Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

he had worked at the mill or the factory or had had some other unskilled job—the kind that most poor black people in South Alabama worked

Southern Prisoners Defense Committee

Harvard, I could study law while pursuing a graduate degree in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government,

To be honest, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a lawyer.

Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.

“You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close,” she told me all the time.

“Bryan,” he said at some point during our short flight, “capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment.’