“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson. Mixing commentary and reportage, he adroitly juxtaposes triumph and failure, neither of which is in short supply, against an unfolding backdrop of the saga of Walter McMillian, an innocent black Alabaman sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of an 18-year-old white woman. It will come as no surprise to those who have heard Stevenson speak or perused any of his briefs that “Just Mercy” is an easy read - a work of style, substance and clarity. Now 54, Stevenson has made his latest contribution to criminal justice in the form of an inspiring memoir titled “Just Mercy.” Stevenson, the visionary founder and executive director of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, surely has done as much as any other living American to vindicate the innocent and temper justice with mercy for the guilty - efforts that have brought him, among myriad honors, a MacArthur genius grant and honorary degrees from Yale, Penn and Georgetown. Alabama, the adopted stomping ground of Bryan Stevenson, champion of the damned. And nowhere, let us pray, are matters worse than in the hard Heart of Dixie, a.k.a. Rob Warden is executive director emeritus of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.Ĭriminal justice in America sometimes seems more criminal than just - replete with error, malfeasance, racism and cruel, if not unusual, punishment, coupled with stubborn resistance to reform and a failure to learn from even its most glaring mistakes.

Just mercy a story of justice and redemption