Witness Ministry.

This is a powerful book. It chronicles the legal defense by Attorney Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative of  cases of African-Americans, the poor and wrongfully condemned caught up in the injustice of the US prison system. Their cases are heart wrenching. Several times, I had to lay the book aside because I could not read through the tears.  The book brought forth memories from the past. My family lived near Cummins State Prison in Arkansas. As a child I heard my parents speak of "convicts going missing" in the prison. When we drove pass, we saw "trustees" guarding the prisoners as they worked the fields. Once, men from our baptist church went to play softball with the prisoners. When my mother disciplined me, she often referred to "Cummins" as a means of deterrent. I learned to fear the prison as a consequence of poor choices and parental disobedience.

My opposition to the death penalty or capital punishment is on religious grounds, the commandment that thou shall not kill. My first exposure to the death penalty came shortly after I graduated from high school in the summer of 1953. It was the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage case. I followed the events leading up to the execution in the newspaper and on television. I was very sad when they were put to death.

Michelle Alexander powerfully enlightening book, The New Jim Crow helps us understand the institutional processes of enslaving  African-American males through mass incarceration. In the new Jim Crow there are more African-Americans today under correctional control ( in prison or jail, on probation or parole) than were enslaved in 1850, a decade prior to the Civil War due to disparities in drug law enforcement and mass incarceration.  In the new Jim Crow of today disenfranchisement laws disenfranchise more African-American males than in 1870 when the 15th Amendment was ratified.

Stevenson's Just Mercy adds flesh and blood, soul and death. No one can read Just Mercy and still be for the death penalty.

Stevenson says: "I do what I do because I'm broken too... You can't effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it." To be broken, in my opinion, is a metaphor, for sacrifice of one's life for the salvation of others.

Brian Stevenson was the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize non fiction winner for Just Mercy.

copyright (c)