Just Mercy
By Bryan Stevenson
2015 Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperback Edition
ISBN 978-0-8129-8496-5
Reviewed by Don McCrabb
 


Catholic missionaries – especially ones serving in the United States – should read Just Mercy for what it can teach us about people on the peripheries, sin, the horizons it can open for mission, and for a glimpse of the holy found on death row.
 
A film (2019) was made of the same name. It is very good, and it is a dramatic introduction to some of the themes of the book, but the book has more scope and depth. The film depicts a major storyline of the book – the injustice of death row. The movie focuses on the relationship of Bryan Stevenson and Walter McMillian – his family gave him the nickname Johnny D – who was sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit.
 
What the movie does not address is how the criminal justice system deals with children, women, the mentally ill, and the severely handicapped. The criminal justice system in the United States is flawed. We often say that justice is blind in America, meaning it is impartial. That is a noble ideal. For far too many people, our criminal justice system is not impartial but punitive.
 
A society needs laws. When laws are broken, those who break them need to be held accountable. Is punishment, locking someone up in a jail, the only way, the best way, the humane way to hold someone accountable?
 
Add to the inherently flawed criminal justice system racism, prejudice, and corruption, and it is inevitable that innocent men, women, and children will suffer, even die. Those who are not innocent will be treated inhumanely with little – if any – chance for healing and reconciliation.
 
I believe the missionary will see in author Bryan Stevenson the path of mission itself. Bryan went beyond himself and stepped outside his comfort zone. He crossed huge cultural borders moving from the city life of the northeast to the rural south. He inserted himself into the “culture” of death row and cared for the people who live in that culture. Bryan found a periphery – people abused and forgotten by society. Societies create the periphery – often as an unintended consequence of its efforts to advance the common good. The true measure of a civilization is its ability to care for the people on the periphery. Often, in our society we hide the periphery – like death row – so we, as a society, do not have to look honestly at ourselves and see the failures of the criminal justice system we created.  
 
Bryan is not an evangelist. He does not preach Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of the world. He is a lawyer, working within the criminal justice system to right wrongs, improve how the system itself works, and change the system for the better. Bryan was raised a Christian, and his faith – and his community of faith – clearly fueled his passion for justice and his passion for people. At one point, near the end of the book, Bryan shares a moment when he hits rock-bottom – he is overwhelmed by the brokenness of the system and the lives, the people, broken by it. A friend shares with him a quote by Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk, who said “we are bodies of broken bones.” Bryan writes:
 
I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by the things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.
 


Is it justice that we humans seek or are we just trying to mitigate injustice? Bryan Stevenson, and his dedicated staff, who poured countless hours into Johnny D’s – Walter McMillian’s – case did not achieve justice. What they did was heroic, but it was not justice. The people who injured Johnny D – who robbed him of 8 years of his life – were never held accountable for laws they broke. Johnny D was freed from death row, but was he made whole again?
 
Justice is the harmony and goodness of rightly ordered human relationships. If the glory of God is the human being fully alive, then justice is the Kingdom of God. Sadly, the evidence is overwhelming. We no longer hunger and thirst for justice. We have reduced justice to a game with winners and losers based more on fear than faith in what we, as human beings, can achieve. God, it seems, has more faith in humanity that we do.
 
Frankly, the criminal justice system would seem hopeless, save the possibility of mercy. Mercy is freedom from the consequences of injustice that creates a space for healing, restoration, and reconciliation. The heroic efforts of Bryan Stevenson and his staff did not secure mercy for Walter McMillian. They were merciful to the broken and racist criminal justice system operating in Monroe County, Alabama. No, that is too small a thing. The mercy they unleashed is for all of us who have abandoned our ideals so we can mitigate our fears, who have used the law to hurt rather than heal, who have closed our eyes to the systemic sin of our criminal justice system. What does it say about us when we would rather crucify an innocent man than do the hard and painful work of conversion?
 
Justice and mercy need faith. If we have lost it, we can find it again. If it is weak, we can strengthen it. If it is lazy, we can work it.
 
We are missionaries. We are with and for people in their context. The context we find ourselves in, today, is a country that has abandoned its own ideals, that has succumbed to fear and political theater. It is here, among these people, that we must witness to the Kingdom of God. We must proclaim the promise of justice and insist on the hope of mercy. Why? Because we believe in the inexhaustible power of faith in Jesus who came, not to condemn the world, but to save it.
 
May 9, 2020


Dr. Donald R. McCrabb is Executive Director of the United States Catholic Mission Association. Don served over twenty years in mission to higher education and twelve years in priestly fo