On August 6th I started to read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and the introduction is titled Higher Ground (from the words of a hymn). Here Bryan introduces himself and describes his going to Harvard law School, and then going to Georgia to help death row inmates who have no access to lawyers. It was part of an internship and he would be working with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC). Bryan went to the Georgia prison and met the prisoner, Henry, who was on death row. He promised that he would get him a competent lawyer and have him released. Henry would not be executed. The guard was not too happy with the fact that he stayed with Henry for 3 hours instead of one, and he was a bit rough on him when cuffing him again. Bryan describes his growing up on the Delmarva Peninsula (Milton DE) and how his parents worked in chicken plants and at Dover AFB. Bryan also talks about how much the country spends on incarcerating people. And since the 1980’s how much it has become a punitive nation. People are incarcerated for non-violent offenses like drug charges. Minor theft can result in life imprisonment. And the for profit prisons who have so much to gain by having people sent to prison. In chapter 1, title Mockingbird, he relates how Judge Robert E. Lee Key called him about a prisoner on death row in Alabama named Walter McMillian. Judge Key told Bryan that he was wasting his time trying to help Walter. Bryan then talks about his going to the prison to meet with him. And that Walter is from Monroe County, the same county that Harper Lee was from.
In the Mockingbird Stories (chapter2) he describes Walter McMillian’s life as a sharecropper, limited education since he was more valuable in the fields than in school, and then his relative success as a lumber businessman. But he cannot get too successful because the white Alabamans would be quite angry. Walter had a wife and children but is also a womanizer. Walter was having a relationship with a young white woman named Karen Kelly, who was having trouble with her marriage. There would be a custody battle for the children. The chapter also talked about some white women who were murdered but they could never find the killers. It was the worst evil for a black man to have a relationship with a white woman. Then an inept sheriff from the neighboring county is starting to investigate the murders. In the Mockingbirds Stories chapter, Walter was accused of the murder of the Pittman girl because he was black and had a relationship with a white lady.
Then in the Stand chapter (named for a Sly & the Family Stone song) in 1977 Bryan goes to Gadsden AL to see about a young black man who was incarcerated after a traffic violation and denied his medications, and then died in prison. He also investigated a young black man who was beaten and arrested and incarcerated after a minor traffic stop. He also talked about the places he lived in around Atlanta, and the final one where he has a roommate named Charlie. When he parked his car and waited until a Sly & the Family Stone finished playing on his radio, the SWAT team came by to check him out. It looked like he was going to be arrested on suspicious charges but he was able to prove that he lived there and was not doing anything wrong. It looks like neighbors called the police because they did not recognize his and he was black. He did try to get an apology from the police but no luck. But the deputy chief did promise that the officers would get extra homework on community relations. He went back to visit Gadsden and spoke at a church. An elderly man, a veteran of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, showed him scars from beatings and other attacks by anti-black people, told him to continue the fight for social justice.
In chapter 3 (Trials and Tribulation) Walter is arrested by Sheriff Tate, the incompetent sheriff, on false charges from Ralph Myers on sodomy. He is also framed for the murder of Ronda Morrison at a cleaners in Monroeville. Tate apprehended Walter and called him the “N” word. Walter could not have killed Ronda since he was 10 miles away at a fish fry held at his house and was also working on his truck – the one supposedly used to take Myers with him to the cleaners, the site of the murder. Tate pressured Myers to tell him more about the crime, but there was nothing more to say. In 1987 Myers and Walter were sent from the county jail to the prison in Holman and on to death row. Tate was pressured to make an arrest in the case, and despite Walter’s alibi, had him sent to Holman before a trial. In chapter 3 Bryan describes the murder of John Evans, where it took three shots of electricity to finally kill him after 14 minutes. While Walter and Myers are on death row, another prisoner, Jim Ritter, was scheduled to be executed soon. JL Chestnut, a black attorney from Selma, had represented Walter but had no luck reversing the charges. Tate arranged to have Myers taken off of death row and back to the county jail after Ritter was executed. Despite the fact that there were no court orders or filings. Myers then affirmed his accusations against Walter. District Attorney Ted Pearson was determined to have a victory in the case by having Walter convicted at a trial set for February 1988. The jury would be all white – ways to get around voting rights laws and Supreme Court decisions. The South had insisted on all white juries. But the Court only allows them to be selected for jury duty, not to serve on them. Some of the other death row inmates were sent there by all white juries after black jurors were struck out. There was the Supreme Court case Batson vs. Kentucky in while prosecutors could be challenged more directly about using peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner. The DA had to worry about the Batson decision and knew that lawyers like JL Chestnut and Bruce Boynton would object to racially discriminatory jury selection. But he was not too worried. The two lawyers requested that the trial be moved and it was, to Baldwin County – a mostly white county on the Gulf and not too removed from Jim Crow days. Myers, in the county jail, did not want to implicate himself in a murder he did not commit. He said he could not testify because what he had to say was not true. Myers went to a mental health facility in Tuscaloosa and that did not find him unfit to stand trial and was returned to death row. Before the trial held in August 1988 Walter was moved in tight handcuffs to Baldwin County and at the trial he was found guilty by an all-white jury and sent back to death row. Myers had told his absurd story that Walter forcing him to drive to the cleaners because his arm hurt. And that a mysterious white man had told Walter to kill Myers but he was out of bullets. But they believed Myers, despite Chestnut’s cross examination of him. The prosecutor called Myers back to repeat his testimony to convince the jury, despite the contradictions and the lack of logic. Another white man said that he had seen Walter’s truck – a low rider – at the cleaners, but the truck was not converted until months after the murder. Only 3 of the people at Walter’s house during the fish fry were called by his lawyers. Morrison’s uncle, Ernest Welch had been at Walter’s house to collect some money but it was a different day from the murder. Walter was pronounced guilty of murder.
Chapter 4 is titled The Old Rugged Cross, after a hymn that a condemned prisoner asked be played before his execution. In February 1989 Bryan and a friend Eva Ansley had tried to open a nonprofit law center in Tuscaloosa AL but soon there were obstacles to keeping it open. He then moved the office to Montgomery and was able to get federal dollars to keep open. There were several pending executions coming up. Two of them were Michael Lindsey and Horace Dunkins. Bryan tried to get appeals for both men. Michael had received a life without parole sentence from the jury but the judge overruled it with a death sentence. Alabama was one of the two states that allowed judges to do that (Florida was the other in 1989, but since ended the practice). His court appointed lawyer, David Bagwell, had worked on the unsuccessful trial of Wayne Ritter who was executed in 1988. Bagwell basically would not take death penalty cases again. Judges are elected in AL so there are campaign contributions from vested interested and the general public basically votes along the crime & punishment lines. Bryan and his staff wrote to the governor asking to stop Michael’s execution because the jury had voted against execution. He refused. Michael was executed in May 1989. Horace Dunkins was executed in July 1989. Horace was disabled intellectually and despite a Supreme Court ruling against executing the mentally deficient, the execution went on. The next prisoner slated for execution was Herbert Richardson, in August. Herbert was a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from PTSD. While in the Army he was denied psychiatric evaluations. He spent time after his discharge in veterans hospitals recovering from head pain, but he did recover from his head pain. A nurse from Dothan AL helped him during his recovery and Herbert followed her when she went back home. He was really hung up on her and tried to get her to like him in return. But he still had pre-service trauma (death of a parent, parental abuse) and also PTSD. To try and win the former nurse he concocted a plan to have a bomb go off on her porch and he would rescue her and be her hero. But one of her nieces picked it up and it exploded, killing her and injuring her friend. Herbert was arrested. Since this took place in a poor black neighborhood, normally it would not have been a capital case in AL. But Herbert was a transplanted Northerner so law enforcement had more contempt for him. The prosecutor said that Herbert was misguided and evil. The jury accused Herbert of being associated with Black Muslims in New York City. And Herbert was sentenced to death, despite the fact that the death was nonintentional. Herbert’s appointed lawyer at his trial told him that it was useless to appeal the conviction because the trial was deemed to be fair. Bryan filed numerous stay motions to no avail. The Supreme Court wanted to get on with the executions, according to Chief Justice Rehnquist. Bryan also appealed based on Herbert’s trauma and military service. Also because of an ineffective lawyer, racial bias, and comments from the prosecutor. Eventually Bryan filed a stay of execution with the Supreme Court with no luck. Herbert got married to a woman from Mobile a week before the execution so that she could get his American flag. Herbert had requested that a hymn titled “The Old Rugger Cross” be played at his execution. And it was. Herbert was executed on August 18, 1989.
Chapter 5 it titled On the Coming of John (from the title of a short story by W.E.B. DuBois). While Walter McMillian is on death row, Bryan visits his family at their home and tries to confirm that Walter was nowhere near the cleaners. A white man named Sam Crook said that Walter was a decent man. Bryan got Darnell Houston released after being falsely jailed for perjury. But he could prove that Walter was innocent – the Hooks witness was lying. Darnell was with Hooks working on the morning that the Morrison girl was killed. Hooks, Hightower, and Myers were the state’s witnesses and were not believable. He also spoke with the new district attorney Tom Chapman in hopes of getting Walter a new trial. Chapman seemed a bit indifferent. He also filed an appeal to get Walter a new trial and then started to work on the brief that he had to present.
Chapter 6 of Just Mercy is titled Surely Doomed. Here Bryan goes back to Alabama after a grandmother calls him to say that her 14 year old grandson Charlie is in jail for murder. He had shot killed his mom’s boyfriend George who abused his mom and also mistreated him. George was a police officer and that did not sit well with the judge. Charlie was tried and convicted as an adult and sent to an adult jail where he was raped and beaten. He would not open up to Bryan due to PTSD from that experience. Later a white couple, Mr. & Mrs. Jennings from the Birmingham area. They took to Charlie and helped him and became his family. Mrs. Jennings said that we are “surely doomed” if we don’t help others.
Chapter 7 is titled Justice Denied. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals denied Walter’s appeal. Bryan argued that there was prosecutorial misconduct, racially discriminatory jury selection, and an improper change of venue. He also challenged the judge’s overruling of the jury’s life sentence ruling. The head of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals was John Patterson, an anti-civil rights former governor and a segregationist. Bryan was not hopeful. Patterson’s only question was “where are you from?” to Bryan. He still hoped that the state would overturn the capital punishment decision because of lack of supportable facts. Bryan visited Walter and told him that it could take years to get it overturned. Bryan got a new assistant, Michael O’Connor from Yale Law School. They soon learn that witness Bill Hooks was paid by Sheriff Tate to testify against Walter, and to travel out of the county during the trial. Hooks also said that he saw Walter’s “low rider” truck on the day of the murder but the truck was remodeled months after the murder. The court was supposed to say that Hooks had charges against him dismissed in exchange for cooperation with authorities was never mentioned. A white man running the store when Ralph Myers came in to give a note to Walter. But the store owner said Myers and Walter never met. The mechanic told them that they worked on Walter’s truck months after the Morrison murder so Hooks and Myers he could not have seen Walter in a low rider. Myers called Bryan and Mike and said that he wanted to speak to them from his prison. Myers testimony was riddled with credibility issues thanks to Darnell Houston, Walter’s truck and assistance Hooks gave to law enforcement. When Bryan and Mike meet Myers at the prison he tells them that he was pressured by the sheriff and the ABI to testify against Walter or else face the death penalty. He told Bryan that he knew Walter had nothing to do with the murder and Ralph knew nothing about what happened to Ronda Morrison. Myers did admit to the Vickie Pittman murder under the direction of another sheriff. Bryan and Mike followed up on the leads Myers gave them. They meet up with Karen Kelly at her prison where she tells them about how her life went out of control. Also that Sheriff Tate asked her why she slept with blacks. After the visit she wrote Bryan and said that Myers had never met Walter. Bryan and Mike then looked more into the Pittman murder. They reduced Kelly and Myers’ sentences in exchange for testimony against Walter. There were other people involved in the Pittman murder including the corrupt sheriff. They visit Vicki Pittman’s twin aunts, Mozell and Onzell in Escambria County who believe that Kelly and Myers did it. But in the 1980’s a new movement started in the justice system where the system started to personalize the victims as opposed to being the state or commonwealth. Victim impact statements were not to be heard by jurors. But in 1990 the Supreme Court upheld the rights of states for present evidence about the character of the victim in a capital sentencing trial. That meant more victim advocacy groups and victims’ advocates on the parole boards. But the race of perpetrators and victims had a greater effect on the sentence. The lack of concern and responsiveness on the part of police, prosecutors and victims’ advocates that devastated the Pittman ladies. Bryan and Mike filed Rue 32 petition which put them back into a trial court with the chance to present new evidence. They had to include claims that were not raised at trial or on appeal and could not have been raised. This one said that Walter was unfairly tried and convicted, and illegally sentenced. But most said his guilt was a settled matter. The case was transferred back to Baldwin County and the state Supreme Court said they could proceed. They met with DA Chapman, DA investigator Larry Ikner, ABI agent Simon Benson and Sheriff Tate. Tate did not the looks of Mike and said he was Yankee, The joke about Penn State did not go well and Tate said that Alabama beat them in 1978. Tate asked them how much Walter was paying them, and Bryan said nothing,. They asked Tate about the files on the case and they insisted that they handed everything over. Bit something could have been lost. Tate felt his integrity was being questioned. Bryan and Mike got the files and left Monroeville for Montgomery. The sheriff and the other men gave them files on the Pittman murder and also the Monroeville police files. They saw that some law enforcement officers (LEO’s) names were coming up frequently in the Pittman murder so the contacted the FBI.
Chapter 8 is titled All God’s Children. It opens with a poem titled Uncried Tears by Ian Manuel. Then Bryan talks about three juveniles who were tried as adults and sentenced to life without parole. The first was Trina Garnett of Chester PA. Trina was the youngest of 12 children of a washed out alcoholic boxer and his sickly wife. The father beat Trina and her siblings, and also sexually abused them. Trina was also traumatized by the abuse and then her mother’s death so she ran away to live on the streets. In 1976 she and her friend went into a house to visit two young boys. There were no lights so she used matches, which started a fire in which the boys died. This traumatized her and her inept lawyer did nothing to help her, especially stopping Pennsylvania from trying her as an adult, and having her declared incompetent to stand trial. Her friend got off for testifying against her. The judge could not take Trina’s age, mental condition, poverty and abuse into account since it was considered second degree murder, despite the lack of intent to kill. Because of that, she was sentenced to life without parole. At 16 she was sent off to an adult prison for women. Where she was raped and impregnated by a guard. Over the years she became more mentally disabled and she summered spasms. Trina is one of several hundred people in Pennsylvania who were sentenced to life sentences when they were teens or adolescents when they did wrong. The next was Ian Manual of Tampa FL. In 1990 Ian attempted to rob a couple at a restaurant and fired a shot at Debbie Baigre and wounded her. She survived but Ian and his two friends with him were tried as adults for armed robbery and attempted homicide. Ian was encouraged to plead guilty but the lawyer did not realize that two charges were punishable by life without parole. That is what Ian got. He was sent to Apalachee Prison for adult men and soon was in solitary confinement for his own safety. In 1992 he reached out to Debbie who had forgiven him and even tried to have his sentence reduced, but to no avail. Florida in 2010 had over 100 people sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses committed as young teens. All of them are black or Latino. The third teen was Antonio Nuñez of Los Angeles CA. Antonio was beaten by his father regularly and his mother neglected him. In 1999 he was shot and wounded while riding his bicycle and his brother who came to his side was shot & killed. When he got out of the hospital he was sent to live with relatives in Las Vegas and tried to recover from his brother’s death. But California authorities ordered him back because he was on probation as a ward of the court for a prior offense. While back in Los Angeles he was got a gun for defense but was sent to a juvenile camp. When he got home he was at a party with some older guys who tried to fake a kidnapping to get ransom money. When they were heading to the Orange County pickup point an undercover police car followed them and Antonio fired at it. Their car crashed. Antonio was charged with attempted murder and aggravated kidnapping. He may have not been tried as an adult for the attempted murder, but kidnapping has no age minimum in California. He was sent to prison for life without parole. Bryan also talked about a child executed in South Carolina in 1945 for a murder, based on flimsy evidence and the fact that he was black and the victims were white. His name was George Stinney Jr. George and his sisters had seen the white victims earlier in the day and the authorities immediately said that he killed them. The sheriff said that George confessed (he did not). His family fled for their lives and at his trial, George was convicted on the sheriff’s testimony on an alleged confession. There was no appeal because his family could not afford a lawyer. Despite appeals, George was sentenced to death and executed in 1945. However by the 2010’s George was exonerated. Bryan goes on to say that the way that blacks were convicted in the South 50+ years ago to keep them in control has continued to the 1980’s against to children. Criminologists said that there was a wave of super predators with whom the justice would not be able to handle. Children have been transferred to the adult prison system. But by 2001 it was proven that the super predator theory was wrong and there was no evidence that by the 1990’s that there were more youthful offenders that in the 1970-‘s or earlier. But it was too late for Trina, Antonio and Ian, and certainly for George. Bryan did meet the three former teen offenders and were broken by years of confinement. Most youngsters were traumatized by the justice system. Bryan was going to try and get Trina’s sentence reduced, and also arranged to get her to see her son. He also went to Central California to see Antonio. He had a desire to learn and read. Bryan also went to Florida to visit Ian. He had managed to educate himself and wrote numerous poems. Bryan decided to publish a report to draw attention to the plight of children here in the US who were sentenced to die in prison. He tried to photograph them to give them human faces. Florida allowed him to do that and he got to photograph Ian, who later wrote him a letter thanking him for the photo session.
Chapter 9 is titled I’m Here from a quote that an elderly lady said to Bryan in the courthouse. She was a veteran of the 1965 Selma March. Bryan got the date for Walter’s hearing. The team got new evidence to exculpate Walter, and it was documentary. The DA got new assistant and the case got a new judge (Thomas Morton Jr.) who gave Bryan 3 days to make his case. They started with Ralph Myers, speaking to him first. At the courthouse Bryan told the judge that the verdict was based on Ralph’s testimony and that there was no evidence to convict Walter. Bryan questioned Ralph and he admitted that he did not see Walter on the day of the murder. He also admitted that his testimony was not true. Bryan then had to rebut the testimonies of Bill Hooks and Joe Hightower. He did that by calling Clay Kast and he said that he converted Walter’s truck to a low rider 6 months after the crime. Hooks & Hightower said they saw a low rider at the scene of the killing. Police Officer Woodrow Ikner was called and said that the murder victim (Ronda Morrison) was shot int eh back and moved. Ikner was asked by the prosecutor Pearson to testify that Morrison’s body was dragged. He knew that it was false and told the prosecutors that he would not lie (and was fired from the police force for that and that shook the judge). Bryan was able to lay out all of the evidence that Walter was innocent in this evidentiary hearing. The next day the team arrived at the courthouse to visit Walter, but the judge had the courthouse half packed with white viewers and Bryan had to argue his way in. He found a metal detector, an officer with a police dog, and the benches where Walter’s supporters sat were now occupied by white viewers. Soon the black ministers selected which black viewers can go inside, including Mrs. Williams, the lady who was at the 1965 Selma March. The police dog spooked her completely with bad flashbacks. Mental health specialists were called in to talk about Ralph. His confessions were bogus and forced by the police. In the evening Bryan spoke with Mrs. Williams and she told him about her experience at Selma in 1965. The next day Bryan arrived early. Mrs. Williams made up her mind not to be scared of the police dog. She told Bryan, “I’m here” when she arrived. On the last day of the hearings things went well. Witnesses said that Ralph was pressured to give false testimony against Walter. He had told the police that he did not know about the Morrison murder or about Walter. They also exposed the lies that Pearson told the court. Ralph gave 6 additional statements to the police that he had no information about Walter committing the Morrison murder. The statements were favorable to Walter. Bryan called on Walter’s original trial lawyers Boynton and Chestnut) to testify how much more they could have done if the state had turned over the evidence that it suppressed. After the team finished their presentation the state did not put on a rebuttal case. The judge told the parties to submit written briefs arguing what ruling he should make. The court gave them time to explain the significance of all the evidence. And the judge adjourned the proceedings. After that the team heads to the beach on the Gulf of Mexico.
I read chapter 10 (titled Mitigations) in which Bryan talks about the number of mentally ill people who are incarcerated and how that is causing problems for the prisoners as well as the prison staff. He described two mentally ill prisoners – George Daniel and Avery Jenkins who were sentenced to death but he worked to have them taken off death row and placed in mental institutions. Avery was orphaned at one and faced abuse in foster care. When Bryan goes to the prison where Avery is being held, he faces harassment from a neo-confederate prison guard, who eventually changes his attitude after he learned about Avery’s life in foster care, since he too was in foster care. Avery was also taken off of death row and put into a mental institution.
Chapter 11 is titled I’ll Fly Away. Bryan and his team were receiving bomb threats. In May 1992, the judge from Baldwin County (John Norton) said that Ralph Myers did not perjure himself in the Walter McMillian trial and would not accept any more evidence. There would be no relief. Bryan had to approach the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. He had been successful in reversing over a dozen death penalty cases between 1990 and 1992. Michael left to go to California and was replaced by Bernard Harcourt. The threats that Bryan received made him worry about what would happen to Walter if he were released. They had to prove that Walter did not do it. The media still insists that Walter is guilty and a dangerous man, even publishing false stories about him, including that he was a drug dealer. The chapter also says that the state of Alabama had used libel as a means to stop civil rights people and also the media, goes back to Governor Patterson, until the Sullivan vs. the New York Times Supreme Court case of the 1960’s. The South was still anti media even in the 1990’s. Bryan filed the appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeals. 60 Minutes also came to Monroeville, to the annoyance of the Monroe Journal. And local officials quickly tried to discredit the story. Chapman was worried that the evidence against Walter may not be reliable. Alabama Bureau of Investigations agents Tom Taylor and Greg Cole doubted that Walter was guilty. Why would a drug kingpin be working at logging and live in a trailer? They said that Hooks was lying. Ronda Morrison was receiving menacing calls before she was killed. A white man was seen by the cleaners. Ken Nunnelly took over the appeal. Bryan told the court that Walter’s rights had been violated. Bryan said that Walter’s family should hope. On February 23rd, the appeals court invalidated Walter’s conviction and death sentence. It did not conclude that he was innocent and must be released, though. He would get a new trial. Walter’s wife said that he should not come back to Monroeville if released after what he went through. There was a new judge, Pamela Baschab, who replaced Norton. At the new hearing Bryan gave a history of the case than told the court that the state and the defendant were moving to dismiss all charges. Walter was now a free man. After Walter went with Bryan to the prison to collect his possessions, when then got to the car to leave, Walter said, “I feel like a bird. I feel like a bird”. This would be the basis for the title.
The title of chapter 12 is Mother, Mother, as it is about women imprisoned for crimes against children. The chapter opens with the story of Marsha Colbey. After Hurricane Ivan devastated coastal Alabama. Marsha and her husband with their 6 children were placed into a FEMA trailer. Then Marsha became with baby #7. She and her husband were poor but gave their children everything from their hearts. One evening Marsha decided to take a bath in her old trailer and while in the tub she went into labor. She delivered a stillborn son she named Timothy. Since it was dead, she buried it on her property. A nosy neighbor, Debbie Cook, asked one of her coworkers to call the police and they came to Marsha’s home. Marsha showed the police officer her son’s grave. Soon law enforcement exhumed Timothy’s body and a state pathologist named Kathleen Enstice said that the baby was born alive and that Marsha murdered him. Marsha went to trial for murder and the false evidence was used against her. Two medical doctors said that Enstice’s testimony was not correct and that one of the doctors could not declare a live birth. Marsha insisted in numerous interrogations that the baby was stillborn. But the press called her a dangerous mother. The chapter also talked about the Yates and Smith child killings. There are distortions and bias. We have rather high infant mortality for a developed nation. There was another stillborn case in Alabama at the same time as Marsha’s, involving a woman named Bridget Lee. Pathologists examined this baby and said that neonatal pneumonia killed the baby. But the state pathologist said that Bridget killed the baby because it was conceived from an extra marital affair. But the pathologist was discredited and Bridget was exonerated. There were other infanticide cases in Alabama, one which involved a Black lady who was never even pregnant thanks to having her tubes tied. She was coerced into pleading guilty. Bryan and his staff had her released since they proved that the lady could not have been pregnant in the first place. Alabama also criminalized other bad parenting situations like dangerous environments. Since it was broadly defined, a home or community where drugs are common would qualify. The Alabama Supreme Court also extended it to the uterus and the fetus. If a woman used drugs while pregnant, she could be sent to prison. Naturally, the hysteria over the bad mothers made it difficult for Marsha to get a fair trial. There were many biases and presumptions in the trial. She was pronounced guilty and sent to the overcrowded women’s prison. Many of the women are there for non-violent crimes like drug or property offenses or passing a few bad checks. The majority have minor children. In 1996 Congress passed welfare legislation that authorized states to deny welfare and public housing to those convicted of drug crimes. And for the women at the Tutwiler Prison, they were often raped by the male guards, and spied on them in the showers and bathrooms. Before Bryan got Marsha released from Tutwiler, he managed to get another woman released from a life without parole sentence because of a drug charge. Bryan soon worked on Marsha’s appeal and won her release. In 2013 she was a guest at a benefit dinner in New York City.
Recovery is the title of chapter 13. Walter’s 1993 release was cover by The New York Times. Bryan wanted to get the people of Monroe County to realize that Walter was released because he was innocent. The two men went to several legal conferences to talk about Walter’s experience and about the death penalty. He moved to Florida for several months. He then resettled in Monroe County AL again, and went back to logging. He also planned to file a civil suit for a wrongful conviction. Bryan tried to get Walter compensation for his wrongful conviction and incarceration. But no go. Alabama was one of the states that did not compensate for that. But people thought that he did get money and tried to leech off of him. People who convicted Walter acknowledged that he was innocent but would not take any responsibility for his conviction. Walter’s case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Prosecutors were protected from liability by immunity Bryan took the case to the Supreme Court by Monroe County and Sherriff Tate’s misconduct. Tate was not an employee of the county even though he is paid by it. The Court ruled that Tate was a state employee. Walter then went back to logging until he was injured by a log and then started a junked car business. Bryan and Walter went to Chicago in 1998 for a conference where exonerated former death row inmates were to gather. It was energizing for Walter. He also came to New York City to talk to Bryan’s NYU Law School students. Walter was just happy to be free and not angry or bitter. He said his faith helped him through the ordeal. Meanwhile his junkyard business was not doing that well. In 1994 the conservative majority in Congress eliminated federal aid for death row inmates. Bryan was awarded the Olaf Plame International Human Rights Award by Sweden and went to Stockholm to receive it. Walter did not want to go too. A Swedish television crew went to Alabama to interview Walter. He broke down and cried when interviewed.
Chapter 14 is titled Cruel and Unusual. It tells about 13 year old Joe Sullivan was indicted for robbery and sexual assault in Pensacola. He was with two other boys who got off relatively easy. Joe was tired as an adult and sentenced to prison where he was raped and beaten. But there was no positive proof that he committed the sexual assault. Bryan later visited Joe at a new correction facility in the Florida Panhandle and saw that he was in a wheelchair that was stuck inside a cage. The guards got him out so he and Bryan could talk. Bryan was going to work to get Joe either released or have his sentenced reduced. But the victim and one of the accomplished had both died in the years since the crime was committed. Joe described how the number of prisons has increased since the 1990’s, partly due to the profit motive. Also, poorer people are sentenced to long prison terms for relatively minor offenses. Ned Miller was sentenced to life without parole as an adolescent after he and a friend got into a fight with an older man and burned his trailer down and he died. Bryan also worked on the adolescents that were mentioned in chapter 8 (Trina Garnett, Ian Manuel, and Antonio Nuñez) to get their sentences reduced or get them freed. Bryan also discussed how adolescents are still not developed mentally and are easily influenced. Joe’s case was reviewed by the U. S. Supreme Court in 2009. He hoped that the Court would provide to relief to children sentenced to die in prison especially for non-homicide offenses. The Court reviewed Joe’s case and another Florida case – Terrance Graham from Jacksonville FL who was arrested for trying to rob a store while on probation. Psychology organizations supported Bryan and cited former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson who was a juvenile delinquent before straightening out. Bryan also cited child soldiers from African nations who are released from the armies and come to the US and do quite well as university students. Briefs were soon filed for Joe and for Terrance. Bryan said that life sentenced for meant for adults and not adolescents. It was cruel and unusual.
Chapter 15 (Broken) opens with an Irish film crew coming to Alabama to make a documentary about the death penalty. The film featured Walter, a man named Bo Cochran who was released after 20 years on death row, and Robert Tarver who was executed because the defense made a poor objection – and the jury was racially biased. Walter was soon suffering from dementia and was no longer to run his business. He ended up in a nursing home in Montgomery Bryan talked about the rate of executions in the US during the 2000’s. The Equal Justice Initiative was working to stop the executions of several death row inmates around the country. He argued a case in 2004 before the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of certain methods of execution. He was walking about lethal injection. Inmate David Nelson had compromised veins due to drug addiction. The Court said he could and David was not executed. He did die of natural causes a few years later. Bryan also talked about Jimmy Dill who was executed in 2009 for the death of a man whom he wounded in a drug deal but died nine months later due to poor medical care. The state of Alabama would not let him appeal, nor grant a stay of execution. Poor legal help had basically screwed him over during his trial. Jimmy was mentally challenged but the state would not consider it. Bryan talked about we are hurt and how we hurt others. He cited Thomas Merton in that we are shattered by our choices or by things we never should have chosen. We have a choice to embrace our humaneness and embrace our broken natures and the compassion that remains or deny it and therefore our humanity. Bryan talks about how we have become so vengeful that we throw away the disabled and children and imprison thee the sick and weak. Throwing the broken away keeps them broken, and us as well, Embracing our brokenness creates a need for mercy and a desire to show mercy. And you learn that humanity resides in each of us. Bryan then talked about how he had the chance to meet Rosa Parks, Johnnie Carr (who worked with Martin Luther King on the Montgomery Bus Boycott) and Virginia Durr (the wife of a prominent attorney). He admitted that when he was invited to meet them, he mainly just listened to what they said and never really did speak. He ended the chapter by saying that while we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness we are also in a web of healing and mercy. He said that the power of just mercy is that it belongs to the underserving. It is when it is least expected that it becomes the most potent. It can break the cycle of victimization, victimhood, retribution and suffering. It can heal psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power and incarceration.
Chapter 16 (The Stonecatcher’s Song of Sorrow) tells about Bryan’s attempts and successes to get life without parole sentences for teens and relates the four hurdles Black Americans had to overcome: slavery, Jim Crow, KKK type terror, and convict labor. Bryan talked about specific cases like Philip Shaw, Demarious Banyard and Dante Evans in states like Missouri and Mississippi. There were death row convicts whose convictions were overturned, and he got reduced sentences for Antonio Nuñez and Joe Sullivan. He also talked about getting two New Orleans men (Joshua Carter and Robert Caston) released from Angola for non-homicide crimes committed when they were teens. While at their hearings Bryan meets and elderly lady whose grandson was murdered and their killers sent away for life. She told him that you never fully recover but do carry on. During Walter’s hearings some African Americans’ support for him was muted because of his extra marital affairs and that he was not active in the church. Bryan went to the church meeting and the Gospel story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery came up. He told us that today self-righteous, fear and anger have caused us throw stones at others instead of forgiving or showing compassions. He said that we have to catch the stones (hence the chapter’s title).
The Epilogue tells us that Walter McMillian passed away on September 11, 2013, He had been further disabled in his last years but was glad to be able to die on God’s schedule and not the state’s. Bryan said that just (fair) mercy made it possible for Walter to forgive and move on. Walter taught Bryan that we have to reform a system of criminal justice that treats rich people better than those not as rich. And that fear and anger are a threat to justice. He told the congregation at Walter’s funeral that the question is do we deserve to kill. He also told the congregation that mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Walter did forgive the people who condemned him falsely. It was just mercy that allowed him to recover a life worth celebrating – a life that rediscovered love and freedom and able to die on God’s schedule.