Bryan Stevenson: "Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption"

good evening ladies and gentlemen president of Court of Appeals the Honorable Christopher Maxwell your honors distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen my name is Carolyn Evans I'm the Dean here at Melbourne law school and it's my great pleasure to welcome you here tonight to the Melbourne launch of Bryan Stevenson's book just mercy we meet today on the traditional lands of the wandering people of the Kulin nations and begin by paying my respects to their elders past and present tonight is our first public lecture for 2015 and what a wonderful way to start the lecture theatre in which we meet tonight was renamed late last year the David P Durham theatre for one of the university's most distinguished alumni a former professor of law and vice-chancellor of this university and you can read more about him on the plaque on the wall and I'd like to welcome a number of members of the Durham family who are here with us tonight I also welcome our supporters readings scribe and reprieve i if you wish to you can join the discussion here on Twitter where we live tweeting and hashtag just merci merci it's my pleasure tonight to introduce our speaker professor Bryan Stevenson my colleague professor John Tobin who I'd like to thank through his really seminal role in organizing tonight's event will after Bryan speaks chair question time and thank our speaker it's a great pleasure to welcome Bryan back he's going to speak to us tonight about his book just mercy it's a moving and compelling story about the legal system and the sometimes complex relationship between law justice and mercy already a best-seller it certainly just deserves a significant audience here I know some of you've already bought and had it signed and there'll be a further opportunity to do that tonight Bryan is a graduate of Harvard and a professor of clinical law at New York University he's been representing defendants in capital cases and death row inmates since the 1980s and since 1989 has been the executive director the equal justice initiative a private nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States he's won multiple awards for his work and national and international claim for the important contribution he's made to justice I could spend a long time talking about it but when Brian was here a couple of years ago he gave a wonderful inspiring lecture and I don't want to get in the way of hearing from him again so please join with me in welcoming him back to Melbourne well thank you it's a real honor to be back in Melbourne it's quite exciting for me to be back in this space I had the great privilege of teaching here for a week with some wonderful wonderful students many of whom I've seen on my return back here to Australia the faculty here has been incredibly generous and your leadership is wonderful and I'm delighted to be back here with this book it was actually writing this book when I was here before so it's a little bit of a kind of a mind shift to actually be here talking about it I wasn't certain I was going to finish it when I was here so it's always exciting to be in a place where I didn't expect to be talking about something I didn't expect to talk about but I am really really grateful for the opportunity that my work has created it's been difficult work challenging work at times heartbreaking work but ultimately work that has informed me and shaped me in ways that I find incredibly meaningful and I wanted to talk about some of the things that have shaped me in my talk tonight this book is really about the American criminal justice system and the way our country has been undermined if you will by the politics of fear and anger I feel that our country has in many ways been corrupted by this rush to be tough this desire to be punitive and we've seen our prison population go from 300,000 and 1972 to 2.3 million today and mass incarceration has defined an era of American history we now have the highest rate of incarceration in the world there are some 2.3 million people in jails in prisons 6 million people on probation or parole 68 million Americans with criminal arrests that means when they apply for a job they have to report that arrest and it undermines our ability to get employment we have 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's imprisoned in a country that prides itself on its qualities of freedom the land of the free in the home of the brave has been come has become this place where punishment and incarceration is a defining feature the Bureau of Justice now reports that one in three black male babies in America is expected to go to jail or prison one in three that wasn't true in the 20th century that wasn't true in the nineteenth century it became true in the 21st century and so for me talking about these problems talking about this phenomenon has been challenging because these statistics that I give you really only tell part of the story the number of women have gone to prison has increased six hundred and forty percent but most of these women are the mothers the single parents of minor children and their children have been devastated by this phenomenon we've got states in America where you permanently lose your right to vote as a result of a criminal conviction we're celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act in America and there's a film that's out Selma that talks about the historic march from Selma to Montgomery to win the right to vote and people come to Selma every year and they'll be coming a next month and we'll be a huge gathering the President and everyone will come and very few of the people who come to Selma will know or appreciate the fact that 34 percent of the black male population has permanently lost the right to vote in the state of Alabama as a result of a criminal conviction and these statistics in these data can be quite overwhelming but what's more overwhelming in my judgment is the despair that over incarceration has created I go into communities were young kids were 13 and 14 years of age tell me when I engage them in honest conversation that they don't expect to be free or alive by the time they are 21 years of age and in America to have a generation of children who don't expect to be free or alive by the time they're 21 sets up this really profound contradiction how is it that a society so evolved so dazzling with its technology so creative with its art and industry could nonetheless create a system that has been so harsh and punitive we've put so many people on death row and many of whom are innocent wrongly convicted for every nine people we've executed in America we've identified one innocent person on death row who's innocent it's a phenomenal rate of error and that error has defined our system it's been interesting being here this week when two Australians are facing execution in Indonesia and I've been heartened to hear people talking with compassion and concern about the plight of these men and I think that's appropriate because when a government executes a citizen it does something really really horrific and shameful it doesn't implicate just the people who have been executed implicates the rest of us I don't think the death penalty can be resolved or understood by asking do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed I think the real question is do we deserve to kill I haven't been anywhere where I have a system I've seen a system that deserves to kill in America we have a criminal justice system that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent in Australia this is not a country that deserves to kill not because it's not doing some wonderful things it is but when we have these disparities and the number of indigenous people who are sentenced to prison way disproportionate to their population when we have refugees and immigrants that are sometimes not valued and protected in the way that people need to be protected and valued you don't deserve to kill and in Indonesia a society that is struggling in many ways spending millions of dollars to protect Indonesian nationals who face the death penalty abroad and yet executing people who are disproportionately foreign nationals there is this in my judgment lack of the ability to kill and all of these problems are quite challenging and I could go on and on talking about the challenge we're putting children in our jails and prisons in America and that's an issue that's been particularly difficult for me my clients have gotten younger and younger and younger and when you represent these kids who are often put in adult jails in prisons where they are victimized by sexual abuse we've got some 250,000 people serving long prison sentences in America for crimes they committed when they were two children we've got fifteen states with no minimum age for trying a child as an adult we've got 10,000 kids as I said in adult jails or prisons 3,000 children sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and working with that population can be heartbreaking because these kids will grab on to you and and demand from things from you I I was been talking about many of my clients who at times show their age in ways that can be heartbreaking before I got on the plane to come here I have two cases I'm working on now of two young 14 year olds and I made good progress with them I have this policy when I represent kids I make them read books and I the first year I picked the books and then the next year they picked the books and these are my young clients have just finished my first year with him and they've been reading these books and we've had these amazing conversations talking about this literature and they were very very concerned that I was going to Australia and not coming back and I said no of course I'm coming back and and I don't I didn't understand why they were asking me these questions about well when are you coming and then one of them said well if I ever could go to Australia I would not come back and it spoke to this real kind of disconnect and it was it was funny but it but also very moving and these things can I kind of pile up and create real challenges and I want to talk tonight about just a few things that I think are essential in meeting the challenge my work is dealing with the death penalty is dealing with mass incarceration it's dealing with racial bias is dealing with a lot of issues but I think meeting the challenge is the same wherever you are there are challenges in this country on how we're going to do better to respond to the needs of indigenous communities how we're going to do better and to create opportunities for people who've been victimized and people who have offended how we're going to do better to deal with a whole range of issues and I wanted to talk about four things that I think are critical as we find our way the first is legacy I am persuaded that every community every society has a legacy and the legacy isn't defined by how dazzling and how spectacular the landscape is created the legacy is ultimately defined by the character of the people who live there and in a lot of ways I've been spending a lot of time trying to help my country confront its legacy because while America has a lot of great things that it can point to and talk about it also has a legacy of abuse of racial inequality of not hearing the voices of people who are suffering and when you don't hear the voices of people of suffering you create real disconnect you create trauma and injury and there is this legacy of trauma that I want us to overcome I was a young kid I grew up in a community where black children couldn't go to the public schools I started my education in a colored school and I remember when the lawyers came into our community to open up the public school because that's the only way I could ever get to high school and these lawyers came in and they opened up the public school and I got to go to high school and then I got to go to college and going to college was amazing for me because at the college there was this kind of beautiful campus we had rivers and streams and green landscapes and all of that stuff and I was playing sports and I was doing music and I was having the time of my life I was a philosophy major in college and I was loving that kind of the deep interactive engagement that I could have with my professors and I would sometimes tell my friends I'm just going to go out on the hillside and I'm just going to do some philosophy and my friends would look at me very suspiciously and they I think they thought I was going to go out there and do drugs or something illegal but I really would I would just go out and sit and think what I thought were these great deep thoughts and is in my last year of school and somebody came up to me and they said well what are you going to do after you graduate from college and I heard that as a very hostile question because I realized that nobody was going to pay me to philosophize we're not ready so I went frantically looking for ways to extend my education and in America if you want to do graduate work in history or English or political science you actually have to know something about history or English or political science I was pretty intimidated by that and to be honest that's how I found Law School it was very clear to me that you didn't need to know anything to go to law school so I signed up for that right away and found my way to law school but mostly what I've been trying to do is to kind of work on this legacy because the truth is is that when we are not attentive to the needs of people who are vulnerable when we're not attentive to the needs of people who are marginalized when we're not attentive to the needs of people who are poor and disabled we create a legacy of indifference to suffering and I think that makes us unjust it makes us unfair and so paying attention to suffering an inequality which is not something we're necessarily kind of designed to do I'm going to suggest I'm going to argue is key to confronting the challenges that we create my mother was this incredible woman she was a sweet kind woman she was a church musician and she was really really generous really really sweet I used to get mad because she would just ask all the kids if I was out playing she wouldn't just call me and she'd call all the kids and she would give them the little sweets that we had or whatever she had she was just a really generous person and we grew up in a poor segregated community and I would see her do things that just struck me as unneccessarily kind but that was just the way my mom was and when I was about six or seven they came into our County and said that it was necessary for all the children to get polio shots this was in the 60s and they we didn't have a doctor in our County but I remember them calling all of the kids to this building where they were supposed to get polio shot and of course it was segregated so all the white kids went through the front door and all the black kids went through the back door and I was standing in the back waiting for them like all the other kids the black kids to finish with the white kids and it was a cold day and they went the the nurses were working hard and by the time they got to the black children they'd run out of the lollipops they would give the kids so they could give them these shots and they were tired and they were beat down and I never will forget this being in line with my siblings and these nurses tired that they didn't have time to be polite they were grabbing these black kids and taking these big needles and just jabbing them in the arm and I watched my sister who was in front of me I'll get pulled by one of these nurses and she was about to jab her in the arm with this big needle and she did and my sister started screaming and I couldn't believe that my mom was letting this happen to us and I looked at my mom and I started screaming I didn't want this to happen and the nurse grabbed me by the arm and she pulled me and she lifted up her hand with this us with this syringe to give me a shot and all of a sudden I heard all this glass breaking and I turned around and I looked and I saw my sweet mom throwing glasses against the wall and she was angry that we had to stand in the back for so long she was angry that there was this kind of segregation she was angry that we weren't being treated like the other kids were treated and she couldn't take it anymore she started throwing these glasses against the wall the doctor came running in and said call the police and the black ministers came forward and began negotiating for my mom's security they said no no no please don't arrest her please don't take her to jail please please please and then the doctor said well we're leaving and then they had to beg them to get the rest of the children these polio shots and what was interesting to me about it was there was this absolute silence absolute silence they didn't arrest my mom they didn't take her to jail and they gave us our shots but there was this dichotomy in that this begging for a little bit in the face of so much and I'm prepared to argue that that the legacy of segregation can't be really exhibited by people like me who got to go to college in law school it can't be exhibited in the progress we've sometimes made I think it's exhibited in the trauma we've created by not being attentive to the suffering that inequality creates and so for me I think it's necessary for a society to be very very attentive to these dynamics the legacy of society that tolerates inequality that tolerates injustice that tolerates this kind of hierarchy is a legacy that will compromise the future of that society we've been corrupted by the politics of fear and anger because we haven't become a tent responsive in the states to inequality to injustice and I'm here to suggest that legacy your legacy a community's legacy is key if we're going to actually make a difference in protecting people from the things that they desperately need to be protected from second thing I think I talked about about this the last time I was here I am persuaded that we all have to be people who commit ourselves to becoming more proximate to the problems and situations that we see around us I'm persuaded that proximity is how we actually gain our ability to make a difference in the world I you know I teach in a loss when I'm often overwhelmed and worried because I see my law students and I see them going to classes and you know law school has a tendency to complicate things and to create these barriers these all this precedent and all of this kind of jurisprudential conflict intention and I see the hopefulness in my students I sometimes start to disappear and they begin to believe that they can't do the things that they mode that were motivated them to come to law school because things are so complicated and I'm persuaded that the only remedy to the complexities of a big challenge a difficult challenge is a choice to get proximate to the things that you care about getting close to the people in the situations that motivated you to wanted to be a lawyer wanted to be a doctor wanted to be an engineer proximity is powerful and not only because it allows you to be a better advocate or a better caregiver or better service provider but it's also the thing that allows you to be a better human being proximity is what's told me and taught me the things I now know I talked about these kids I represented was representing a child who was living in a house where his mother had repeatedly been the target of a lot of domestic violence and this boy's mother had a boyfriend who would get violent when he started drinking the man had been drinking one night he came home he walked into the kitchen and he called this child and it's called child's mother into the kitchen and he just punched her in the face she fell on the floor she was lying unconscious and the child ran in and tried to help his mom come to and he and he couldn't wake his mom she was covered with blood after ten or fifteen minutes this boy was persuaded that his mom was dead she wasn't dead but he thought his mom was dead the man went into a bedroom and fell asleep and the little boy got up after 15 minutes and he walked into the bedroom where the man was sleeping and he put his he went over to a dresser door where he knew the man kept a handgun he opened the drawer and he pulled the gun out and he walked over to where the man was sleeping he pointed the gun at the man's head the man was snoring at the point at which he stopped storing this little boy tragically pulled the trigger and shot the man in the head he died almost instantly now this child was about five feet tall it was under 100 pounds he'd never actually been in trouble before no prior juvenile arrest he was the kind of kid who probably might have had a chance of being tried as a juvenile but for the fact that the man that he shot and killed his mother's boyfriend was a deputy sheriff and because he was a deputy sheriff the prosecutor insisted that this child be tried as an adult and the judge certified him to stand trial as an adult and they immediately placed him in the adult jail he'd been there three days before his grandmother asked me to get to the cell and I got there and I had this interview I was telling the lawyers earlier about it today I had this interview that was really difficult I started asking this child questions but he wouldn't say anything he just kept staring at started staring at the wall and I said look you got to talk to me I can't help you if you don't talk to me he wouldn't say a word eventually after 20 minutes of this I put my pen down I got up and I walked around the table and I pulled my chair close to him and I said look I can't help you if you don't talk to me you got to talk to me and he kept staring at the wall I didn't know what to do and at some point I just started leaning on him I don't even know why but when I leaned on him I felt him lean back and when he leaned back I put my arm around him I said cool you got to talk to me I can't help you if you don't talk to me at that point this boy started to cry and through his tears he began talking to me not about what happened with his with the man not about what happened with his mom but he started talking to me about what had happened at the jail he told me on the first night several men had hurt him he told me on the next night several people had raped him he told me on the night before I got in there so many people had hurt him he couldn't remember how many there had been I held this little boy while he cried hysterically for almost an hour and when I left that jail I couldn't help but ask myself who was responsible for this and I realized we are we've allowed our distance children to actually persuade us that some children aren't children and proximity is the only way we're going to actually reclaim the basic human dignity that all human beings possess and advocate an effective incentive and strategic ways I am persuaded that if we care about human rights if we care about justice we've got to think about the legacy that is created by inequality we've got to choose to get proximate to the things and people we care about third thing I'm persuaded that we've actually got to understand the power of narrative I was with John and can bear the other day walk talking to these two law professors and educators and we had a wonderful session but I was interested in talking about the power of narrative because there is a narrative for every society and I believe that it's important for us to recognize that if we're intent on creating more justice if we're intent on protecting human rights we've actually got to change the narratives that sustain indifference of human rights violations that sustain inequality that sustain injustice and changing narratives is hard but necessary and we're doing work in America to confront our history of racial inequality I'm persuaded that we've never done that in the United States the United States is a glorious country with a lot of wonderful things but we're a country that has never had the courage to actually confront our history of racial inequality my grandmother was the daughter of people who were enslaved a slavery was a tremendous evil and we weren't like a lot of countries in a lot of countries in the world that had slavery that had people who were enslaved but in most countries they were societies with slaves and America we became something else we became a slave Society we actually created a narrative of racial difference in the evil of American slavery wasn't involuntary servitude it was this narrative of racial difference this ideology that black people people of African descent weren't really human they were deficit they had these deficiencies they weren't as smart as other people they weren't as hard working and this narrative of white supremacy was the true evil of American slavery and our Constitution which prohibited involuntary servitude at the end of the Civil War didn't really deal with the evil of slavery it only dealt with involuntary servitude and why I've been going around arguing that in America slavery didn't end in the middle of the 19th century it just evolved it turned into something else and that something else was decades of terrorism of racial violence and lynching and horrific mistreatment of people of color my grandmother was born in the 1880s and she was terrorized every day of her life we just put out a report called lynching in America where we document 4,000 lynchings of African Americans in 12 states people who were pulled out of jails people who were executed and lynched and murdered not always for even accusations of crime there were black World War 1 veterans who were lynched in Blakely Georgia because they were wearing their US military uniforms African Americans in Mississippi were running to the Train and bumped into a white woman and they were lynched for that indiscretion there was a man in Luverne Alabama who was lynched because he went up to a white police officer and he didn't use the title mister and that was a violation of this narrative of white supremacy and we'd never really talked about it it was terrorism our government is complaining appropriately about the horrific violence and brutality that we see in the Mideast in Syria and Libya this these horrific executions of people by Isis and it's barbaric to see what's happening but it is not unprecedented because we burned people in America we cut people up we mutilated people we tortured people and we did it in an atmosphere of celebration and carnival throughout the country and we haven't talked about it in fact we do the opposite we actually celebrate with these markers and monuments and all these other things the architects of slavery and the defenders of slavery even our civil rights conversation and I'm a big proponent of talking about these things but I get worried because we're so celebratory about civil rights in America you come to America and you hear the civil rights story and it's this one happy glorious episode right it's almost like this three-day carnival that happened in America on day one Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on a bus on day two dr. King led a march on Washington and on day three we changed all these laws isn't that a wonderful story aren't we a great nation when in fact segregation was something that injured people and humiliated people and marginalized people for decades we've not talked about it we haven't committed ourselves to a process of truth and reconciliation and I am worried that until we change this narrative we are going to continue to see racial conflict there's a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to young people of color and it follows us around these protests about unarmed black men being shot by the police are a manifestation of our failure to change the narrative I was it happened to me I keep thinking I've gotten past it I was in court not too long ago and I was sitting in a courtroom where I was just at defense counsel's table I had my suit on I think was this suit I'm pretty sure it was this suit I don't have that many I have my tie on I was getting ready for Court just sitting at counsels table and waiting for the court to start and had never been there before it was in the Midwest and the judge walked in and he saw me sitting at defense counsel's table he looked over and he said hey hey hey hey you get out of here I don't want any defendant sitting in my courtroom without their lawyer should go back out there in the hallway and wait until your lawyer gets here and I got up and I said oh I'm sorry Your Honor I didn't introduce myself my name is Bryan Stevenson I am the lawyer and the judge started laughing and the prosecutor started laughing and I made myself laugh because I didn't want to disadvantage my client in this hearing that we were about to have my client came in a young white kid I was representing at these hearings we did the hearing but afterward I was thinking about it I was thinking to myself how is it that we've gotten to this point in our history in America 24 when a judge sees a middle-aged black man in a suit and tie sitting at counsels table he doesn't think lawyer he thinks defendant then I started worrying about that do I think that that consciousness is going to unfairly undermine fair sentencing for defendants of color yes do I think it's going to compromise the ability of people of color to get the treatment that they want and need yes we've been undermined and contaminated by this narrative of racial difference and we've got to commit ourselves to changing that narrative we've got a project where we're trying to put mark and monuments at the spaces where the slave trade was most active I want to put markers and monuments at the places where lynchings took place in Germany today if you go to that country you see a nation that is struggling to reconcile itself to the to the history of the Holocaust you've got markers everywhere they're putting stones and and markers in places where families were abducted and taken away they urge you to go to the concentration camps which have become places of sober reflection about the horrors of that institution we do the opposite in America I think you've done the opposite in Australia a little bit there is this horrible history of how indigenous people were treated the mistreatment the stolen children and all of that and I think we've got to find ways to talk about it and to confront it we will not deal with these disparities that we see this intergenerational trauma that takes place in some of the territories where people have been so mismanaged and so overwhelmed that there's alcohol abuse and all of these other things but our strategy it seems to me has to be to give voice to the trauma and mistreatment that we've created I don't know how you can have mandatory sentencing of a community that has been brutalized and victimized by indifference to basic human rights I don't know you can do that because a mandatory sentence doesn't allow you to consider that history that narrative it's suggesting that the narrative doesn't matter when we're supposed to be saying the opposite the narrative matters alone so I believe we've got to be people who change the narrative two more things I should have warned you that these get harder as I go along I'm really sorry about that I'm also persuaded that if we're going to actually protect human rights if we're going to actually advance social justice then we've got to find ways to protect our hope and it may seem sort of kind of you know touchy-feely to be talking about hope but I'm really really persuaded that our hopefulness our individual hopefulness and our collective hopefulness is our best weapon in creating justice in protecting human rights when I go into a court when I see a hopeless judge and a hopeless prosecutor and hopeless defendant and hopeless court a defense lawyer I know that there's going to be a bad outcome I do when I go into places in communities where I see despair and hopelessness I worry because I'm persuaded that injustice prevails where hopelessness persists hope is essential to creating the kind of movement that justice demands that a quality demand and when people get hopeless about what they can do I'm very very fearful I am those of you who are law students I tell my students this all the time because I see them getting increasingly worried about what they can achieve they're worried about jobs are worried about performance they're worried about money they're worried about all of these things and their legitimate concerns but you can't worry so much that you lose your hope I tell my students all the time don't take a job until you go back and read your law school admission essay and you make sure the kind of lawyer you're about to become is the kind of lawyer you want it to be I said I asked them what do you believe that you haven't seen what do you think can be achieved that we haven't achieved yet that hopefulness is key and it's hard it really is it's very hard I've been practicing law for a long time I keep thinking I give these talks I keep thinking well I've got this down and the truth of it is is that you don't ever get to the point in life where hope just follows you around and jumps in when it needs to jump in and what's interesting is that there are vulnerabilities that we all have it will sometimes make us responsive to things that are hopeless in ways that we shouldn't be and I've got my own I've got things that you know that really get to me I grew up in the rural South I'm burdened by that history and I'll be honest I don't like the images of the Old South in America and it's in the state of Alabama where I live I often see these flags and I see people talking hear people talking about the good old days there's this indifference to recognizing that history and when I see it it provokes me it really does I was going to a prison not too long ago and there was a truck outside this prison when this truck was like a shrine to the Old South it was covered with Confederate flags it had all of these bumper stickers on there there was a bumper sticker on this truck I'd actually never seen before this bumper sticker read quote if I'd known it was going to be like this I'd have picked my own cotton I had never seen that one I walked past the truck and there was a white guard at the prison door and I went up to and I said hi I'm here for a legal visit and this guard said to me you're not a law so yes sir I am cuz I don't believe you're a lawyer I said I am an attorney he's well where's your bar card my bar card is in the car he's well you're gonna have to go get your market he made me go back to my car to get my bar card to show to him that I was an attorney I did it I came back was a little insulted I said look I want to see my client now and then the guy said to me well you're gonna have to get in the bathroom because I'm not letting you in my prison until I give you a strip-search I said no sir lawyers don't get strip-searched when they come into this prison you coming into my prison you're going to get in that bathroom I couldn't get anybody to help me I had this dilemma I drove three hours to get to the prison and I ultimately decided I needed to see this man and so I went into the bathroom and let this guard subject me to this humiliating strip search I came back out it was trying to recover some dignity I said look I want to see my client now and the guy said to me well you got to go back there and sign the book I said lawyers don't have to sign that book you're coming into my prison you go back there and sign the book and so I did I went over to this book and I signed it in and finally this guy let me come over to the door and he unlock the door and I was about to walk inside and he grabbed me by the arm and he said hey let me ask you something he said did you see that truck out there with all those flags and bumper stickers I said yeah I saw that truck he said I want you to know that that's my truck really difficult really upsetting I got into the prison room and I was really just agitated by this guy and I was sitting there waiting for this client to come out it was a client I'd never met before very disabled person I knew that but I hadn't met him and then finally this client comes out an african-american man he comes out and he sits down and the first thing the client says to me is quote did you bring me a chocolate milkshake I thought to myself this is the strangest day I've had in a really long time I said no I didn't bring you a chocolate milkshake I'm your lawyer I'm here to represent you and I started asking my questions but I realized he wasn't paying attention after 15 minutes I put my pen down I said look I'm sorry I didn't know you wanted me to bring you a chocolate milkshake the next time I come if they let me I'll bring you a chocolate milkshake and when I said that this man smiled and smiled and smiled he was horribly disabled terribly abused and neglected as a child he was in 29 foster homes by the time he was 10 years old began showing signs of bipolar disorder at the age of 13 began showing saw of schizophrenia at 15 he was using crack-cocaine because he couldn't get medical care at 14 and 15 he was using heroin at 16 he was homeless at 17 having psychotic episodes at 18 and 19 and in the midst of a psychotic episode he committed a horrific a brutal crime we man was murdered it was arrested charged with capital murder taken the court quickly convicted and sentenced to die I got involved in the case I got the trial transcript I went through this record and at no point in the record could I find the words mental health mental illness mental disability nobody ever mentioned his mental status at all we started working on the case I got some great experts involved we did some investigation we got the foster parents to acknowledge and talk about this man's background in his suffering and finally it came time to go to court and I was really hopeful because I had some great evidence and witnesses and I got to the courthouse and who do I see standing in the courtroom but that guard who had given me such a hard time I went over to my client we had our little ritual I had to apologize because I wasn't able to ever bring him a chocolate milkshake he said that's fine and we started putting on our case and the witnesses did great testified very very effectively very forcefully and after three days of being in court I was hopeful that maybe this judge was going to do the right thing it was about three weeks after the hearing that I decided to go back to the prison and I drove down there and parked my car and what do I see in the parking lot but that truck hadn't dealt with this guy since my first encounter and I thought to myself you know what I'm just going to come back another day and I was going back to my car and then I started hearing that song that they used to sing during the civil rights movement where they sang that song can't let nobody turn me around turn me around and the more I heard it the more I thought you know you can't be turned around by this and I said you know what I'm just going to go deal with this guy and I got my bar card I put it in my pocket I walked past that truck and sure enough there's the guard standing in the front of the prison I said hi I'm here for a legal visit and he said hello mr. Stevenson how are you through me I said well I'm fine I said here's my bar card he said oh I don't need to see your bar card through me so ok well I'll go over in the bathroom and get ready for you Sergio said mr. Stevenson we're not going to do that so well thank you as well I'll go over here in sign the book he said mr. Stevenson I saw you coming and I signed you in really threw me I said well thank you he said yes sir and he walked over to the door and I watched this man try to unlock the door to let me into the visitation room and his hand started to shake he was holding the padlock in one hand he was holding the key and the other and his hands were shaking and I watched him tried to get the key in the lock and he couldn't do it and eventually after five minutes he finally got the key in the lock he finally unlocked the door and he looked up in his face was flushed red I thought he was about to cry and he looked at me and he said mr. Stevenson I have to tell you something I said what's that is well I was in that courtroom and I want you to know that I was listening because I want you to know that I came up in the foster care system too he said I didn't think anybody had it as bad as I did but I now realize that maybe your client had it worse than I did he said I'm a very angry person I think I've been angry my whole life but I was in that courtroom listening and I just want you to know that I think what you're doing is a good thing would have never guessed it never guessed it he said I think what you're doing is a good thing and sir I think you should just keep fighting for justice he put his hand out and said can I please shake your hand I shook this man's hand and I would have never ever believed it possible I said thank you I cannot tell you what it means to me that you said what you said it really means a lot I said thank you he opened the door is about to walk in tiny and grabbed me by the arm ease a wait wait wait wait wait I got to tell you something else so what's that hell I just want you to know that on the trip back from the courthouse to the prison I did something would you do well I just took an exit at one point and I took your client to a Wendy's and I bought him a chocolate milkshake it's a really silly story but it speaks to me about the importance of us staying hopeful about what we can do when we begin to believe that these people can't do that and these people can't do that these institutions can't shift in our country can't be this and these disparities are permanent and something we cannot overcome then we've got to be willing to protest and challenge hopefulness we'll make you stand when other people are sitting hopefulness will make you speak when other people are quiet hopefulness will give you the vision and the courage to do the difficult things that must be done to protect justice I'm persuaded by that finally fifth and finally I believe that to protect human rights to protect an advanced justice we need people who are willing to do uncomfortable things and I hate to even say that because it's a really challenging thing to say and it doesn't seem polite to come all the way to Melbourne from America and say impolite things but I'm absolutely persuaded that human rights social justice creating a better society requires that each of us consider doing uncomfortable things and it's hard because we are programmed to do what's comfortable all human beings are you know we come into a room like this we look for the people we know we sit with the people who make us comfortable we like comfort and I like comfort I'm not against comfort I'm not arguing that comfort is bad or wrong I value comfort in other people just my wonderful publisher at scribe Henry and Bradley put me in a very comfortable hotel I'm very grateful for that I was giving a talk down in Mississippi and I got off the plane and the people came up to me they said all mr. Stevenson we know all about you we've read about you we know what kind of person you are we know what kind of lawyer you are we know everything about you and we're having our conference at the luxurious Double Tree Hotel and we decided you don't want to stay at the luxurious Double Tree Hotel we've asked one of the farmers if they might put you up in one of their barns I looked at them I said what is wrong with you of course I want to stay in the luxurious GG her job that's not what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is sometimes choosing to do uncomfortable things because it is necessary to be a witness for justice it is necessary to get a society that is struggling to find inequality when it's right there in front of them to see it struggling to do the things that must be done and doing uncomfortable things can be absolutely terrified okay to go to the parts of the community to go to the spaces where there is discord and discipline and disability to go to our jails in prisons and teach and educate and preach Redemption and rehabilitation to do the things that don't make you popular can be really really terrifying but I think they're necessary to create justice and I've had to do it myself I keep thinking again I should get to the point where I've done enough uncomfortable do anything uncomfortable again but it doesn't work like that to be engaged means to constantly be choosing to do the uncomfortable things we had a terrible era a couple of years ago I think when I was here last time this was even more sort of fresh but between 2009 and 2011 we had 17 executions in my state of Alabama every other month somebody was being acted when I get back I'm going to have an uncomfortable run we've got nine people facing execution over the next several months and when you're dealing with these executions it can be just so overwhelming and we don't have a right to counsel for these condemned people there is no system the government doesn't pay for lawyers for people facing execution and death penalty we don't have a public defender system we don't have a legal aid they provides free services to the condemned and me and my young lawyers made the decision to stand with all of these people facing execution a couple of years ago and I just felt like we had to do it and then I watch my young lawyers trying to get stays with these people and these men kept getting executed and it was just killing them not to go through this and I was deeply concerned about them they just seemed to be overwhelmed and I said to my young boys do you know you guys take a break I've done this a long time I know what I'm doing I'm going to take the next couple of cases and I got involved in this case of a man who was facing execution it was a heartbreaking case because once I picked up the record I realized that he was intellectually disabled he suffered from mental retardation and our court actually bans the execution of people with mental retardation but nobody ever raised the issue and even though we have these doctrine we procedurally default claims all the time our system seems to prioritize finality over fairness and the lawyers who represented him never raise the issue and he couldn't find a lawyer to present his cases in post-conviction and he went through the process with nobody ever raising the issue that would have spared his life and I tried to get a court to pay attention I went from court to court to court but each court said too late too late not too late on the day that he was scheduled to be executed I got that call from the Supreme Court telling me that our last state motion had been denied I was standing there picking up the phone to call this man to tell him this terrible news I got him on the phone and I was telling him what had happened it was very very quiet and in addition to being intellectually disabled this man also had a very severe speech impediment when he got nervous and when he got anxious and when he got pressured and worried he couldn't get his words out and after I gave him this news he just couldn't speak couldn't get his words out he was trying he told me don't get off the phone because he had something important he had to say to me but I couldn't I couldn't hear him he couldn't get his words out and he was trying so hard to get his words out and the harder he tried to talk the more he just broke my heart I was standing there holding the phone and he was trying to get his words out he was trying to make the syllables come together and he couldn't and tears were running down my face and he kept trying the closer we got to the execution the harder it was for him to talk and he kept trying and he kept trying and I was standing there holding the phone and I remembered something I'd actually completely forgotten until that time I remembered how when I was about nine years old I'd gone to church one Sunday with my brother and my mother had taken us there and my brother and I were talking to our friends and there were these other kids around who I you know I knew but there was a kid I'd never seen before a little skinny kid and I was just talking to my friends and this kid wasn't saying anything and at some point I turned him and I asked him a question you know what's your name where are you from and when I remembered that night that had completely forgotten about was how that little boy when I asked him a question couldn't get his words out he also had a very severe speech impediment and he tried to tell me what his name was he tried to tell me where he's from and he couldn't get his words out and because I'd never met anybody with that challenge I did something really ignorant I laughed when I laughed my mother was standing across the room and she gave me this look I'd never seen before and she came over and pulled me by the arm and she pulled me to the side and she said Brian don't you ever laugh at somebody because they can't get their words out right don't you ever do that I tried to defend myself I said I'm sorry mom I didn't know she said no Brian you know better than that and then she said now you go back over there and tell that little boy you're sorry I said okay mom and I took a step and she said wait after you tell him you're sorry I want you to I want you to hug that little boy I said mom she said she gave me that looks I said okay so I took a step and then she said wait after you hugged that little boy I want you to tell that little boy you love him I said mom I cannot go over there and she gave me that look again I said all right all right and and I went over to this little boy and I walked up to him I said look man you know I'm sorry and then I sort of lunged at him and gave him my little boy version of a man hug and what I'd forgotten about until that night was how I remembered saying to this child as in sincerely as I possibly could I remember saying to him I love you and what I'd forgotten was how when I said that he hugged me back and whispered flawlessly in my ear he said I love you too forgotten all about it until I was listening to this man talk and he was trying to get his words out and we were getting close to the time of the execution and I could hear the guards in the background and finally he was able to get his words out and what he said was I want to thank you for fighting for me I want to thank you for representing me and then he said I love you for trying to save my life hung up the phone it pulled him away put him on the gurney and executed him I hung with the phone and I thought to myself this is too hard I don't want to do this anymore I can't do it it's just too hard too hard too hard too I'm tired can't do it tired tired I can't and I started thinking about how broken he was and I had the question in my head that I couldn't get a good answer to I kept thinking why do we want to kill all the broken people what is it about us that when we see brokenness we want to crush it and demonize it and throw it away I hello the phone I thought you know what I can't do this anymore I can't I can't stew much too hard too difficult too uncomfortable and I started having that conversation because I started thinking about how everything is broken my clients are all broken they've been broken by poverty they've been broken by racism they've been broken by disability they've been broken by exclusion and marginality they've been broken by a lack of intervention a broken by disability broken broken broken everything around me is broken I work in a broken system of justice my clients and my colleagues are being broken broken broken broken I don't want to do this anymore and that's when I had to have that conversation you have to have with yourself sometimes when you ask yourself why are you doing what you do I began asking about those questions us and I realized something I hadn't realized before I realized that night that I don't do what I do because I have to do it and it was part of the way I was thinking that I don't have to do this I realized that I don't do what I do because I've been trained to do it I don't do what I do because I've got some skills I don't do what I do because I get paid to do it I don't get a lot of money I don't do what I do because somebody has to do it I don't do what I do because it's important I don't even do what I do because I get to talk to wonderful people like you I realized something that night that I'd never realized before and what I realized is that I don't do what I do for any of those reasons I do what I do because I'm broken too and the truth is is that when you get close to injustice when you get close to suffering when you get close to inequality it will break you it'll hurt you in ways that you didn't think you could be hurt it'll create this moment of real anguish and pain but I also realized that night that because I'm broken - I'm not just trying to save the lives of condemned and broken people I'm trying to save myself - my humanity is inexorably tied to their humanity I'm trying to save myself by holding up the idea that every person every person is more than the worst thing they've ever done I need that for me because I'm broken I have to believe that each of us more than the worst thing we've ever done I have to it would be painful for me to live in a world where I'm only my worst mistake and so becomes because that's true for me it's necessary for me to stand with those who've been condemned I think if somebody tells a lie they're not just a liar I think of somebody take something that doesn't belong to them they're not just a thief I think even when you kill somebody you're not just a killer these men in Indonesia are not just drug dealers and because of that we can't kill just that part of them we kill everything and what we're killing is something with incredible redemptive potential and that's wrong my work has taught me other things I'm persuaded that in this country in Australia and in America I don't believe that the opposite of poverty is wealth I think we've got this kind of notion that we can sometimes spend and do comfortably and not get and get to where we're trying to go I don't believe that I don't believe that the opposite of poverty is wealth I believe that the opposite of poverty is justice and we need a community of people who are prepared to get close to worry about legacy to change narratives be hopeful and do uncomfortable things in service of justice and finally I believe that you judge the character of a society you judge its commitment to the rule of law it's civility not by how it treats the rich and the powerful and the privileged but by how it treats the poor the incarcerated are the condemned there is in my judgment a different metric system for those of us who care deeply about human rights who care deeply about just for those of you who care about the rule of law I think we ultimately have to sometimes step back from the metrics that have been given us how much money do you make how many cases have you won who knows your name how many people know you what kind of crowd was drawn to this I think that those are understand those metrics I'm not urging or suggesting that they're not valid but there's another metric system that matters and I'll end with this I think that the metric system that matters is a system that is defined by how willing we are and to get proximate to change narratives to be hopeful to do uncomfortable things and even in that context how we're going to protect the legacy of the things that we care about I met a man giving a talk I've been talking about a lot recently because he's just an amazing person I was giving this talk in a church and I was in this church and this man came into the back he was in a wheelchair and he was an older black man he was staring at me the whole time I was talking and I just thought he was angry because he had this very stern look on his face and he was distracting me actually but I got through my talk and at the end of the talk people came out they were very nice very polite this man kept staring me staring at me in the back and eventually he got some little boy to wheel him up to me and I was standing up there trying to figure out what this guy was going to do he came up with this very aggressive look on his face and he got in front of me in his wheelchair and he leaned forward he put his hand up and he said do you know what you're doing and I stepped back I was kind of taken aback and then he asked me again he said do you know what you're doing I started mumbling something I don't even remember what I tried to say to him and he said one less time he said do you know what you're doing and then he said I'm going to tell you what you're doing and then he looked at me he says you're beating the drum for justice and I was so moved he says you're beating the drum for justice and then he said you keep beating the drum for justice I was so moved and then he said come here come here come here and he grabbed me by my jacket and he pulled me into the wheelchair and he turned his head he's I'm going to show you something I'm going to show you something he turned his head he said you see the scar I had behind my right ear is that I got that scar trying to register people to vote in Greene County Alabama in 1963 he turned his head he said you see this cut down here see to see that scar is I got that in Philadelphia Mississippi working on Freedom Summer to try to get people registered to vote turned his head he said you see this dark spot he said that's my bruise I got that bruise in Birmingham Alabama during the Children's Crusade in 1965 and then this man looked at me and he had tears in his eyes he's I'm going to tell you something young man he says people look at me and they think I'm some old man in a wheelchair covered with cuts and bruises and scars he said but I'm going to tell you these aren't my cuts these aren't my bruises these aren't my scars he said these are my medals of Honor there is another metric system when we are trying to achieve justice and it reflects the hearts and minds of people who have done uncomfortable things hopeful things intimate things to elevate that part of our society that needs elevation that parts of ourselves that need elevation in service of human rights and service of justice and service of this quest to create greater equality greater fairness and greater opportunity I'm excited to be in this country again it's a wonderful place really enjoy my time here I'm excited to be in a room with so many of you who have an interest in hearing somebody talk about the kinds of things that I talk about but I'm mostly excited because I believe there are a lot of people in this space who are prepared to stand when others are sitting who are prepared to speak when it is required who really want to get proximate who really believe in changing their - who got some hope and who are prepared to do some uncomfortable things that excites me because that's how we create a better world a world where justice really can prevail and that means a great deal to me as I continue my work and go back to America thank you so very much for this time okay we have some time for questions we are pushing the time limit but we'll take three so if you could please put your hand up we've got microphones stand up state your name your organization and please keep the comm out of questions brief and not comments who's the first volunteered in the frontier Thank You Bryan thanks very much my name is Ryan Rosario I thoroughly enjoyed it can you talk about the challenges when you're up against to see the corporate system where you know prisons especially there's such a lot of money that people are making out of building prisons particularly and also then I suppose to some extent even with the infiltration of Bob you know tanks on the streets and policing being infiltrated by you know armed type of person yeah that culprit I'm sure thanks yeah you're absolutely right that one of the real challenges we have in America right now is that we have privatized this industry with so much growth and with so much opportunity of course the business community the corporate community came into that and they began building private prisons which now are dependent on maintaining a high level of incarceration we've got about a million people in our prisons that are not a threat to public safety we declared this misguided war on drugs and we put people in jails and prisons for simple possession of marijuana for low-level offenses we've got these mandatory sentences I represent people who've written bad checks for 50 or 60 dollars and now serving life in prison because of them prior conviction and these corporations have an interest in keeping those people in jails and prisons because that's their economic model is I do think it's been deeply deeply corrupted of a system that is designed to provide justice because we don't have anything to counterbalance that we've got them spending millions of dollars to create new crimes in States and to make sure that reforms don't get passed the counterbalance which is what I'm hopeful about is that we spend we're spending so much money that we've now put ourselves in a corner where we cannot sustain this level of spending we spent six billion dollars on jails in prisons in 1980 eighty billion dollars last year eighty billion dollars to keep people in jail in prison in some states they spend sixty five seventy thousand dollars a year to keep somebody in custody and you think what you could do with half of that to keep somebody out of harm's way to keep them from preventing crimes right and so that dynamic is a very real threat but I'm hopeful that the costs and the burden because we now can't finance education we can't finance Health and Human Services and a lot of jurisdictions will cause us to turn around it's going to be a struggle much harder than it would have been 15 years ago and it's one of the reasons why I think every society needs to be quite quite careful about allowing private interests monetize interests to come in to the punishment business and it does have implications for the policing issue as well because when you have so many people in jails in prisons you begin to suspect that everybody is a criminal even when they're not doing anything criminal and that's in some ways being kind of advanced by these corporate interests we've actually been organizing a boycott sort of a pressure on these companies and corporations including their their shareholding companies to get out of the business of human suffering you know we've gotten to the point now if you use the words human trafficking you can generate a lot of government activity to disrupt it to kind of to to kind of pursue it to arrest people to prosecute people everybody's behind prosecuting human traffickers this is a different kind of human trafficking it's really exploiting illness and vulnerability and disability and addiction and making money from it by keeping these people in conditions of confinement that are brutal and horrific and we're really quite in tension about trying to disrupt that through the same strategies that have disrupted corporate access in other contexts of the question hi thank you um you said that your clients are getting younger and younger and um it seems kind of contrary to seeing as we're learning more about how the brain doesn't fully mature until you know age 25 I was just wondering if you hadn't any theories as to why that is and what we could possibly do about it yeah no you're absolutely right I'll answer the why part first I think it's again narrative right we had in the States a bunch of criminologist going around the country who are basically talking about how some children aren't really children and they had these data to suggest that they were going to be pikes peaks increases in violent crime in certain communities that ended up being false and wrong but they went around saying that some kids look like kids talk like kids but they're not kids they are quote super predators they use that term to characterize a generation of children mostly black and brown boys and it was very effective every state lowered their minimum age for trying children as adults we created this pathways into adult jails and prisons we even created what we are still calling a schoolhouse to jailhouse pipeline when we put police in schools and we started arresting you know five and six and seven year old children we detained and suspended and expelled thousands of kids because we believed them to be in the early stages of becoming a super predator and that narrative was so powerful that it shifted things and that's how the clients got younger the counter narrative is first saying that all children are children and we can prove it because we've now got new neuroscience and new a behavioral science that actually allows us to show through brain imaging the differences between child children and adults the capacity to kind of do complex thinking their capacity to manage stress and trauma is very very different every parent knew it but we actually had to prove it and when we went to the Supreme Court to win these cases banning mandatory life without parole it's embarrassing how much of our brief was about adolescent development about brain science about the new technologies that allow to take pictures of the neurological differences between children and adults and in some ways proving it in that scientific way became a necessary strategy to overcome this narrative of the super predator and it's why I'm so focused on narrative as a key component of how we protect basic rights particularly when people are disfavored who get branded and demonized you've got to have a counter narrative in my judgement thanks Brian um my name is Matt I just quick question I just want to get your thoughts more and then the balance between narrative and hope it seems that when people obviously if the narrative is I guess is too confronting or too grim people lose hopeless oh it can seem hopeless and in the converse potentially what I guess maybe has happened with America they've twisted that narrow or refocused it in an attempt to maybe instill hope um yeah I'm just interested in your thoughts on getting that balance yeah that's a great question I do think that oftentimes we don't look at the things that are difficult and painful because we are afraid that it will overwhelm us and somehow make us hopeless I actually it's interesting we did this report on lynching if you go to our website ej i'd org you can get the small version of it and i invite any of you who are interested in learning more to just email us and we'll send you more and people were saying oh that's going to be ugly it's going to be difficult but ultimately i am persuaded that actually knowing what you are capable of doing that is knowing the challenges that people have overcome actually is a pathway to power my clients my young clients we spend a lot of time talking to them about history you know and i it's funny because when I'm you know I'm 55 and until I was about 40 I never talked about the fact that my grandmother was a daughter of people who were enslaved my grandmother talked to me about slavery all the time because her father learned to read while he was a slave and it was dangerous it was illegally could have been sold or worse for letting anybody know he's and she would he would tell her these stories and she would tell me these Dory's but I was for a long time I just didn't want anybody to know that I didn't tell people I started my education in a colored school just thought that would that would diminish me in some way and I was uncomfortable with that you know some of the things I talk about in this book I don't know 15 years ago I would have been comfortable talking about being you know stopped by the police and being threatened with these police officers and things like that but ultimately I realized it if I've got any strength at all if I've got any will at law if I've got any ability and to fight at all it is rooted in that legacy of slavery it is rooted in that knowledge that my grandmother who couldn't do a lot of the things that I got to do was the most powerful strong gifted person I ever met it's rooted in the knowledge that my parents who couldn't go to school were nonetheless brilliant right and I live in a community Montgomery Alabama that is just haunted by these courageous spirits these people who have done extraordinary things they had so little and did so much I've got so much and there's more I've got to do and that's why I think that history actually ultimately gives us the hope we need I believe people say all your work sounds horrible sounds difficult a news people on death row bla bla bla and it is difficult it is challenging but I've never had to say like the people who came before me my head is bloody but not bad never had to say that nobody's ever hit me over the head and made my face so bloody but I had to remember to hold my chin up but the people who gave me the opportunities that I have had to say that and I find something hopeful in the fact that if they could do as much as they did with less maybe I can do more maybe I should do more maybe I have to do more with the more that I have and for me that is the balance really it's the ability to sometimes look back to know that you've got the capacity to do things moving forward it's funny because the older I get the more ambitious I become it's a weird sort of dynamic but I really do want to change America I really want to resurrect I want to change the visual landscape of that country I don't I don't I want you to be able to come to America and see a country that is soberly reflecting on its legacy of slavery I want to put these markers and monuments in spaces so that people begin talking about things we haven't talked about I want us to be a that's you that has some humility that understands our capacity to yes do great things but also to do terrible things and this need to be vigilant that we don't do more terrible than great and I never would have guessed I'd hear myself talking like this but the older I get the more ambitious I get because I do think the more I reflect on these difficulties the more hopeful I become that we say the things that have to be said we can make a difference and that's what really energizes me on that note of inspiration let's

Channel: Melbourne Law School

Views: 95,446

Rating: 4.7519379 out of 5

Keywords: law, justice, bryan stevenson, nyu

Id: CF4Gkr0LrwA

Length: 68min 31sec (4111 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2016