Just Mercy: Introduction Summary & Analysis

The book begins with Bryan Stevenson’s first-person account of a moment in the summer of 1983 when he was a third-year Harvard law student interning in Georgia. During his drive to a rural prison to meet a death-row inmate for the first time, Stevenson feels anxious because he has little knowledge of death penalty litigation and he is unsure of how to speak to a death row inmate.

Stevenson rewinds, describing his journey to this moment. He majors in philosophy and applies to a joint law school and public policy program, despite that he has no background in law, because he wants to fight economic and racial injustice. At Harvard, he finds the atmosphere too competitive and the academics too abstract, but when he takes a class on race and poverty litigation, “everything [comes] into focus.” The next summer, he goes to Georgia to intern for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC). On the plane, he meets the impassioned director, Steve Bright. At the SPDC, Stevenson finds an atmosphere of dedication and mutual support. After years of being outlawed, the death penalty has just been reinstated. The office receives calls daily from inmates scheduled to die without legal counsel. Stevenson is assigned to make a visit to one of these inmates to reassure him he won’t die in the next year.

At Jackson prison in Georgia, a hostile guard meets Stevenson. In the visitor center, the guards bring out Henry, a young black man with his hands and ankles shackled. Henry reminds Stevenson of his friends and relatives from home. Stevenson begins with several apologies until he stammers out the message that Henry won’t be executed in the next year. Henry takes Stevenson’s hand and expresses deep relief. They spend three hours talking and sharing life stories. The guard enters and warns Stevenson he has overstayed. The guard shackles Henry tightly and ignores Stevenson’s request to loosen the cuffs. Henry tells Stevenson not to worry, but to remember to visit again. Henry starts singing a beautiful church hymn that Stevenson recognizes: “Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” Stevenson leaves feeling deeply moved by Henry’s kindness, and overwhelmed with a new understanding of the meaning of hope and the human capacity for redemption.

After his summer at the SPDC, Stevenson returns to his last year at Harvard with a new sense of purpose. He studies everything he can about the death penalty and the relationship between the law and systems of power, poverty and racial inequality. He rewinds to describe his upbringing in a rural, racially segregated town in Delaware. There, the history of slavery asserted itself through the presence of white supremacist symbols and ideology. His parents both worked in low-paying jobs and they always struggled financially. Stevenson's grandmother was the daughter of slaves in Virginia, and she learned their sense of fear and caution. When Stevenson was a child, his grandmother often hugged him and said, “You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close.” Stevenson reflects that, while law school alienated him at first, “proximity to the condemned, to people unfairly judged” returned him to a sense of home.

Stevenson explains that the book’s purpose is to “get closer” to the issue of incarceration in the US. He describes the changes since the 1980’s that have resulted in an unjust and punitive criminal justice system. He cites the growing incarceration rate (which is disproportionately high for black males), the death penalty, harsh sentences for juvenile offenders and nonviolent crimes, and the criminalization of poverty, mental illness and drug addiction. He writes that the system fails at rehabilitation and instead uses labels like “felon” to permanently dehumanize the condemned. He describes the “collateral consequences” of incarceration on perpetuating inequality, such as the prevalence of false convictions and the huge increase in prison spending at the expense of other public social services.

Stevenson explains that he will focus on the story of Walter McMillian to illustrate the justice system’s tendency to tolerate unfairness and to “victimize” the condemned. He argues that, “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” and that by granting mercy, we can stop perpetuating the cycle of violence. He writes that we all need mercy because “we are all implicated when we allow others to be mistreated.”