Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson:
Notes:
US has highest rate of incarceration in the world. 1/15 people born in the US in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison. US is only country in the world that condemns children to life in prison without parole.
Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to $80 billion today.
Loving v. Virginia (1967): struck down anti-miscegenation (interracial marriage) statutes.
Attica prison riots (1970s): prisoners took over Attica prison in New York after years of abuses in the form of “sweatboxes” (casket-size holes, extreme heat for days or weeks) and “hitching posts”—arms fastened above heads, forced to stand for hours. Hitching posts weren’t declared unconstitutional until 2002.
Batson v. Kentucky (1986): prosecutors could be challenged more directly about using preemptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner.
Jeremiad: a long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in verse, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall.
Mrs. Jennings took in a teenage boy released from incarceration after many years. She had high hopes for him. Bryan Stevenson cautioned against expecting too much from the boy after his release. Mrs. Jennings: “We’ve all been through a lot, Bryan, all of us. I know that some have been through more than others. But if we don’t expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed.”
Victim rights (impact statements, input during trial, sentencing, etc.) didn’t really come along until the 1980s. Until then, crimes, even those involving specific victims, were mostly seen as crimes against society in general. (I.e., “The People” v. Defendant.)
Over 50% of prison and jail inmates in the US have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly 5x greater than that of the general adult population. There are 3x the number of seriously mentally ill individuals in jail or prison than in hospitals.
New York Times v. Sullivan (1964): In 1960, the NYT ran an ad attempting to raise money to defend MLK from perjury charges in AL. AL officials went on the offensive by suing the NYT. SCOTUS changed the standard for defamation and libel by requiring plaintiffs to prove malice—actual knowledge that a statement is false.
In 1996, Congress passed welfare reform legislation that authorized states to ban people with drug convictions from public benefits and welfare. Bad for ex-cons, worse for their children.
Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the US every ten days.
8th Amendment: a punishment must offend “evolving standards of decency” and also be “unusual” to violate the 8A.
2011: first time in 40 years that prison population did not increase.
“Convict leasing:” late 1800s, convict former slaves of nonsensical offenses so that freed men, women, and children could be “leased” to businesses and effectively forced back into slave labor.
Quotes:
“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”
“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”
“The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.”
“Walter’s case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?
“The work continues.”