Final Thoughts (Chapter 14 - End of book)

Welcome back!


This is going to be my final blog post. It has been nice to be able to communicate my thoughts through writing and in a less stressful way, as I don't have as much pressure on me as I do when I am writing an English essay!

Anyways, I have finally finished Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson. It was a good read and I highly recommend it for anyone that is looking for a good non-fiction book.

As I was reading this book and was introduced to the thousands of people whose lives have been forever changed by the criminal justice system, I began to think about death penalties and life sentences. I began to wonder... what makes someone so deserving of a death penalty or a life sentence?

Is anyone?

Should people be easily assigning sentences as harsh as the death penalty or life sentence without parole?

Where can we draw the line?

Throughout this book, I learned of so many stories that could have ended differently if it weren't for the intervention of being wrongly convicted or given sentences that were to the point of no hope.

First, there was Walter McMillian. An ordinary black man who grew up on the outskirts of Monroeville,
Alabama and owned a pulpwood business. He was surrounded by his family and loved them all dearly.
Life was good for him, until one day, it wasn’t.

He was accused of murdering of Rhonda Morrison, a girl he never knew, never saw, and never talked to. 

"But there was no evidence against McMillian. No evidence except that he was an African American man involved in adulterous interracial affair, which meant he was reckless and possibly dangerous, even if he had no prior criminal history and a good reputation." (p. 34)"

He spent six years on death row as an innocent man. He was able to return after being released, but he was never able to go back home to his family.

Then there was Herbert Richardson. A boy who struggled with an unstable home environment as he grew
up. A Vietnam War veteran who never received the appropriate care for his PTSD. A confused, battered
man who was only trying to prove his love and protection to his girlfriend. He wasn’t right in his head,
he didn’t know what he was doing. He planted a bomb on her front porch only so it could go off and he
could run in and save her. He didn’t intend for his girlfriend’s niece to pick it up and shake it…

Charlie, the young fourteen-year-old boy. He only tried to protect his mother. She was hurt, she had been
punched by his drunk father, and had hit her head on the kitchen counter as she fell to the floor. Charlie
was scared not only for himself but for his mother as well. He did what any other child might do, he
stood up for himself and her. He shot his father in the head. 

We then met Avery Jenkins, the man who just wanted a chocolate milkshake. He suffered from the loss
of both his parents by the age of one. He traveled around 19 different foster homes by the time he turned
eight. His traumatic upbringing caused him to develop schizophrenia. One day his current foster parent
decided they didn’t want to deal with him and his issues so she tied him to a tree in the middle of the
woods. He was there for three days. The older became the more he struggled with his mental illness. One
day he walked into an old man’s home and stabbed him to death. After that incident, he was arrested and
placed on death row.

In the last few chapters that I read this past week, one more story that stood out to me was Joe Sullivan’s.
As a thirteen-year-old, he was convinced by two older boys to break into an empty house in Florida with
them. One of the older boys took some money and jewelry, and then they all left. Later that afternoon, an
older white woman by the name of Ms. Bruner, the woman who lived in that house, was sexually
assaulted in her home. Ms. Bruner was never able to see her attacker clearly but described him as
“quite a dark colored boy with curly type hair” (p. 256). 

Joe would have been fine if the three boys hadn’t have been caught on their travel away from the house
they had broken into. One of the older boys had jewelry on him and the other with an extensive sexual
assault criminal background claimed that Joe was the boy who assaulted the old woman. 

And so Joe, a thirteen-year-old boy, was tried in an adult court for sexual battery. There was no argument
whether or not he should be tried as a juvenile or as an adult, he was just taken straight to the adult court.
The only evidence they found supporting this was a partial handprint in the bedroom. There was seminal
fluid and blood that the police found, but instead of using it as evidence they quickly destroyed it. 

Joe was found ‘guilty’ and sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. 

At the time of his arrest, Joe was struggling with severe mental disabilities. He had the reading level of a
first-grader, and his father had physically abused him for years. He had been put into the system and was
tossed around foster homes like the others.

Joe’s experience in prison was horrifying. Unlike Charlie, Joe was forced to stay in an adult prison. There,
he was sexually assaulted multiple times. He tried to commit suicide. He then developed multiple sclerosis
and was put in a wheelchair. He was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that the doctors hypothesized
was triggered by the years of trauma that he had experienced in prison. At the time of his diagnosis, he
was only 31.

When Stevenson visits Joe, he spends a long time discussing the cage that Joe is kept in.

“There were three six-foot-tall metal cages in the corner that couldn’t have been more than four feet by four feet… The cage was so small that when they tried to remove Joe’s wheelchair, the spokes on the chair got caught on the cage, and they couldn’t budge it… As the staff became more frustrated by their inability to get Joe out of the cage, there was talk of using pliers and hacksaws, of putting the cage on its side with Joe in it. Someone suggested trying to lift Joe from his wheelchair to remove him without the chair, but both Joe and the chair were packed so tightly into the cage that no one could get in to move him.” (p. 261-262)

This whole scene seems too bizarre to be true. Are people really locking a man in a wheelchair into a cage for transportation? If Joe was such a struggle to get out that they had to consider using a hacksaw then wouldn’t it be better to just let him go without the cage? Why was a man in a wheelchair even in a cage?

Because ‘lifers’ are required to be transported with “higher security protocols” (p. 262) And, as a thirteen-year-old, Joe Sullivan was given the life sentence.

When Stevenson finally sits down to talk with Joe Sullivan during his legal visit it quickly becomes
evident that the man is seriously mentally delayed as well as physically battered. He is 31, yet is confined
to a wheelchair and can barely move. During the legal visit, Joe informs Stevenson that he has prepared
a list of questions. He is very, very excited to ask the questions so Stevenson decides to halt the meeting
and let him ask them.

“‘Joe, I’ll be happy to answer your questions. Fire away.’

He read with some difficulty.

‘Do you have children?’ He looked up at me expectantly. 

‘No, I don’t have children. I have nieces and nephews, though.’

‘What is your favorite color?’ He once again smiled eagerly.

I chuckled, since I don’t have a favorite color. But I wanted to respond to him. 

‘Brown’

‘Okay, my last question is the most important.’ He looked up at me briefly with big eyes and smiled. He then became serious and read his question.

‘Who is your favorite cartoon character?’” (p. 263)

Clearly, Joe Sullivan is extremely developmentally delayed. I was surprised to read his questions. There’s something so childish about the way his eyes became all big and excited. It was also saddening to hear that he had prepared a list of questions, and Stevenson and his readers were expecting them to be legal related, yet they turned out to be simple questions a young child would ask a relative when they came to visit or someone when they first met them.

Joe’s story reminds me of Avery Jenkins and his chocolate milkshake. Joe is overjoyed by being able to ask Stevenson what his favorite cartoon character is. It means the world to him. Avery Jenkins was overjoyed by the idea of getting a chocolate milkshake, of finally being able to have one. 

Why are those men locked up? Why are guards going through the hassle of locking Joe into a tiny cage when they all know deep down that the man was harmless and it wasn’t needed? Why didn’t anyone speak up?

There are many more stories that were told in the pages of this book, and millions more that have been left untold.

Tell me, do those men seem like they need to be locked up for life? Do they seem ‘dangerous’ enough to
be tied down to a chair and shocked with electric waves until they no longer have a pulse?

Where do we draw the line?

One thing that is for sure is that children under the age of 18 should not be tried and treated as adults.
Children should also not be held until that age and then tried as an adult. 

No child should ever be given a life sentence. They have so many years to live, so much more
developmental years to live. They have the most hope for change.

Yes, some of those men and children did bad things. Not all of them were innocent. But even for those
cases, I find myself wondering if there should be a system that can re-evaluate inmates after a period of
time. As we saw in Just Mercy, people can change. Stevenson admits this at the end of his book.

“For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger… We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.” (p. 288-289)

Everyone has problems. Everyone makes mistakes, no matter how minor or severe. Brian Stevenson admits that he isn’t perfect, nobody is.

Oftentimes, we learn from those mistakes, and we grow from them. 

People struggle with mental illnesses, as we see with Herbert and his PTSD, and Avery Jenkins and his schizophrenia.

Children are incarcerated at shockingly young ages and the traumatic experiences they are forced to endure end up harming them to the point of no return rather than helping them. 

Innocent people, like Walter McMillian, are accused of crimes that they had nothing to do with and they are sent away to prison and death row.

Child after child, man after man, woman after woman, people are convicted of crimes that they may or may not have committed, and the way the country deals with them is by sending them away to prison, or death. After that, they can forget about them, and it’s on to the next case. 

But aren’t people capable of change? If so, aren’t we able to do something about them and help them along the way as they make that change? And through that process, aren’t we able to reduce the number of lives that are taken away whether it be via death or via being confined to prison?

At the end of the book, Stevenson asks the question: “Do we deserve to kill?” 

My answer is, no, I don’t think humans deserve to kill. 

We can ban the death penalty. But that won’t be all. By giving people life sentences and sending them off to prison, we are sending them off and forgetting about them. In a way, it’s still sentencing them death.

So instead of doing so and never touching their cases again, can we give the prisoners who have worked hard to change and show evidence of hope a second chance? Can we revisit their cases and gain them a new trial?

My question is: should prisoners be given second chances?

Of course, when someone commits a crime, they have done something wrong. There should be repercussions. 

But we have to make sure that we are giving those repercussions to the right person, and we also have to make sure that along with the repercussions we are treating them for their mental illnesses and helping them with anything they struggle with.

Some may ask me, why do I think it’s a good idea to help a murderer become a better person?

Because by doing so it is doing something a human would do. Humans help humans. If I chose not to, I wouldn’t be any better than the murderer itself. 

Thank you for reading!

(Note: I do not know why the font keeps changing sizes and the spacing gaps get larger and smaller. I have tried to fix it multiple times but I think it is beyond my control now.)

WORKS CITED:

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau, 2014.