The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1865, reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." While slavery was formally declared ended, history shows us that forced labor and repressive bonds continued to haunt our nation for a century and beyond. Today still, the criminal justice system affects poor and black people disproportionately. As a young law student in 1983, Bryan Stevenson took an internship in Georgia, experiencing death row through the eyes of a man facing execution. As he came to understand the realities of detention and how often marginalized individuals – young people in particular -- were swept into an unrelenting process of incarceration, Stevenson focused his efforts on representing those wrongfully imprisoned. He advocated prohibiting sentencing children less than 18 years of age to death or to life in prison without parole, winning landmark cases before the U. S. Supreme Court. Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice and Mercy, Adapted for Young Adults, describes the struggles he faced, as a lawyer and a compassionate person, while defending prisoners who were clearly disadvantaged within a confusing and sometimes duplicitous system. The narrative traces the cases of several people, such as the unjustly convicted Walter McMillian, from Stevenson’s initial encounter to their resolutions. In the process, readers travel the pathways of arrest, detention, conviction and appeals; local, state and regional law enforcement practices; prison life and parole; and the impact on families and communities when cases can take years and years to be addressed adequately. Stevenson conveys, directly yet with respectful tenderness, the values of justice and equity that reside at the heart of a democratic society. Believing that “all of us can do better for one another,” Stevenson founded in Montgomery, Alabama, the Equal Justice Initiative and, in recent years, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, displaying the history of slavery and racism in the United States, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, honoring the names of the thousands of victims of lynching between 1877 and 1950. Ages 12 and up.
