Criminal - Just Mercy

Episode Date: June 17, 2016

As a law student, Bryan Stevenson was sent to a maximum security prison to meet a man on death row. The man told Stevenson he'd never met an African-American lawyer, and the two of them talked for hours. It was a day that changed Stevenson's life. He's spent the last 30 years working to get people off of death row, but has also spent the final hours with men he could not save from execution. He argues that each of us is deserving of mercy. Learn more about Bryan Stevenson in his book, Just Mercy. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hi, it's Phoebe. We've wanted to sit down with Bryan Stevenson for a long time.

He's been working with inmates on death row for 30 years and has seen the side of the criminal justice system few of us can. Doing this show for the past couple of years, we've had a lot of time to think about many of the issues he deals with every day. So today, maybe something a little different. The interview I had with him a couple of weeks ago. Here's the show. You know, there's no humane way to kill a fully healthy human being, someone who is not physically ill, without trauma, without suffering. It's not just the method of execution. I've been with people in the hours before an execution, and it can only be described as surreal. The first time Bryan Stevenson met someone on death row, he was a Harvard Law student.

He'd been struggling in law school. He says he didn't really like Harvard, and he didn't even know if he liked the idea of being a lawyer. But then he got an internship with a group called the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, and they sent him, all by himself, to a maximum security prison outside of Atlanta to deliver a message to an inmate. And they said, just explain to him that he's not at risk of execution any time in the next year. And I was so convinced that he would be disappointed to meet someone

who was just a law student. I tried to rehearse carefully what I would say. But when I got to death row and I was back in that visitation room, I was so overwhelmed. And they kept me back there a while. And when they finally opened the door, there stood the first condemned prisoner I'd ever seen. And my image of him was shaped by the chains he was wearing. He had handcuffs on his wrists, a chain around his waist, shackles on his ankles. And it took them almost 15 minutes to unchain him. And by the time he walked in, I was so overwhelmed. I just started apologizing. I said, I'm so sorry. I'm just a law student. I don't know anything about law student. I don't know anything about

criminal procedure. I don't know anything about the death penalty. I don't know anything about civil procedure, appellate procedure. But they did send me down here to tell you that you're not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And as soon as I said that, the man said, wait, wait, wait, say that again. I said, you're not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And the man said, wait, wait, say that again. And I said, you're not at risk of execution any time in the next year. And the man said, wait, wait, say that again. And I said, you're not at risk of execution any time in the next year. And that man grabbed my hand and he said, thank you, thank you, thank you. He said, you're the first person I've met in the two years that I've been on death row

who's not a death row prisoner or a death row guard. He said, I've been talking to my wife and my kids over the phone, but I haven't let them come and visit because I was afraid I'd have an execution date. He said, now because of you, I'm going to see my wife, I'm going to see my kids. And I couldn't believe how even in my ignorance that being proximate could have an impact on the quality of someone's life. And we started talking, this man and me, and I was the first person of color who was part of a legal team that he had met. He knew I was going to Harvard. He was very intrigued by that.

And so he asked me a lot of questions. And then I asked him some questions. And it just turned out that we weren't that different. We both had grandmothers that had been formative in our lives. We both had experiencedmothers that had been formative in our lives. We both had experienced segregation and discrimination. We both understood that the system wasn't going to be always fair or just. And I think he was so genuinely interested in me that it was very easy for me to be genuinely interested in him. And we just started talking and we fell into one of these conversations that felt very familiar.

Finally, after three hours, the guards came in to take the man back to his cell. Brian Stevenson says the guards treated the man roughly, putting tight shackles on his ankles and a chain around his waist. I tried to get them to be gentler, but they ignored me. The condemned man said to me, he said, Brian, don't worry about this.

You just come back. And then they started shoving this man toward the door. He almost fell down. And they were about to push him out of the room when I watched the man plant his feet. And just before they could push him out of the room, the next time when they shoved him, he didn't move. And then he turned to me and he said, Brian, don't worry about this. You just come back. And then that man did something I've never forgotten. He closed his eyes, he threw his head back, and he began to sing. And he started singing, I'm pressing on the upward way, new heights I'm gaining every day, still praying as I'm onward bound.

And then he said, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. And I hadn't heard the song in quite a while before that man sang it, but I've never forgotten it since. I'm pressing on the upward way New heights I'm gaining every day. Right then, Brian Stevenson says he knew, at 23 years old, exactly what he wanted to do with his life. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

Oh, Lord. Let my feet all dry, all dry. Oh, Lord. Lord, lift me up and let me stand My faith will come to table land Oh heart, let me stand Oh Lord, lift me up and let me stand A few years later, on a Saturday morning in 1987, an 18-year-old white woman named Rhonda Morrison

opened the dry cleaners where she worked in Monroeville, Alabama. At 10.45 a.m., customers came into the store and couldn't find anyone working there. They looked around and found Rhonda Morrison's body on the floor. An autopsy later found three bullets in Rhonda's body, one which had been fired at close range. For seven months, the murder remained unsolved. And then a man stepped forward and said that he knew who'd killed Rhonda Morrison. He said that he'd seen an African-American man named Walter McMillan near the victim's body with money in his hands.

And we believe they chose to arrest Mr. McMillan not because he had a prior crime history. He didn't. We believe they chose him because he was having an interracial affair with a young white woman who was related to one of the officers. And that affair is what brought him to the attention of the police. And so they arrested him and charged him with this murder, despite the fact that at the time of the crime, some 11 miles away, he was raising money for his sister's church. There were dozens of people with him at the exact time of the crime, miles from it. And they went to the police.

They went to the sheriff. They said, you've got the wrong man. We were with him when this crime took place. There's no way he committed this crime, but they were ignored. They actually put Mr. McMillan on death row for 15 months pre-trial. It's the only case I've ever worked on where the client spent 15 months awaiting trial on death row. And the irony for me is that this community where this crime took place,

where this trial took place, is the very same community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the beloved American novel To Kill a Mockingbird. And people in that community love To Kill a Mockingbird. They put on plays about it. They name streets after characters. They have stores named after it. They've dedicated a museum to it. They name streets after characters. They have stores named after it. They've dedicated a museum to it. They are preoccupied with the story of To Kill a Mockingbird, but they were completely indifferent to the plight of an innocent black man being wrongly convicted and condemned. Walter McMillan was charged with murder, and the trial was moved to the primarily white Baldwin County. It lasted a day and a half. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.

And then the judge overrode the jury's sentence of life in prison and gave Walter McMillan the death penalty. I got involved in the case, and we started investigating and quickly came up with some very powerful evidence of Mr. McMillan's innocence. They had coerced witnesses to testify falsely against him. And for some bizarre reason, they didn't just coerce these witnesses to testify falsely. They tape recorded the sessions when they were coercing these false statements.

And even more bizarre, they didn't destroy the tapes. And so we actually got our hands on these tapes where the main witness against Mr. McMillan was saying, quote, you want me to frame an innocent man for murder and I don't feel right about that. And the police officer says, well, if you don't give us what we want, we'll put you on death row. And it went on like that for minutes. And so we got these tapes and we got the witnesses to admit that their trial testimony was false. And we uncovered other evidence to prove Mr. McMillan's innocence. And it was time to go to court. And I was really moved by the fact that on the first day of the hearings, the entire black community showed up. Poor people from the region showed up.

And at the end of that first day in court, after we put on the evidence about these tapes and other pieces of evidence, I saw hope growing in that community. And then the next day when I came back to court, I noticed that all the people of color were sitting outside the courtroom. They weren't coming inside. And I went up to the community leaders and I said, well, why aren't y'all inside? And they said, they won't let us in today. And I went over to the deputy sheriff to go into the courtroom. And I said, I want to go inside the courtroom. And he said, you can't come in. I said, I'm the defense attorney. I think I have to be able to come in. And the deputy looked worried, and he said, well, let me go check.

And he ran inside the courtroom. Then he came back and said, well, you can come in. And on the second day, they changed the courtroom around. They had placed a metal detector that you had to walk through to get inside the courtroom. And on the other side of the metal detector, they had positioned this huge German Shepherd dog that you had to walk past. And I was angry because the courtroom had been filled, half filled, with people who were supporting the prosecution. They were letting other people in, but not people of color. And I complained bitterly to the judge, and the judge said,

well, your people have to get here earlier tomorrow. I said, that's not the problem, judge. They wouldn't let them in. But I went to the community leaders and explained what had happened. They said, that's okay, Mr. Stevenson, we will be here earlier tomorrow. And that's when they began identifying older people of color to be representatives for the few remaining seats in the courtroom. And they identified this older black woman by the name of Ms. Williams, and she was so proud to be given this responsibility. You know, she fixed herself up, she got her hat together, and she started walking toward the courtroom. And they finally let people of color come inside, and I was inside when I watched this beautiful older black woman walk through the door, walk through the metal detector, and then walk up to that dog. But when she saw the dog,

you could see fear paralyze her. She stopped dead in her tracks. Her body began to shake. Her shoulders dropped. Tears started running down her face, and I was standing there watching her while her whole body trembled. And then I heard her groan really loudly and watched her turn around and run out the courtroom. It was a painful thing to see. Other people came inside. We had another good day in court. I'd forgotten all about Ms. Williams until I was going to my car that night. But she was sitting outside when I saw her.

She came over to me and she said, Mr. Stephenson, I feel so bad. And she said, I let you down today. I said, no, Ms. Williams, it's all right. It's okay. It's not your fault. They shouldn't have done what they did. She said, no, Mr. Stevenson, you don't understand. I was meant to be in that courtroom. I should have been in that courtroom. And she started to cry, and I couldn't console her. She said, Mr. Stevenson, I feel so bad. She said, I wanted to be in there so bad, but when I saw that dog, all I could think about was Selma, Alabama in 1965. I remember how we gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge to march to Montgomery for the rights to vote. I remember how they beat us, and I remember those dogs, and I wanted to move. I tried to move,

but I just couldn't do it. And she walked away with tears running down her face. The next day, I was back at court, and her sister told me that that night Ms. Williams didn't talk to anybody. They didn't hear her say anything. She didn't eat. They said they could just hear her in her room praying all night long. And they said she was praying, Lord, I can't be scared of no dog. I can't be scared of no dog. And the next morning, Ms. Williams got up and she called the community leaders and asked them for another chance to be a witness. And on the trip from the house to the courthouse, she kept saying over and over again, I ain't scared of no dog, I ain't scared of no dog. And I was standing there talking to her sister when Ms. Williams finally got to the

courtroom. And you could hear her saying over and over again, audibly, she was saying, I ain't scared of no dog, I ain't scared of no dog. And I watched this beautiful older black woman walk through the metal detector, walk up to this dog, say in a very loud voice, she said, I ain't scared of no dog. And she walked past the dog, sat down on the front row of that courtroom, and she turned to me and said, Mr. Stevenson, I'm here. And I looked at her and I said, Ms. Williams, it's so good to see you here. And I started getting my papers ready. And then she said it again. She said, no, Mr. Stevenson, you didn't hear me. She said, I'm here. And I looked at her and I said, no, Ms. Williams, I did see you. I'm glad to see you here. I was a little embarrassed. The courtroom got packed full of people. The judge walked in. Everybody stood up and everybody sat

back down except Mrs. Williams. And I turned around and she said one last time in a very loud voice, she said, I'm here. And it became clear to me then what she was saying. What she was saying wasn't that I'm physically present. She wasn't saying I'm physically here. What she was saying is I may be old, I may be poor, I may be black, but I'm here because I've got this vision of justice that compels me to stand up to injustice. And for me, that's when the case turned. That's when I knew we were going to prevail. It is that kind of witness that has ultimately motivated me to see

that it is not the power that you bring, it's not the wealth, it's not the status, it is the heart and the hope that ultimately allows us to achieve justice in cases like this. And they won. Walter McMillan was exonerated and lived the rest of his life a free man. He died in 2013. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials.

This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums. And leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. Apple Podcasts. I'm Brian Stevenson, AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Alabama and opened what would later become the Equal Justice Initiative. He chose Alabama because it had, and still has, one of the highest execution rates in the country and extremely limited

resources for public defenders. As soon as he opened the practice, he got a call from a man who had 30 days left. And I had to say to him, I'm sorry that we don't have books, we don't have staff, we don't have resources, I can't take any cases just now. And he was so heartbroken when I said that, that he didn't say another word. And the next thing I knew, he hung up the phone and I was just holding the phone in anguish. I couldn't sleep much that night. He called me the next day and he begged me. He said, Mr. Stevenson, I know you don't have your books, I know you don't have your staff.

He said, but please tell me you'll take my case. He said, you don't have to tell me that you can get a stay. You don't have to tell me you can stop the execution, but please tell me you'll fight for me. He said, I don't think I can night this man was scheduled to be executed, I got that dreadful call from the Supreme Court telling me that our last stay motion had been denied. And I drove down to Atmore, Alabama to be with this man before the execution. And it was surreal. We had this very emotional, very difficult moment. We were holding hands. We were praying. We were talking.

We were crying. And then he said something to me I've never forgotten. He said, Brian, it's been such a strange day. He said, all day long, people have been asking me, what can I do to help you? He said, when I woke up this morning, the guards came to me and they said, what can we get you for breakfast? At midday, they came to me and said, what can we get you for lunch? And the evening, they came to me and said, what can we get you for dinner? He said, all day long, people have been saying, what can I do to help you? Can I get you coffee? Can I get you water? Can I get you stamps? Can I get you letters? Can I get you the phone? And I never will forget that man saying in those last few minutes, he

said, Brian, it's been so strange. He said, more people have said, what can I do to help you in the last 14 hours of my life than they ever did in the first 19 years of my life. And it is the anguish of some of those moments that make me appreciate why it is so necessary that we do better when it comes to human rights in this country, when it comes to justice. I don't think the death penalty in America can be resolved by asking whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. I think the threshold question is, do we deserve to kill? We make terrible mistakes. We've now, I just got, I won the release of a man a year ago who was the 156th person exonerated, released from death row after being proven innocent. That means

that for every nine people we've executed in this country, we've now identified one innocent person on death row. It is a shameful rate of error. If for every nine planes that took off, one crashed, no one would fly. Have you met anyone in all of your time who you've thought is evil, who you've thought, I don't want to waste my time saving this person? No. I mean, I've met people who are severely mentally ill.

I've met people for whom it's probably likely that they will never be able to get out of prison because they're dealing with disabilities or challenges that won't make it safe for them to get out of jail or prison. But I've never met anybody who I think is beyond hope or beyond redemption or whose life doesn't matter. I think, you know, we have to judge our commitment to the rule of law. Our commitment to human rights can't be measured by how we treat people who impress us, by how we treat people who we like, how we treat the rich, the powerful, and the privileged. We have to judge our commitment to justice, to the rule of law, to human rights by not

looking at how we treat the rich and the powerful and the privileged. We have to look at how we treat the disfavored, the disabled, the condemned. I mean, it's easy to be just to people you like, people you favor. It's easy to be compassionate toward people who you have a lot of respect for. But it's not really mercy if you give it to the people who deserve it. Mercy is mercy when it's given to the undeserving. And so I've never met anybody about whom I should say, oh, no, they can't get mercy. They don't deserve it. That's what mercy is about. And I don't think that I have some special insight or anything.

I think if anyone saw what I saw on a regular basis, if they could see what I see, if they could hear what I hear, if they could understand what I understand about what we're doing, I think they would be motivated to do the exact same thing. I think they would want to end mass incarceration. I think they'd want to stop this extreme, excessive, cruel punishment. I think they would want more hope and more mercy and more justice. Your grandfather was murdered. stabbed to death in Philadelphia by several young men who broke into his apartment to try to steal a TV. And it was devastating to our family.

My mother was grief-stricken. My grandfather had nine children, had lots of cousins, many of whom were actually working for the police department. And it was deeply, deeply challenging to imagine this 86-year-old man being stabbed to death by a lot of reckless young teens. But what was fascinating was that my grandmother, she was less interested in what punishment these young men would receive. She wanted to talk about why or how anyone could be in a place in life that they would think that that's something that they could do. And if she could do anything, she wanted to create a world where children didn't run around stabbing old men

in low-income projects just for TV. And she wanted us to look beyond these young men and try to understand something more important about what's happening in a world where kids are born into violent families. They live in violent neighborhoods. They go to violent schools and become violent people by the time they're teenagers. And how do we change that kind of world? And that's motivated my work as much as anything. It's been interesting doing the show about crime. I've spoken with so many people who I guess could be judged from the outside as bad. I think that

they're a bad person, murderers and things like that. And I've never got that sense speaking to someone coming away from it of this is a bad person. I've never got that sense speaking to someone coming away from it of this is a bad person. I've only come away with a sense of how did they get there? You know, how did someone get there? Not that they've ended up and they've crossed a line. I think that that lines people believe of you've crossed the line, you can never come back, you're bad now, just is invisible. There's so many other things. Well, I think that's right. I mean, if we spent more time trying to understand

how it is that people came to these decisions and why, then we could do so much more to disrupt, to reduce crime, to actually create public safety. You know, in other cultures, in other countries, in Scandinavia, they think of crime as disorder. And when someone is arrested for a crime, they really want to help that person recover. Punishment for the sake of punishment doesn't make a lot of sense.

There is this idea that rehabilitation is necessary, recovery. And what's ironic is that we all want rehabilitation when we make mistakes. None of us want to be judged by our worst act. When we make mistakes, we want a chance to show we're not just that mistake. And yet we've created a system that is so unforgiving, that is so judgmental. And it's intoxicating to imagine all of these evil people that we can all organize and beat up on and go to war against. But it's dishonest. And one of the great challenges that I think we have in this country is

to revive a conversation about what it means to recover. You know, we don't give justice to people just because we want to be fair to them. We give justice to people because we want to be just. We don't give mercy to people because some people need mercy. We give mercy to people because we want and need to be merciful. Our strength, our humanity, our dignity turns on how we treat other people, including people who have committed crimes, including people who have fallen down. And I ultimately think that if we're going to evolve as a species, our capacity to talk and think about rehabilitation, about recovery, about redemption is essential. A world where we only hit back when we are hit, where we only judge who have judged us,

where we only hurt those who hurt us, is a world that is destined to die. And if we believe in life, if we believe in a future, we're going to have to get past that. And crime is a space where we have fallen down, where we've allowed the narrative of fear and anger to take over our thinking. And I want to push back against that. I think the one thing I'd say is that we can't make decisions rooted in fear and anger to take over our thinking. And I want to push back against that. I think the one thing I'd say is that we can't make decisions rooted in fear and anger when we're trying to deal with crime or justice or even what it means to be just.

So far, Bryan Stevenson has gotten 125 people off of death row. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder and Russ Henry. Julianne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where we've got a link to Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the best podcasts around.

Shows like The Illusionist, made by our friend Helen Zaltzman. Not only does she take us into the history of how we use language, but also shows us how a word as obvious-seeming as please can have different connotations in different countries, or how one so-called bad word

comes to be worse than another. It's really funny and smart. That's the illusionist with an A. We learn something every time. Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge.

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