By Bryan Stevenson
Bryan is an attorney who has devoted his life to helping people of color, the poor, and children who are caught up in the justice (injustice) system. This book pissed me off at times knowing that white, privileged people took advantage of their privilege and biases, and locked up innocent people many, many times. Too often, these privileged white people were judges and police officers. It makes me angry just typing this.
Attorney Stevenson created the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery Alabama whose mission initially was representing people on death row whose trials were flawed and at times, totally dishonest. Note: At the time of this book in 2014 there were 152 people who were sentenced to death who ultimately were deemed innocent. With that many problems, we should not be killing anyone anymore, ever again.
EJI also took on the challenge of representing children who have been imprisoned for life. Yes, as young as 13 and 14 years old! Many times, non-homicidal convictions. These young teens are just beginning to mature and are typically a few years away from being able to make adult decisions. This age group, especially males, loves risk-taking and adventure, and at times, yes they do illegal things. I did too at that age. But if I had been locked up with adults, my life would have been lost. And the trauma of being a 13-year-old in prison with adults was horrible. In nearly every case he shared with us, these kids were sexually abused numerous times. It is disgusting what our criminal justice (injustice) system does.
Death row should be stopped. If they have found 152 innocent people by 2014, how many others are there? People need to be held accountable for their actions, I get it. But it needs to be fairly done with hope for the people to recover and possibly live their lives. I am sure some people should be locked up for life, but not children. Because of the work of EJI, they got the Supreme Court to agree that children should be tried as children and given a chance. But it took years to get this done.
Everyone should read this book to understand how the system has worked for years.
If you want to learn more about working with Justice-Involved clients, check out the EJI.org website and consider taking this seminar, Career Readiness for Justice-Involved Citizens taught by Dr. Bret Anderson.
