Chapter Fifteen

Broken

Walter’s decline came quickly. The moments of confusion got longer and longer. He started forgetting things he had done just a few hours earlier. The details of his business slipped away from him, and managing work became complicated in ways he couldn’t understand, which depressed him. At some point I went over his records with him, and he’d been selling things at a fraction of their worth and losing a lot of money.

A film crew from Ireland came to Alabama to make a short documentary about the death penalty that would feature Walter’s case and the cases of two other Alabama death row prisoners. James “Bo” Cochran had been released after spending nearly twenty years on Alabama’s death row; a new trial was awarded after federal courts reversed his conviction because of racial bias during jury selection. At his new trial, a racially diverse jury found him not guilty of murder, and he was freed. The third man featured in the film, Robert Tarver, also adamantly maintained his innocence. The prosecutor later admitted that his jury had been illegally selected in a racially discriminatory manner, but courts refused to review the claim because the defense lawyer failed to make an adequate objection, so Tarver was executed.

We hosted a premiere of the film at our office, and I invited Walter and Bo to address the audience. About seventy-five people from the community gathered in EJI’s meeting room, where we screened the film. Walter struggled. He was more terse than usual and looked at me frantically whenever someone asked him a question. I told him that he wouldn’t have to do any more presentations. His sister told me that he’d started wandering in the evenings and getting lost. He began drinking heavily, something he’d never done before. He told me that he was anxious all the time and that the alcohol calmed his nerves. Then one day he collapsed. He was at a hospital in Mobile when they reached me in Montgomery. I drove down to speak with his doctor, who told me that Walter had advancing dementia, likely trauma-induced, and that he would need constant care. The doctor also said the dementia would progress and that Walter would likely become incapacitated.

We met with Walter’s family at our office and agreed that he should move to Huntsville to live with a relative who could provide consistent care. It worked for a while, but Walter became agitated there, and he was out of money, so he moved back to Monroeville, where his sister Katie Lee agreed to watch him. For a while, he did much better in Monroeville, but then his condition began to deteriorate again.

Soon, Walter needed to be moved into the sort of facility that provided care for the elderly and infirm. Most places wouldn’t take him because he had been convicted of a felony. Even when we explained that he was wrongfully convicted and later proved innocent, we couldn’t get anyone to admit him. EJI now had a social worker on staff, Maria Morrison, who began working with Walter and his family to find a suitable placement for him. It was an extremely frustrating and maddening process. Maria eventually found a place in Montgomery that agreed to take Walter for a short stay—no longer than ninety days. He went there while we figured out what to do next.

The whole thing made me incredibly sad. Our workload was increasing too quickly. I had just argued Joe Sullivan’s case at the U. S. Supreme Court, and I was anxiously awaiting that judgment. The Alabama Supreme Court had scheduled execution dates for several death row prisoners who had completed the appeals process. For years we’d been fearing what would happen when a sizable number of condemned prisoners exhausted their appeals. More than a dozen people were now vulnerable to execution dates, and we knew that it would be extremely difficult to block those executions given the current legal climate in Alabama, combined with the limits on federal court review in capital cases. I met with our staff, and we made the difficult decision to represent all of the people who were scheduled for execution and didn’t have counsel.

A few weeks later, I found myself deeply distressed. I was worried about the execution dates that were set for every other month in Alabama. I was worried about what the U. S. Supreme Court would do with all of the children condemned to die in prison, now that it had the issue to consider. I was worried about our funding and whether we had enough staff and resources to meet the demands of our expanding docket. I was worried about several clients who were struggling. When I got to the Montgomery nursing home to see Walter a week after he’d arrived there, I felt like I had been worrying all day.

Walter sat in a common room with older, heavily medicated people watching TV. It was jarring to see him sitting in a hospital gown among people so compromised and infirm. I stopped before I walked into the room and looked at him; he hadn’t seen me yet. He looked sleepy and unhappy slumped in a reclining chair, his head rested on his hand. He was staring in the general direction of the television, but it didn’t seem like he was watching the program. He wasn’t shaved, and something he’d eaten had crusted on his chin. There was a sadness in his eyes I had never seen before. Looking at him, I felt my heart sink; a part of me wanted to leave. A nurse saw me standing outside the room and asked if I was there to see someone. I told her I was, and she smiled sympathetically.

When the nurse escorted me into the room, I walked up to Walter and put my hand on his shoulder. He stirred and looked up, then gave me a broad smile.

“Hey, there he is! ” He sounded cheerful, and suddenly he looked like himself. He started laughing and stood up. I gave him a hug. I was relieved; he hadn’t recognized some family members recently.

“How you doing? ” I asked him while he leaned on me slightly.

“Well, you know, I’m doing okay. ” We started walking to his room where we could talk privately.

“Are you feeling better? ”

It was not a sensible question, but I was a little unnerved seeing Walter like this. He’d lost weight, and his gown wasn’t tied in the back, which he didn’t seem to notice. I stopped him.

“Wait, let me help you out. ”

I tied the strings on his gown and we continued to his room. He moved slowly and cautiously, sliding his feet in his slippers across the floor as if he’d forgotten how to pick them up. He grabbed my arm a few feet down the hall and leaned on me as we slowly made our way.

“Well, I told them people I got plenty of cars, plenty of cars. ” He spoke emphatically, with much more excitement than I’d heard from him in a while. “All different colors, shapes, and sizes. The man say, ‘Your cars don’t work. ’ I told him my cars do work, too. ” He looked at me. “You may have to talk to that man about my cars, okay? ”

I nodded and thought of his field of metal. “You do have lots of cars—”

“I know! ” He cut me off and started laughing. “See, I told them people, but they didn’t believe me. I told them. ” He was smiling and chuckling now, but he looked confused and not himself. “Them people think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I know exactly what I’m talking about. ” He spoke defiantly. We reached his room, and he sat down on his bed while I pulled up a chair. He became still and quiet and suddenly looked very worried.

“Well, it looks like I’m back here, ” he said with a heavy sigh. “They done put me back on death row. ”

His voice was mournful.

“I tried, I tried, I tried, but they just won’t let me be. ” He looked me in the eye. “Why they want to do somebody like they’re doing me is something I’ll never understand. Why are people like that? I mind my own business. I don’t hurt nobody. I try to do right, and no matter what I do, people come along, put me right back on death row … for nothing. Nothing. I ain’t done nothing to nobody. Nothing, nothing, nothing. ”

He was becoming agitated so I put my hand on his arm.

“Hey, it’s okay, ” I said as gently as I could. “It’s not as bad as it seems. I think—”

“You’re going to get me out, right? You’re going to get me off the row again? ”

“Walter, this isn’t the row. You haven’t been feeling well, and so you’re here so you can get better. This is a hospital. ”

“They’ve got me again, and you’ve got to help me. ”

He was starting to panic, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then he started crying. “Please get me out of here. Please? They’re going to execute me for no good reason, and I don’t want to die in no electric chair. ” He was crying now with a forcefulness that alarmed me.

I moved to the bed next to him and put my arm around him. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Walter, it’s going to be all right. It’s going to be all right. ”

He was trembling, and I got up so that he could lie down. He stopped crying as his head hit the pillow. I began talking to him softly about trying to make arrangements so he could stay at home and how we needed to find help, and that the problem was that it really wasn’t safe for him to be alone. I could see his eyes drooping as I spoke, and within a matter of minutes he was sound asleep. I’d been with him less than twenty minutes. I pulled his blankets up and watched him sleep.

In the hallway, I asked one of the nurses how he’d been doing.

“He’s really sweet, ” she said. “We love having him here. He’s nice to the staff, very polite and gentle. Sometimes he gets upset and starts talking about prison and death row. We didn’t know what he was talking about, but one of the girls looked him up on the Internet, and that’s when we read what happened to him. Somebody said someone like that is not supposed to be here, but I told them that our job is to help anybody who needs help. ”

“Well, the State acknowledged that he didn’t do anything wrong. He is innocent. ”

The nurse looked at me sweetly. “I know, Mr. Stevenson, but a lot of people here think that once you go to prison, whether you belong there or not, you become a dangerous person, and they don’t want to have nothing to do with you. ”

“Well, that’s a shame. ” It was all I could muster.

I left the facility shaken and disturbed. My cell phone rang as soon as I stepped outside. The Alabama Supreme Court had just scheduled another death row prisoner’s execution. One of EJI’s best lawyers was now serving as our deputy director. Randy Susskind interned with us as a law student when he was at Georgetown University and became a staff attorney right out of law school. He proved to be an outstanding litigator and an extremely effective project manager. I called Randy and we discussed what we would do to block the execution, although we both knew that it was going to be difficult to obtain a stay at this stage. I told Randy about my visit with Walter and how painful it had been to see him. We were silent on the phone for a while, something that happens a lot when we talk.

The increasing rate of executions in Alabama went against the national trend. Media coverage of all the innocent people wrongly convicted had an effect on the death-sentencing rate in America, which began to decline in 1999. But the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001, and threats of terrorism and global conflict seemed to disrupt the progress toward a repeal of capital punishment. But then a few years later, rates of execution and death sentencing were once again decreasing. By 2010, the number of annual executions fell to less than half the number in 1999. Several states were seriously debating ending the death penalty. New Jersey, New York, Illinois, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Maryland all took capital punishment off the books. Even in Texas, where nearly 40 percent of the nearly 1, 400 modern-era executions in the United States had taken place, the death-sentencing rate had dropped dramatically, and the pace of executions had finally slowed. Alabama’s death-sentencing rate had also dropped from the late 1990s, but it was still the highest in the country. By the end of 2009, Alabama had the nation’s highest execution rate per capita.

Every other month someone was facing execution, and we were scrambling to keep up. Jimmy Callahan, Danny Bradley, Max Payne, Jack Trawick, and Willie McNair were executed in 2009. We had actively tried to block these executions, mostly by arguing about the way the executions were being carried out. In 2004, I argued a case at the U. S. Supreme Court that raised questions about the constitutionality of certain methods of execution. States had largely abandoned execution by electrocution, gas chamber, firing squad, and hanging in favor of lethal injection. Viewed as more sterile and serene, lethal injection had become the most common method for the sanctioned killing of people in virtually every death state. But questions about the painlessness and efficacy of lethal injection were emerging.

In the case I argued before the Court, we challenged the constitutionality of Alabama’s protocols for lethal injection. David Nelson had very compromised veins. He was in his sixties and had been a drug addict earlier in his life, making access to his veins difficult. Members of the correctional staff were not able to insert an IV in his arm in order to carry out his execution without medical complications. The Hippocratic oath prevents doctors and medical personnel from participating in executions, so Alabama officials planned for untrained correctional staff to take a knife and make a two-inch incision in Mr. Nelson’s arm or groin so that they could find a vein in which to inject him with toxins and kill him. We argued that without anesthesia, the procedure would be needlessly painful and cruel.

The State of Alabama had argued that procedural rules barred Mr. Nelson from challenging the constitutionality of the protocol. The U. S. Supreme Court intervened. The legal question was whether condemned prisoners could file civil rights actions to challenge arguably unconstitutional methods of execution. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was especially active during the oral argument, asking me lots of questions about the propriety of correctional staff engaging in medical procedures. The Court ruled unanimously in our favor, deciding that a condemned prisoner could challenge unconstitutional methods of execution by filing a civil rights case. David Nelson died of natural causes a year after we won relief.

Following the Nelson litigation, questions about the drug combination that most states used to carry out lethal injections arose. Many states were using drugs that had been banned for animal euthanasia because they caused a painful and torturous death. The drugs weren’t readily available in the United States, and so states had started importing them from European manufacturers. When the news spread that the drugs were being used in executions in the United States, European producers stopped making them available. The drugs became scarce, which prompted state correctional authorities to obtain them illegally, without complying with FDA rules that regulate the interstate sale and transfer of drugs. Drug raids of state correctional facilities were a bizarre consequence of this surreal drug dealing to carry out executions. The U. S. Supreme Court, in Baze v. Rees, later held that the execution protocols and drug combinations weren’t inherently unconstitutional. The executions would resume.

What that meant for Alabama death row prisoners and EJI staff was seventeen executions in thirty months. It happened at the same time that we were representing children sentenced to life without parole all over the country. I’d flown to South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Arkansas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and California to argue cases on behalf of condemned children over the preceding months. The courts, procedures, and players were all different, and the travel was exhausting. We were still very actively litigating on behalf of condemned children in Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—Southern states where we had litigated previously. And, of course, our Alabama docket had never been more jammed or demanding. In a two-week period, I had been in California visiting Antonio Nuñ ez at a remote prison in the middle of the state before arguing his case in an appellate court there, while also actively trying to win relief for Trina Garnett in Pennsylvania and Ian Manuel in Florida. I had visited Ian and Joe Sullivan in a Florida prison, and both of them were struggling. Prison officials weren’t allowing Joe to have regular access to his wheelchair, and he had fallen repeatedly and injured himself. Ian was still in isolation. Trina’s medical condition was worsening.

I was having an increasingly difficult time managing it all. At the same time, Walter’s authorized length of stay at the Montgomery facility was up, so we frantically made arrangements for him to move back home, where his sister would do the best she could to take care of him. It was a worrisome situation for him and his family, for all of us.

By the time Jimmy Dill was scheduled for execution in Alabama, the entire EJI staff was exhausted. The execution date couldn’t have come at a more difficult time. We had no prior involvement in Mr. Dill’s case, which meant getting up to speed in the thirty days before his scheduled execution. It was an unusual crime. Mr. Dill was accused of shooting someone during the course of a drug deal after an argument erupted. The shooting victim did not die; Mr. Dill was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. He was in jail for nine months awaiting trial while the victim was released from the hospital and was recovering fine. But after several months of caring for him at home, the victim’s wife apparently abandoned him and he became gravely ill. When he died, state prosecutors changed the charges against Mr. Dill from assault to capital murder.

Jimmy Dill suffered from an intellectual disability and had been sexually and physically abused throughout his childhood. He struggled with drug addiction until his arrest. He was appointed counsel who did very little to prepare the case for trial. Almost no investigation was done into the poor medical care the victim had received, care that constituted the actual cause of death. The state made a plea offer of twenty years, but it was never adequately communicated to Mr. Dill, so he went to trial, was convicted, and was sentenced to death. The appellate courts affirmed his conviction and sentence. He couldn’t find volunteer counsel for his postconviction appeals, so most of his legal claims were procedurally barred because he had missed the filing deadlines.

When we first looked at Mr. Dill’s case a few weeks before his scheduled execution, no court had reviewed critical issues about the reliability of his conviction and sentence. Capital murder requires an intent to kill, and there was a persuasive argument that there was no intent to kill in this case and that poor health care had caused the victim’s death. Most gunshot victims don’t die after nine months, and it was surprising that the state was seeking the death penalty in this case. And the U. S. Supreme Court had previously banned the execution of people with mental retardation, so Mr. Dill should have been shielded from the death penalty because of his intellectual disability, but no one had investigated or presented evidence in support of the claim.

Along with his other challenges, Mr. Dill had enormous difficulty speaking. He had a speech impediment that caused him to stutter badly. When he became excited or agitated, it got worse. Because he had not previously had a lawyer who would see him or speak to him, Mr. Dill saw our intervention as something of a miracle. I sent my young lawyers to meet with him regularly after we got involved, and Mr. Dill called me frequently.

We tried frantically to get the Courts to issue a stay based on the new issues we’d uncovered, to no avail. Courts are deeply resistant to reviewing claims once a condemned prisoner has completed the appeals process the first time. Even the claim of mental retardation was thwarted because no court would grant a hearing at such a late stage. Although I knew the odds were against us, Mr. Dill’s severe disabilities had made me privately hopeful that maybe a judge would be concerned and at least let us present additional evidence. But every court told us, “Too late. ”

On the day of the scheduled execution, I once again found myself talking to a man who was about to be strapped down and killed. I had asked Mr. Dill to call throughout the day because we were waiting to hear the outcome of our final stay request at the U. S. Supreme Court. Early in the day he had sounded anxious, but he kept insisting that things would work out, and he told me he wasn’t going to give up hope. He tried to express his gratitude for what we had done in the weeks leading up to his execution. He thanked me for sending staff down to visit him regularly. We had located family members with whom he had reconnected. We told him that we believed that he had been unfairly convicted and sentenced. Even though we hadn’t yet persuaded a court to stay his execution, our efforts seemed to help him cope. But then the Supreme Court denied our final request for a stay of execution, and there was nothing else to do. He would be executed in less than an hour, and I had to tell him that the Court would not grant him a stay. I felt overwhelmed.

We spoke on the phone shortly before he was taken into the execution chamber. Listening to him was hard. He was stuttering worse than usual and having great difficulty getting his words out. The imminent execution had unnerved him, but he was trying valiantly to express his gratitude for our efforts. I sat for a long time holding the phone while he strained to speak. It was heartbreaking. At one point, I remembered something I had completely forgotten until that moment.

When I was a boy, my mother took me to church. When I was about ten years old, I was outside of our church with my friends, one of whom had brought a visiting relative to the service. The visiting child was a shy, skinny boy about my height who was clinging to his cousin nervously. He didn’t say anything as the group of us chatted away. I asked him where he was from, and when this child tried to speak he stumbled horribly. He had a severe speech impediment and couldn’t get his mouth to cooperate. He couldn’t even say the name of the town where he lived. I had never seen someone stutter like that; I thought he must have been joking or playing around, so I laughed. My friend looked at me worriedly, but I didn’t stop laughing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. It was a mix of horror, anger, and shame, all focused on me. It stopped my laughing instantly. I’d always felt adored by my mom, so I was unnerved when she called me over.

When I got to her, she was very angry with me. “What are you doing? ”

“What? I didn’t do …”

“Don’t you ever laugh at someone because they can’t get their words out right. Don’t you ever do that! ”

“I’m sorry. ” I was devastated to be reprimanded by my mom so harshly. “Mom, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. ”

“You should know better, Bryan. ”

“I’m sorry. I thought …”

“I don’t want to hear it, Bryan. There is no excuse, and I’m very disappointed in you. Now, I want you to go back over there and tell that little boy that you’re sorry. ”

“Yes, ma’am. ”

“Then I want you to give that little boy a hug. ”

“Huh? ”

“Then I want you to tell him that you love him. ” I looked up at her and, to my horror, saw that she was dead serious. I had reacted as apologetically as I possibly could, but this was way too much.

“Mom, I can’t go over and tell that boy I love him. People will—” She gave me that look again. I somberly turned around and returned to my group of friends. They had obviously seen my mother’s scolding; I could tell because they were all staring at me. I went up to the little boy who had struggled to speak.

“Look, man, I’m sorry. ”

I was genuinely apologetic for laughing and even more deeply regretful of the situation I had put myself in. I looked over at my mother, who was still staring at me. I lunged at the boy to give him a very awkward hug. I think I startled him by grabbing him like that, but when he realized that I was trying to hug him, his body relaxed and he hugged me back.

My friends looked at me oddly as I spoke.

“Uh … also, uh … I love you! ” I tried to say it as insincerely as I could get away with and half-smiled as I spoke. I was still hugging the boy, so he couldn’t see the disingenuous look on my youthful face.

It made me feel less weird to smile like it was a joke. But then the boy hugged me tighter and whispered in my ear. He spoke flawlessly, without a stutter and without hesitation.

“I love you, too. ” There was such tenderness and earnestness in his voice, and just like that, I thought I would start crying.

I was in my office, talking to Jimmy Dill on the night of his execution, and I realized I was thinking about something that had happened nearly forty years earlier. I also realized that I was crying. The tears were sliding down my cheeks—runaways that escaped when I wasn’t paying attention. Mr. Dill was still laboring to get his words out, desperately trying to thank me for trying to save his life. As it got closer and closer to the time of his execution, it became harder for him to speak. The guards were making noise behind him, and I could tell he was upset that he couldn’t get his words out right, but I didn’t want to interrupt him. So I sat there and let the tears fall down my face.

The harder he tried to speak, the more I wanted to cry. The long pauses gave me too much time to think. He would never have been convicted of capital murder if he had just had the money for a decent lawyer. He would never have been sentenced to death if someone had investigated his past. It all felt tragic. His struggle to form words and his determination to express gratitude reinforced his humanity for me, and it made thinking about his impending execution unbearable. Why couldn’t they see it, too? The Supreme Court had banned the execution of people with intellectual disability, but states like Alabama refused to assess in any honest way whether the condemned are disabled. We’re supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances, but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get the legal assistance they need—all so we can kill them with less resistance.

On the phone with Mr. Dill, I thought about all of his struggles and all the terrible things he’d gone through and how his disabilities had broken him. There was no excuse for him to have shot someone, but it didn’t make sense to kill him. I began to get angry about it. Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right?

I tried not to let Mr. Dill hear me crying. I tried not to show him that he was breaking my heart. He finally got his words out.

“Mr. Bryan, I just want to thank you for fighting for me. I thank you for caring about me. I love y’all for trying to save me. ”

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore.

For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice.

I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff, which had grown to nearly forty people. And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this? ”

It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice.

I do what I do because I’m broken, too.

My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.

Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. 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 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.

We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.

But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations—over the things they’d done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

All of sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

When I was a college student, I had a job working as a musician in a black church in a poor section of West Philadelphia. At a certain point in the service I would play the organ before the choir began to sing. The minister would stand, spread his arms wide, and say, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. ” I never fully appreciated what he was saying until the night Jimmy Dill was executed.

I had the privilege of meeting Rosa Parks when I first moved to Montgomery. She would occasionally come back to Montgomery from Detroit, where she lived, to visit dear friends. Johnnie Carr was one of those friends. Ms. Carr had befriended me, and I quickly learned that she was a force of nature—charismatic, powerful, and inspiring. She had been, in many ways, the true architect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. She had organized people and transportation during the boycott and done a lot of the heavy lifting to make it the first successful major action of the modern Civil Rights Movement, and she succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. She was in her late seventies when I first met her. “Now Bryan, I’m going to call you from time to time and I’m going ask you to do this or that and when I ask you to do something you’re going to say ‘Yes, ma’am, ’ okay? ”

I chuckled—and I said, “Yes, ma’am. ” She would sometimes call just to check in on me, and on occasion she would invite me over when Ms. Parks came to town.

“Bryan, Rosa Parks is coming to town, and we’re going to meet over at Virginia Durr’s house to talk. Do you want come over and listen? ”

When Ms. Carr called me, she either wanted me to go some place to “speak” or to go some place to “listen. ” Whenever Ms. Parks came to town, I’d be invited to listen.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. I’d love to come over and listen, ” I’d always say, affirming that I understood what to do when I arrived.

Ms. Parks and Ms. Carr would meet at Virginia Durr’s home. Ms. Durr was also a larger-than-life personality. Her husband, Clifford Durr, was an attorney who had represented Dr. King throughout his time in Montgomery. Ms. Durr was determined to confront injustice well into her nineties. She frequently asked me to accompany her to various places or invited me over to dinner. EJI started renting her home for our law students and staff during the summers when she was away.

When I would go over to Ms. Durr’s home to listen to these three formidable women, Rosa Parks was always very kind and generous with me. Years later, I would occasionally meet her at events in other states, and I ended up spending a little time with her. But mostly, I just loved hearing her and Ms. Carr and Ms. Durr talk. They would talk and talk and talk. Laughing, telling stories, and bearing witness about what could be done when people stood up (or sat down, in Ms. Parks’s case). They were always so spirited together. Even after all they’d done, their focus was always on what they still planned to do for civil rights.

The first time I met Ms. Parks, I sat on Ms. Durr’s front porch in Old Cloverdale, a residential neighborhood in Montgomery, and I listened to the three women talk for two hours. Finally, after watching me listen for all that time, Ms. Parks turned to me and sweetly asked, “Now, Bryan, tell me who you are and what you’re doing. ” I looked at Ms. Carr to see if I had permission to speak, and she smiled and nodded at me. I then gave Ms. Parks my rap.

“Yes, ma’am. Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we’re trying to help people on death row. We’re trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We’re trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who’ve been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We’re trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don’t get the legal help they need. We’re trying to help people who are mentally ill. We’re trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We’re trying to do something about poverty and the hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-making roles in the justice system. We’re trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We’re trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors—” I realized that I had gone on way too long, and I stopped abruptly. Ms. Parks, Ms. Carr, and Ms. Durr were all looking at me.

Ms. Parks leaned back, smiling. “Ooooh, honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired. ” We all laughed. I looked down, a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked to me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, “That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave. ” All three women nodded in silent agreement and for just a little while they made me feel like a young prince.

I looked at the clock. It was 6: 30 P. M. Mr. Dill was dead by now. I was very tired, and it was time to stop all this foolishness about quitting. It was time to be brave. I turned to my computer, and there was an email inviting me to speak to students in a poor school district about remaining hopeful. The teacher told me that she had heard me speak and wanted me to be a role model for the students and inspire them to do great things. Sitting in my office, drying my tears, reflecting on my brokenness, it seemed like a laughable notion. But then I thought about those kids and the overwhelming and unfair challenges that too many children in this country have to overcome, and I started typing a message saying that I would be honored to come.

On the drive home, I turned on the car radio, seeking news about Mr. Dill’s execution. I found a station airing a news report. It was a local religious station, but in their news broadcast there was no mention of the execution. I left the station on, and before long a preacher began a sermon. She started with scripture.

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in your weakness. ” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I turned off the radio station, and as I slowly made my way home I understood that even as we are caught in a web of hurt and brokenness, we’re also in a web of healing and mercy. I thought of the little boy who hugged me outside of church, creating reconciliation and love. I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.

I drove home broken and brokenhearted about Jimmy Dill. But I knew I would come back the next day. There was more work to do.

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