Finding a Voice and Using It

On a cold, rainy Saturday in December, 2018, my family and I drove from Tyrone, Georgia to Montgomery, Alabama. It isn't a bad drive - straight down I 85 for a couple of hours. But it was raining. It was cold. It was the near the end of the semester and I had lots of papers to grade! The whole time driving I kept thinking "Wish I were home."

But we went there to visit the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the Lynching Memorial.(museumandmemorial.eji.org)  Both were sobering opportunities to see a side of our history that often gets overlooked. I remember thinking as we drove home, "Boy, am I glad I came."

Today, on an unusually warm Sunday afternoon in January, 2020, my family and I went and saw the movie Just Mercy. I will admit to thinking, "what a great afternoon for yard work!"The movie is based on a true story from the life of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a movement started to defend death-row inmates in Alabama. Stevenson grew up in Delaware and graduated from Eastern University in Philadelphia and then Harvard Law School. He passed the bar in Alabama and moved south to begin this project.


Christianity Today recently included a very informative interview with Stephenson in its weekly email. (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-web-only/just-mercy-film-bryan-stevenson.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=16244355&utm_content=691363128&utm_campaign=email) 

(If you read this article - make sure you click the links with all kinds of important information about the level of incarceration we accept in the United States as "normal.")


I sometimes semi-jokingly say if I were 38 and not 68 I'd quit my job and go to law school and find a way to get a job at EJI. Statistics suggest that for every nine people executed, one person has been exonerated.  But it isn't just the death penalty. Here's a convicting paragraph from the CT article cited above:

"The US not only has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, we also have more people locked up than any other country in the history of the world. We also have more jails and prisons than degree-granting colleges and universities. In some areas of the country, there are more people living behind bars than on college campuses. Native Americans, Africans, Hispanics, and Southeast Asians are all grossly overrepresented within our justice system. EJI found that for every nine people executed on death row, one is found innocent and released."

The staggering cost of this stampede - often led by politicians who have has their re-election strategy a "lock them up and throw the key away mentality" - is staggering. Check this out: "The Vera Institute of Justice released a study in 2012 that found the aggregate cost of prisons in 2010 in the 40 states that participated was $39 billion." 

It is hard to know what to do.  Or . . . "how do we find our voice and start using it?" I really can't afford to quit my job and go to law school, but I don't think that means there is nothing to do. While the movie no doubt took some liberty in telling the story, that the county sheriff and prosecuting attorney knew that Walter "Johnny D" McMillan was not the murderer they convicted him of being is not a matter of dispute. But the sheriff kept getting reelected up until very recently, even though the Alabama Supreme Court exposed the injustice that resulted in McMillan's conviction in the early 90s.

I've never been a "one-issue voter." But I'm confident that when the 2020 elections come along, I will carefully look at every person I vote for from state legislators, to U.S. Congressmen, to U.S. Senators, to presidential candidates, as well as all other other local officials. Can you really be "pro-life" and adopt a "lock them up, throw away the key" approach to which laws get passed? Can you really be "pro-life" if you wink at some of the common practices in our judicial systems - such as "threaten an exaggerated sentence and push for a lesser plea deal?" Am I really "pro-life" if I routinely vote for people who really are better described as "pro-birth" but actually not all that concerned about "life beyond the delivery room?"

Obviously I don't think that all law enforcement officials, all court officials, and all elected officials are blatantly unconcerned about justice. And clearly I don't think that no one in prison deserves to be in prison. But if one person is in prison who shouldn't be or one person on death row is executed who actually was wrongly convicted - then I think I have a responsibility to "find a voice and use it."