Bryan Stevenson: Fighting for Redemption

I’m serving a 30-year federal prison sentence for a low-level, nonviolent offense. In my twenties, I made misrepresentations to three high-net-worth investors, causing a combined loss of $106,000. I’ve been in federal prison for nearly 12 years. I’m 41. Moreover, I don’t spend my days bitter or in self-pity. Rather, I spend my days full of life, vitality, hope, joy—I am grateful for my life, and I greet each day with enthusiasm and treat it as a gift. I use the Bible’s practical wisdom and the supernatural joy that God gives me to sustain myself. But I also study, learn and write about extraordinary people in law who inspire me.

Like God’s Word and grace, they fuel me as I fight my legal battles as well as the legal battles of my fellow prisoners. 

Criminal justice superhero Brittany K. Barnett’s book really hit home with me. She’s a Texas girl. And aside from MiAngel Cody, she is my favorite.  (Nobody can top my girl, MiAngel Cody.) Before she was even an attorney, Brittany filed two detailed Clemency petitions for two people serving life without parole—she won both of them. The significance of that cannot be overstated. Her book needs to be a movie. In her book, A Knock at Midnight, Brittany talks about Bryan Stevenson. She says that Bryan taught her that to get someone out of prison, you must believe what you cannot see—you must believe that even though it looks impossible, that it will happen.

I wanted to know more about Bryan Stevenson. If he was a mentor to Brittany, he must be one heck of a person. This is what I learned.

Bryan Stevenson is a social justice activist and law professor at New York University School of Law. He boasts an awe-inspiring career that has focused on challenging the bias against marginalized people in the criminal justice system. 

After graduating from Harvard in 1985, Stevenson moved to Atlanta, joining the Southern Center for Human Rights as a full-time lawyer. He was appointed to oversee the Alabama Capital Representation Resource Center in Alabama, a death-penalty organization that, at the time, was funded by Congress.

Congress would eventually discontinue their funding for death-penalty defense, so Stevenson founded a non-profit called Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, as Alabama was the only state that did not offer legal assistance to those on death row. The state also happened to have the highest per capita rate of death penalty sentencing. Stevenson and his team guaranteed a defense of any person in Alabama sentenced to the death penalty.

Stevenson’s Activism Roots

Stevenson grew up in rural Milton, Delaware, in the ’60s and ’70s. Milton was a border area and more a part of the South than the North. Despite the fact the US Supreme Court had condemned segregation in public education in 1954, equality was slow to reach southern Delaware. Stevenson would spend his first year attending the “colored” elementary school. 

By the time he entered the second grade, his town’s schools were officially desegregated, though much racism still existed. For instance, black children and white children did not play together at recess, and black children and their parents were still expected to enter through back doors at the doctor or dentist offices. Many local pools and other community facilities remained “informally segregated.”

Stevenson’s father took the systemic racism in stride; his mother, on the other hand, called it out for what it was and actively fought against it. She brought her children up to understand their worth as human beings and made sure they did not allow others to mistreat them because of their skin color. 

While Stevenson’s mother instilled his fighting spirit, his understanding of lost souls seeking redemption can be traced back to his time spent at the African Methodist Episcopal church. There, churchgoers were continually praised for “standing up after having fallen down.”

“I believe each person in our society is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done,” Stevenson is often heard saying in interviews. “I believe if you tell a lie, you’re not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you’re not just a thief. And I believe even if you kill someone, you are not just a killer. There is a basic human dignity that deserves to be protected.”

To date, Stevenson’s EJI has helped to reverse the death sentences of more than 75 Alabama inmates over the last 20 years. And one of these men would become a focal point in the book Stevenson was about to write.

Just Mercy – A Story of Justice and Redemption

Though Stevenson’s EJI had already helped to save the lives of many innocent people over the years, he wanted to spread his message of redemption and his clarion call to end mass incarceration in this country. And so, he wrote a book called Just Mercy – A Story of Justice and Redemption.

Just Mercy is the story of Stevenson founding EJI and facing the nation’s highest death sentencing and execution rates with a small but passionate staff. One of EJI’s very first clients was a man named Walter McMillian. McMillian was a young black man who was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he did not commit. 

After poring over the evidence, Stevenson immediately realized the entire case against McMillian hinged entirely on the testimony of convicted felon Ralph Myers, who would eventually receive a much lighter sentence at his own upcoming trial in exchange for his testimony.

Stevenson quickly got to work, developing a battle plan for what would prove to be a formidable Goliath.

Stevenson asked prosecutor Tommy Chapman for assistance but was turned down immediately, with no explanation or without his notes even being reviewed. Stevenson then asked a friend of McMillian’s, a man named Darnell Houston, to testify that, at the time of the murder, Houston was elsewhere with a witness who had falsely corroborated Myers’ testimony. Of course, this bit of truth would absolutely obliterate the prosecution’s entire case. And the feds couldn’t have that.

Stevenson submitted Houston’s testimony, and soon after, police arrested Houston on charges of perjury. Though Stevenson was able to get those bogus charges dismissed, Houston had been effectively silenced and refused to testify in court. And speaking of intimidation, Stevenson himself was intimidated by not one but two sheriff deputies who removed him from his car at gunpoint and illegally searched the vehicle. When Stevenson asked the officers why he was pulled over, they refused to answer and eventually let him go.

Now, lesser attorneys may have given up at this point, but Stevenson’s mother raised a fighter. So he fought on, eventually approaching Myers himself, who admitted his original testimony was coerced. At the time of Myers’ questioning for his own crime, police discovered he feared being burned, and the cops used this knowledge and threatened to have Myers executed by electric chair if he didn’t cooperate.

Stevenson appealed to the local court to grant McMillian a retrial and convinced Myers to recant his testimony. But the judge refused to grant a retrial. Frustrated, Stevenson appeared on the television show 60 Minutes to rally public support in favor of McMillian and appealed to the Supreme Court of Alabama. The Supreme Court overturned the circuit judge’s decision and granted a retrial.

Stevenson was able to have the entire case dismissed eventually, and McMillian was finally reunited with his family.

This true story is the stuff of movies, and Hollywood came calling when Stevenson’s book was released. In 2019, the film version was made with Michael B. Jordan playing Stevenson and Jamie Foxx playing McMillian. 

Ending Mass Incarceration

Stevenson has seen a lot of horrible things during his career. Violence, intimidation, and blatant racism. He has comforted inmates he couldn’t free in their final moments and bore witness to their chilling execution.

But perhaps the worst situations he deals with are the children sentenced to death. To Stevenson, making sure kids don’t enter adult prisons should be a critical part of how this nation works toward ending mass incarceration.

“We’ve allowed our most vulnerable children to be thrown away, to be traumatized and to be locked up in these jails and prisons, and we’ve got to change this narrative that some children aren’t children,” Stevenson has said.

Stevenson cites the term “super-predator” used during the 1990s as an impetus for many states’ decisions to pass laws encouraging the use of excessive sentences for youth. Many of these laws included lowering the minimum age for trying children as adults.

Stevenson has fought hard to undo much of this damage. In 2012, he argued before the Court that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of murder violated the Eighth Amendment and completely ignored the fact that children have a profound potential for change. 

The court agreed, recognizing that children do, in fact, need extra attention and protection in the criminal justice system.

While this court win is a step in the right direction, Stevenson recognizes there is still much work to be done to end mass incarceration in general and protect kids from ridiculously extreme punishments.

“You know, some of the most amazing people are former offenders now doing extraordinary things. And I think one of the great challenges we have is how we recover from decades of prosecuting, accusing, punishing these whole communities instead of engaging them, employing them, inspiring them to use these talents and energies in constructive and productive ways.”

My Dream Team

Anyone who follows my blogs is familiar with my dream team, a team of remarkable people in the business of law who selflessly devote their lives to giving the hopeless new life. The list includes MiAngel Cody, Brittany K. Barnett, Mark Osler, Rachel Barkow, Amber Baylor, Jessica Jackson, Amy Povah, Kim Kardashian, and Bryan Stevenson. 

Like the rest of them, Bryan is a true hero.