I wouldn’t describe myself as a voracious reader. When I do sit down with a good book, my preferred genre is non-fiction. I love to better understand the experiences of others and, every so often, a book comes along that profoundly changes me. In 2019, that book was Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Just Mercy tells the true story of Walter McMillian, a black man in Alabama who was falsely convicted of and sentenced to die for a murder he didn’t commit.
Warner Bros.
I grew up in a small town in upstate New York in the 1970s. As I read the book, I realized I was unaware of the level of racism that existed in our country. I credit my mom for this. Racism is learned behavior, it’s not a trait that any of us are born with. One of my earliest memories of my mom was the day I met a black boy in nursery school. I asked, “What is he?” My mom replied deliberately and sternly, “He’s just like you. His skin is just a different color than ours.” From that day forward, that became my worldview. We are all the same, regardless of color.
A Flawed Criminal Justice System
When I was sentenced to prison, I received the maximum sentence allowed. As a young single mother, I experienced the trauma that harsh sentences have on individuals and families, especially children. But through Walter McMillian’s story, I found that my situation, while unbelievably challenging, was nothing in comparison to the injustices endured by others. When reading Just Mercy, I was embarrassed by my own ignorance. It wasn’t just startling statistics—like 1 in 25 people sitting on death row are innocent—that shocked me. It was how they ended up there in the first place, how this has led to cycles of poverty and mass incarceration, and how racial disparities in sentencing have torn apart black families for generations. Just Mercy is the wake-up call America needs to fix our criminal justice system.
You can imagine my excitement when I heard Just Mercy was adapted into a feature film starring Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan. These two Hollywood heavy-hitters have already helped maximize interest in Stevenson’s story and will hopefully spark the action necessary to begin righting wrongs in our justice system. This powerful legal drama, which opened in theaters on January 10th, is an indictment of the inequalities in our criminal justice system and how a model built on punishment rather than redemption negatively impacts everyone. It teaches us that regardless of the crime someone commits, we all deserve the chance to be better than our worst mistake. Harsh sentences, of which the death penalty is the harshest, deny us that opportunity.
Everyone Deserves a Second Chance
Today, as Chief Social Responsibility Officer for Televerde—a sales and marketing company that hires, compensates, and trains incarcerated women for professional career positions—I see both the consequences of our imperfect justice system and the transformative power of second chances. For the one in four Americans that has a criminal background today, finding a job can be almost impossible. Second chance hiring rests on the belief that if someone is ready to turn their life around, they deserve the opportunity to do so. I’ve seen how employment can be the difference between becoming a success story and returning to crime, which is why I partner with advocates for criminal justice reform like Represent Justice.
Represent Justice is a campaign created to support the mission of Just Mercy and promote key messages of justice reform. In late-November, our teams came together to get to know one another, share our stories, and discuss how we could work together to drive national reform. We ended the day with a pre-screening of Just Mercy and agreed that if everyone saw the movie, it could have a profound impact on the world.
- Understand the problem. We’ve designed a justice system that values toughness over fairness. This has created not only a revolving prison door, but also a trend of wrongful convictions. At an estimated rate between 2% and 10%, our prison population of 2.3 million has between 46,000 and 230,000 innocent people. Our system isn’t perfect, we make mistakes. This is why we must not rush to judgment. We must lead with empathy and proceed within the letter of the law, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and background.
- End the stigma and disparity. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences. What’s more, Black Americans make up the majority of people wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. We need to eliminate the policies and racial biases that allow this to happen.
- Give hope. As of April 2019, 2,673 people were on death row. Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, 1,499 people have been executed. But here’s the thing: since 1973, 166 individuals have been exonerated while on death row in the United States. These numbers should give everyone pause. They actually scare me! There’s no question the death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. We can never right a wrongful execution. For this reason, we need to abolish it and restore hope for individuals and their families.
Humans have a propensity to wait until issues affect them personally before they get involved. It’s too late then. Too many individuals and their families suffer unjustly. We must be proactive. Even if you don’t know someone directly affected by our criminal justice system, you are impacted as a taxpayer and as a citizen of a country that knowingly fails to provide a fair and just system for all. This should make us all uncomfortable and inspire proactive action. Go see Just Mercy, get proximate. There is no greater gift than when we educate ourselves and pledge to build a better tomorrow.
