Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults)

55 pages • 1 hour read

Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Discussion Questions

Introduction-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction Summary: “Higher Ground”

As a Harvard Law student in 1983, Bryan Stevenson interns at the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC). Though he is unsure what he wants to do with his life, he knows it will have something “to do with the lives of the poor, America’s history of racial inequality, and the struggle to be just and fair with one another” (4). For this goal, an internship with the SPDC, which defends people on death row in Georgia, is the answer.

Stevenson meets Steve Bright, the director of SPDC, who explains that “capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment’” (5). Stevenson is sent to visit Henry, a young Black man on death row awaiting legal presentation from SPDC, and explains that he will not be executed in the next year.

Though Stevenson is nervous and feels inadequate, Henry is happy for the news and grateful that anyone has come speak to him at all. Before the prison guard takes Henry away again, he sings an old church hymn. Stevenson is struck by Henry’s compassion, though Henry is the one who needs comfort. Stevenson leaves his internship inspired. Now committed to helping death row prisoners, Stevenson completes his law degree and returns to SPDC to continue the work.

A brief description of Stevenson's upbringing in Delaware follows. His family lived in an area still covered in Confederate flags, where the Black community was isolated and segregated. His father worked in a food-processing factory, and his mother worked at an Air Force base. His maternal grandmother was the daughter of enslaved people in Virginia, which influenced the way she raised her children.

Stevenson then describes the inequality of the legal system and mass incarceration. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and one third of all Black boys born in this century are expected to be incarcerated. From the 1970s to 2018, the US prison population grew from 300,000 to 2.3 million people. The legal system has stopped trying to rehabilitate or educate and has instead created laws that allow for harsher punishments, with hundreds of people executed since 1975. Stevenson argues that many of these convictions stem from racial and class bias, while also being fueled by the enormous profit gained from the privatization of prisons.

Stevenson ends the introduction with his hopes for the book. He hopes it will demonstrate the ways in which the legal system punishes people recklessly and without empathy. He also shares what he considers his most important lesson: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done” (17).

Chapter 1 Summary: “Mockingbird Players”

Chapter 1 picks up four years after Stevenson joins the SPDC full time, when he meets five men on death row in Alabama. He travels to Alabama while also working in Georgia, because Alabama is the only state in the US with no public defender system—defendants and prisoners on death row do not receive any legal assistance from the state. Here, Stevenson meets Walter McMillian, who insists he is innocent.

Stevenson compares the case of Walter McMillian, from Monroe County in Alabama, with the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, who was likewise from Monroe County. In To Kill a Mockingbird, a white lawyer attempts to defend a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Stevenson reminds the readers that in the novel, the defense fails and the Black man dies while attempting to escape.

Similarly, Walter is a Black man from the poor Black settlements in Monroe County, where he attended school for only a few years before going to work in cotton fields with his family to earn money. In the 1970s, Walter borrows money to start a successful wood-pulping business, allowing him financial independence. Though married with three children, he has affairs with other women. Eventually, he begins an affair with a young married white woman named Karen Kelly. This affair becomes public knowledge when Karen’s husband divorces her and sues for custody of their children.

A few weeks later, on November 1, 1986, an 18-year-old white college student named Ronda Morrison is murdered at the cleaners where she works. Tom Tate, the newly elected county sheriff, feels pressured by the community when he fails to solve the case quickly. Meanwhile, Walter’s life becomes more complicated when he ends his relationship with Karen, and she begins associating with Ralph Myers, a white man with a criminal record. Karen and Ralph are implicated in the murder of a different young white woman, Vickie Lynn Pittman. When the police question Ralph about this murder, he admits his involvement but bizarrely insists that Karen’s “other boyfriend” Walter is also involved. Ralph accuses Walter of Ronda Morrison’s murder as well.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Stand”

Stevenson's work with SPDC in Atlanta comes with a yearly salary of only $14,000. To save money he spends the first year and a half sleeping on Steve Bright’s couch, until one of his law school friends, Charles Bliss, moves to Atlanta and they share an apartment.

Stevenson shares a terrifying experience from this time. He investigates cases of police misconduct and brutality in Gadsden, Alabama, where a Black man died in police custody when they refused him his asthma inhaler. Stevenson suffers a similar ordeal of police misconduct when returning home late one evening. After parking on the street, he is sitting in his car for a few minutes listening to music when an Atlanta SWAT car suddenly approaches him. When he steps out of his car, the SWAT officers point their guns at him and threaten to “blow [his] head off” (37). The police then illegally search his car and threaten him despite his protests that he lives there and has done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, some white neighbors have come out because of the noise and demand that the police ask Stevenson about their stolen electronics. The police explain that there have been robberies in the neighborhood. But when they find no evidence that Stevenson is a suspect, they let him go without apology.

Stevenson files a complaint with the police department. Some colleagues tell him he should have told the police he was a civil rights lawyer investigating police-misconduct cases, but he wonders why someone “should […] have to explain their professional credentials in order to be taken seriously about police misconduct” (41).

When he remembers that he nearly ran when the police pointed their guns at him, despite knowing that it is the worst thing he could do, Stevenson worries how less knowledgeable Black men might respond to police harassment. He gives talks at local churches and town halls to warn people of color how best to respond to police, and argues for police reform. At one talk, an older Black man tells him he is “beating the drum for justice” and shares his scars from civil rights protests, which he calls his “medals of honor” (44). Following this conversation, Stevenson decides to open an office in Alabama.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Trials and Tribulation”

Returning to Walter’s case, Sheriff Tom Tate, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI), and the investigator for the district attorney (DA) decide to arrest Walter without any investigation or evidence, purely on the word of Ralph Myers. They arrest him on June 7, 1987.

The DA hears Ralph’s flimsy account of the crime. Ralph claims that on the day of Ronda’s murder he was at a gas station when Walter drove up and forced Ralph into Walter’s truck at gunpoint. Walter made Ralph drive the truck to the cleaners because his arm was hurt. Walter left Ralph alone in the truck and went into the cleaners, presumably to murder Ronda. He then returned, admitting to Ralph unprompted that he had just killed the clerk. They drove back to the gas station, where Ralph retrieved his own vehicle and Walter threatened to kill him if he said anything.

The story is nonsensical, with no evidence to support it. In addition, Walter and his family held a cookout the day of the murder and dozens of witnesses from his church can vouch for his whereabouts for the entire day. Unfortunately, the police find Bill Hooks, a young Black man in jail on burglary charges and a well-known “jailhouse snitch” who claims he saw Walter’s truck at the scene of the crime. Sheriff Tate releases Bill Hooks from jail after he makes this claim. On the strength of Ralph’s and Bill’s testimonies, the police charge Walter with murder.

Ralph soon realizes he has made a mistake. In making up a story about Walter, he has also implicated himself, and the police charge him with murder as well. He tells the police that he lied about everything, but at this point Sheriff Tate and the DA just want to charge anyone, and ignore him. They transfer both Walter and Ralph from the county jail to death row before trial—which is almost unheard of. Ralph is so horrified by the experience that he agrees to say whatever the police want him to say if they will get him out.

Walter’s family hire Chestnut and Boynton, the only two Black criminal lawyers in the area, both well known for their civil rights work. The two lawyers attempt to have the trial moved to a different county, where public opinion will be less hostile to Walter, but the judge on the case moves the trial to a wealthier white-majority county instead. There, the DA uses striking—the practice of rejecting prospective jurors without explanation—to remove all but one Black juror from the trial.

The trial is short. Ralph and Bill both offer their false testimony. The defense puts up little fight. Walter is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Old Rugged Cross”

In February 1989, Stevenson and a colleague raise the necessary funds to open their own nonprofit law center to provide free legal services to prisoners condemned to death row in Alabama. They first open the office in Tuscaloosa but, after several setbacks, move to Montgomery instead. The project is called the Equal Justice Initiative.

Stevenson then recounts the first two executions he deals with personally. The first occurs only months after opening the new center. Though Stevenson is still working on Walter’s case, several other death row inmates ask him to help a man named Michael Lindsey. Michael’s execution is scheduled for May 1989. Stevenson petitions for a stay of execution but the governor refuses. Michael is electrocuted on May 26, 1989.

Following this failure, Stevenson also tries to help Herbert Richardson, a war veteran with PTSD who has ended up on death row. Again failing to secure a stay of execution, Stevenson promises to be with Herbert during his electrocution. Herbert reflects that more people have asked him what they can do to help on the day of his death than in any of the years leading up to it. His final request is for the song “The Old Rugged Cross” to play as he walks up to the electric chair.

After the execution, Stevenson witnesses a “cloud of regret and remorse” that no one can shake (71). Even the prison officials tasked with carrying out the execution seem to feel discomfort and shame. This experience makes him more determined to do something about the death penalty.

Introduction-Chapter 4 Analysis

In these chapters Stevenson lays the foundation for his central argument and the book’s main themes. Stevenson's upbringing as well as his first experiences interning with SPDC are vital to understanding his motivations for his work with EJI. His grandmother’s history as the child of enslaved people and his own experiences with segregation in the 1960s expose him to the inherent injustice and racism of the American legal system. That background is integral to his personality and ethical code, particularly his need to help the poor and marginalized. His first experience with a condemned death row prisoner, Henry, is particularly formative, spurring him forward and shaping his understanding of compassion, hope, and resilience in the face of injustice.

The Power of Hope and Resilience is a defining theme of the memoir. Many of the people in the narrative possess these characteristics, including Stevenson. He shows resilience when experiencing police misconduct firsthand, deciding to stand up and fight rather than bow down to the hypocrisy of the justice system. The older Black man he meets in a church who tells him to “beat the drum for justice” likewise demonstrates the kind of resilience Stevenson highlights throughout the memoir (44). The man is physically scarred from participating in civil rights protests, but he continues to believe in and fight for justice. He views his scars as “medals of honor” in a righteous battle rather than symbols of defeat (44).

Another important theme introduced in these chapters is the problem of Systemic Injustice and Racial Bias. According to Stevenson, injustice and racial bias are deeply embedded in the legal system—hence “systemic”—and must be confronted and rooted out. He argues that “presumptions of guilt based on poverty and racial bias have created a system that is defined by error” (16), and concludes that “our legal system convicts and condemns people irresponsibly—with disturbing and traumatic results” (17).

Walter’s case is a vital example of systemic injustice and its consequences. Chapters 1 and 3 begin a narrative that will carry through the memoir, tracing Walter’s life from its early difficulties through the lies built around him, his wrongful conviction, and his fight to be exonerated. Each new fact of the case adds another facet to the racism, corruption, and injustice that put Walter on death row. However, Walter’s case is not the only example used to illustrate Stevenson's point.

The alternating chapters likewise show the police misconduct, racial bias, and cruelty inherent in the judicial system. In Chapter 2, the story of a man who died in police custody in Gadsden, Alabama, is one useful example. His first two firsthand experiences with execution in Chapter 4 likewise make plain the cruelty of the system. For instance, in the case of Michael Lindsey’s execution, even his own defense lawyer is quoted as saying: “I generally favor the death penalty because mad dogs ought to die” (67), a racist comment that demonstrates his lack of concern for the presumed innocence of his clients.

This comment also touches upon a third theme in the book, Advocacy and Empathy. This theme is addressed more thoroughly in later chapters, but Stevenson's insistence that Michael Lindsey’s lawyer should have been his advocate begins that conversation. The other death row prisoners are horrified when they hear about the lawyer’s cruel comment, as is Stevenson himself. By the time Stevenson has seen his first execution—that of his client Herbert Richardson—he is convinced of the wrongness of the entire proceeding. He returns to his work following this incident more resolved to be an advocate for his clients and help every death row inmate that he can. This determination fuels him through the struggles ahead.