Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 211 of 447 · 20 per page

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I see in The Times today that Sir Denis Beckwith, following calls in the House for the reform of sexual offence law, is to leave the DPP’s office and take a peerage. Oddly typical of the British way of getting rid of troublemakers by moving them up—implying as it does too some reward for the appalling things he has done. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to argue with him over law reform in the House—perhaps the only occasion in Hansard when a Noble Lord will have challenged another such who more or less sent him to prison. And he is a man I could hate, the one who more than anybody has been the inspiration of this ‘purge’ as he calls it, this crusade to eradicate male vice. Though one always treated him with contempt, he will now be a powerful voice in the Lords, with others like Winterton and Ammon—though beside their ninnyish rant he will be the more powerful in his cultured, bureaucratic smoothness. I have the image of him before me now in the courtroom at my sentencing, to which he had come out of pure vindictiveness, and of his handsome suaveté in the gallery, his flush and thrill of pride as I went down … It was Graham who answered the phone. ‘Oh Graham, it’s Will Beckwith—is Lord Nantwich there?’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, he’s dining at his Club this evening.’ ‘At Wicks’s? When will he be back?’ ‘I don’t expect him until late, sir.’ ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’ But tomorrow was too far away. I was so confused by this digest of disasters, I felt so stupid and so ashamed that I walked around the flat talking out loud, getting up and sitting down, scratching my crew-cut head as if I had lice. It was impossible so quickly to formulate a plan, but I felt the important thing was to go to Charles, to say something or other to him. It took me ages to get a cab, and as at last it locked and braked its way through the West End closing-time crowds, I found all my ideas of what I might do rattling away, leaving me in a queer empty panic. I left the cab in a jam a block from the Club and ran along the pavement and up the steps. The porter emerged from his cabin with an expression of moody servility and told me Charles had left quarter of an hour before. I hardly thanked him, but dawdled out again, realising that at this moment he was probably roaring along the Central Line on his way home. I drifted around in front of the Club as if waiting for somebody, hands in jacket-pockets, chewing my lip.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I wanted to know what they could make me feel, these images, whether I could go to him as he had asked; but of all the images of that day these struck with the least force, my father as a child and my father dying, they struck with almost no force at all. I couldn’t hold on to them, they slipped away as I remembered instead another image of my father, from the time after K. put an end to our friendship, when my father, too, finally broke with me. It was the end of a long series of events in that large house where the atmosphere had become unbearable; my father and I hardly spoke to each other, maybe both of us afraid of what we might say. He was gone more often, he stayed later at work and took more trips away, on whatever pretext heading to Chicago or New York, leaving my stepmother with me and the older of my sisters, who was still just a toddler. I can see now how unhappy my stepmother was, how often my father abandoned her and how trapped she must have felt, and I can see that if she and I fought it was because for both of us the other was a safer target than my father. We attacked each other for the slightest reason, for no reason at all, raising our voices and slamming doors; and one night, after a particularly vicious argument, when I had crossed a line the nature of which I no longer remember, my stepmother ordered me out of the house. She locked the door leading from the basement stairs, ensuring that at some point I would have to leave, which I did quickly, without waiting her out, escaping as I always did through the garage. I was angry as I walked the two or so miles to my mother’s house, but I was satisfied, too; they punished me all the time but they had never kicked me out, and whatever I had done it didn’t warrant that. I thought my father would agree with me, I was sure he would tell my stepmother to let me back in. I walked quickly, eager to get to my mother’s house and call him; he was in New York, I had the number of the hotel where he always stayed. I visited my mother most weekends but I didn’t often show up unannounced, so she knew something must be wrong when she opened the door. She asked me what had happened but I didn’t answer.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It would have been easy, for example, to have gone over Morningside Park on the west side or to have crossed the Grand Central railroad tracks at 12 5th Street on the east side, to wreak havoc in white neigh borhoods. The mob seems to have been mainly interested in something more potent and real than the white face, that is, in white power, and the principal damage done during the riot of the summer of 194-3 was to white business establish- 82 NO TES OF A NA TIVE SON ments in Harlem. It might have been a £<r bloodier story, of course, it� at the hour the riot began, these establishments had still been open. From the Hotel Braddock the mob fanned out, east and west along 12 5th Street, and for the entire le ngth of Lenox, Seventh, and Eighth avenues. Along each of these avenues, and along each major side street-II6 th, 12 5th, 13 5th, and so on-bars, stores, pawnshops, restaurants, even little lu ncheonettes had been smashed open and entered and looted-looted, it might be added, with more haste than ef ficiency. The shelves really looked as though a bomb had struck them. Cans of beans and soup and dog food, along with toilet paper, corn flakes, sardines, and milk tumbled every which way, and abandoned cash registers and cases of beer leaned crazily out of the splintered windows and were strewn along the avenues. Sheets, blankets, and clothing of every de scription formed a kind of path, as though people had dropped them while running. I truly had not realized that Harlem had so many stores until I saw them all smashed open; the first time the word wealth ever entered my mind in rela tion to Harlem was when I saw it scattered in the streets. But one's first, incongruous impression of plenty was countered immediately by an impression of waste. None of this was do ing anybody any good. It would have been better to have left the plate glass as it had been and the goods lying in the stores. It would have been better, but it would also have been intolerable, for Harlem had needed something to smash. To smash something is the ghetto's chronic need. Most of the time it is the members of the ghetto who smash each other, and themselves. But as long as the ghetto walls are standing there will always come a moment when these outlets do not work.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Nearly everyone on death row had been tried by an all-white or nearly all-white jury. Death row prisoner Jesse Morrison told Walter that his prosecutor in Barbour County had used twenty-one out of twenty-two peremptory strikes to exclude all the black people in the jury pool. Vernon Madison from Mobile said that the prosecutor struck all ten black people qualified for jury service in his case. Willie Tabb from Lamar County, Willie Williams from Houston County, Claude Raines from Jefferson County, Gregory Acres from Montgomery County, and Neil Owens from Russell County were among the many black men on death row who had been tried by all-white juries after prosecutors struck all of the African American prospective jurors. Earl McGahee was tried by an all-white jury in Dallas County, even though the county is 60 percent African American. In Albert Jefferson’s case, the prosecutor had organized the list of prospective jurors summoned to court into four groups of roughly twenty-five people each, identified as “strong,” “medium,” “weak,” and “black.” All twenty-six black people in the jury pool could be found on the “black” list, and the prosecutors excluded them all. Joe Duncan, Grady Bankhead, and Colon Guthrie were among some of the white condemned prisoners who told a similar story. District attorney Ted Pearson had to be concerned about the new Batson decision; he knew veteran civil rights lawyers like Chestnut and Boynton would not hesitate to object to racially discriminatory jury selection, even though he wasn’t too worried about Judge Robert E. Lee Key taking those objections seriously. But the extraordinary publicity surrounding the Morrison murder gave Pearson another idea. In high-profile cases, it’s fairly standard for defense lawyers to file a motion to change venue—to move the case from the county where the crime took place to a different county where there is less pretrial publicity and sentiment to convict. The motions are almost never granted, but every now and then an appellate court finds that the atmosphere in a county had been so prejudicial that the trial should have been moved. In Alabama, asking to change venue was an essentially futile act. Alabama courts had almost never reversed a conviction because the trial judge had refused to change venue. When the court scheduled a hearing in October 1987 on pretrial motions in Walter’s case, Chestnut and Boynton showed up with no expectation that any of their motions would be granted. They were more focused on preparing for trial, which was scheduled to begin in February 1988. The pretrial motion hearing was a formality. Chestnut and Boynton presented their change-of-venue motion. Pearson stood up and said that due to the extraordinary pretrial coverage of the Morrison murder, he agreed that the trial should be moved. Judge Key nodded sympathetically; Chestnut, who knew his way around the Alabama courts, was sure something bad was about to happen. He was also certain the judge and the DA had already conspired.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan cloaked themselves in the symbols of the Confederate South to intimidate and victimize thousands of black people. Nothing unnerved rural black settlements more than rumors about nearby Klan activity. For a hundred years, any sign of black progress in the South could trigger a white reaction that would invariably invoke Confederate symbols and talk of resistance. Confederate Memorial Day was declared a state holiday in Alabama at the turn of the century, soon after whites rewrote the state constitution to ensure white supremacy. (The holiday is still celebrated today.) When black veterans returned to the South after World War II, Southern politicians formed a “Dixiecrat” bloc to preserve racial segregation and white domination out of fear that military service might encourage black veterans to question racial segregation. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950s, after racial segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings. Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and state institutions shut down in his honor. At a pretrial hearing, I once argued against the exclusion of African Americans from the jury pool. In this particular rural Southern community, the population was about 27 percent black, but African Americans made up only 10 percent of the jury pool. After presenting the data and making my arguments about the unconstitutional exclusion of African Americans, the judge complained loudly. “I’m going to grant your motion, Mr. Stevenson, but I’ll be honest. I’m pretty fed up with people always talking about minority rights. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans…When is someone going to come to my courtroom and protect the rights of Confederate Americans?” The judge had definitely caught me off guard. I wanted to ask if being born in the South or living in Alabama made me a Confederate American, but I thought better of it. —

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Suddenly I was enraged for him, I felt the anger I was sure he must feel, that futile anger like a dry grinding of gears. But from a distance Mitko didn’t seem to feel anything at all; these were only my own thoughts, I knew, they brought me no nearer him, this man I had in some sense loved and who had never in the years I had known him been anything but alien to me. He set off again, shaking the cup of yogurt he had never lowered from his ear, and I watched him until he turned out of sight, headed toward the boulevard and the bus that would carry him away. I stood there for some time, gazing at the corner from which he had vanished. Then I stepped inside, and sitting where he had been just a moment before beside me, I lowered my face into my hands. I was in the middle of a sentence when there was a knock at the door and a woman entered my classroom without a word. I knew her, of course, she worked in the front office of my school, but there was something in her manner that checked my greeting before I spoke it, perhaps her silence or the oddly formal way she carried the single, unfolded page in her hand, so that she walked toward me through an atmosphere strangely ruffled or unquiet, in which my interrupted sentence still hung. The students perked up at her knock, not that they had been to that point bored exactly, but any interruption is welcome, and especially when it suggests some hidden drama, as when this woman, whom I considered almost a friend, who had always been kind to me and who surely thought she was doing me a kindness now, walked quickly but with a subdued manner to deliver me what she held. I found myself flustered as I took the page from her hand, standing awkward in front of students to whom a moment before I had been speaking freely, even eloquently, rehearsing thoughts that had burned for me once and that now were a repertoire of dull gestures, a custom. It was mid-September, the very beginning of the year; the sun beat down and the room, which was high and received the brunt of the morning light, was almost unbearably hot, despite the windows we had opened. It was toward these windows that I longed to look, not toward the page now in my hand but toward the trees and the field beyond them and the road and, though I had only a glimpse of it, the mountain that hovered beyond the huge blocks of government buildings. But of course I did look at the page, an e-mail that had been sent to the school’s address and that this woman, my friend or almost friend, had printed out to deliver by hand.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The violence is gratuitous and compulsive because the root of the violence is never examined. The root is rage. It is the rage, almost literally the howl, of a man who is being castrat ed. I do not think that I am the first person to notice this, but there is probably no greater (or more misleading) body of sexual myths in the world today than those which have proliferated around the figure of the American Negro. This means that he is penalized tc>r the guilty imagination of the white people who invest him with their hates and longings, and is the principal target of their sexual paranoia. Thus, when in Wright's pages a Negro male is found hacking a white woman to death, the very gusto with which this is done, and the great attention paid to the details of physical destruction reveal a terri ble attempt to break out of the cage in which the American imagination has imprisoned him for so long. In the meantime, the man I fought so hard and who meant so much to me, is gone. First America, then Europe, then NOBOD Y KN OWS MY NAME Africa failed him. He lived long enough to find all of the terms on which he had been born become obsolete; presently, all of his attitudes seemed to be historic al. But as his life ended, he seems to me to have been approaching a new beginning. He had survived, as it were, his own obsolescence, and his imag ination was beginning to grapple with that darkest of all dark strangers for him , the Mrican. The depth thus touched in him brought him a new power and a new tone. He had survived exile on three continents and lived long enoug h to begin to tell the tale. II. THE EXIL E I WAS far from imagining, when I agreed to write this memoir , that it would prove to be such a painful and difficult task. What, after all, can I really say about Richard . . . ? Every thing founders in the sea ofwhat might have been. We might have been friends, tor example, but I cannot honestly say that we were. There might have been some way of avoiding our qua rrel, our rupture ; I can only say that I failed to find it. The qua rrel having occurred, perhaps there might have been a way to have become reconciled.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Two weeks after my first conversation with Herbert Richardson, I was frantically trying to get a stay of execution. Even though it was very late in the process, I was hoping that we might win a stay when I saw some of the compelling issues in Herbert’s case. While his guilt wasn’t really in question, there were persuasive reasons why this case should not have been a capital murder case, above and beyond the absence of a specific intent to kill. And even if you disregard that part of it, there was strong evidence that the death penalty should not be imposed because of Herbert’s trauma, military service, and childhood difficulties. None of this compelling mitigating evidence was presented at trial, and it should have been. The death penalty can be imposed fairly only after carefully considering all the reasons why death might not be the appropriate sentence, and that didn’t happen in Herbert’s case. I was increasingly becoming convinced that Herbert was facing execution because he had been an easy target. He was unaided and easily condemned by a system that was inattentive to the precise legal requirements of capital punishment. I was deeply distressed that, had he gotten the right help at the right time, Herbert would not be on death row with an execution date in less than two weeks. I asked several courts to stay Herbert’s execution because of his ineffective lawyer, racial bias during the trial, the inflammatory comments made by the prosecutor, and the lack of mitigation evidence presented. Each court said, “Too late.” We got a hastily scheduled hearing in the trial court in Dothan, where I tried to present evidence that the bomb Herbert had constructed was designed to go off at a certain time. I found an expert to testify that the bomb was a timed device and not intended to kill on contact. I knew that the court would probably conclude that this evidence should have been presented at trial or in prior proceedings, but I hoped that the judge could be persuaded. Herbert was in court with me, and we both immediately recognized the lack of interest on the judge’s face. This heightened Herbert’s anxiety. He began a whispered dialogue with me, imploring me to get the testifying expert to say things about his intent that were really outside the expert’s knowledge. He became contentious and started making comments that were audible to the judge. Meanwhile, the judge kept stressing that the evidence wasn’t newly discovered and should have been presented at trial, so it couldn’t create a basis for a stay of execution. I asked for a brief recess to try and calm Herbert down. “He’s not saying what I need him to say!” His breathing was panicked. He held his head and told me he had a severe headache. “I didn’t intend to kill anybody and he has to explain that!” he cried.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Local papers had painted Walter as a dangerous drug dealer who had possibly murdered several innocent teenagers. Monroeville and Mobile newspapers freely printed assertions that Walter was a “drug kingpin,” a “sexual predator,” and a “gang leader.” When he was first arrested, local headlines emphasized the absurd sexual misconduct charges involving Ralph Myers. “McMillian Charged with Sodomy” was a common headline. In covering the hearings, the Monroe Journal focused on the danger Walter posed: “Those entering the courtroom had to pass through a metal detector, as has been the case throughout the court proceedings against McMillian, and officers were stationed throughout the courtroom.” Despite all of the evidence presented at our hearing showing that Walter had nothing to do with the Pittman murder, the local press invoked the case to scare up more fear about Walter. “Convicted Slayer Wanted in East Brewton Murder” was an early headline in the Brewton paper. “Ronda Wasn’t the Only Girl Killed” was the headline in the Mobile Press Register after our hearing. The Mobile paper reported after the hearing: “Myers and McMillian were part of a burglary, theft, forgery and drug smuggling ring that operated in several counties in South Alabama, according to law enforcement officers. McMillian was the leader of the operation.” From its focus on his pretrial placement on death row to the extra security surrounding his court appearances, the narrative in the press was clear: This man was extremely dangerous. At this point, people seemed uninterested in the truth surrounding the crime. During the most recent hearing in Baldwin County, the State’s local supporters walked out of the courtroom rather than hear the evidence that supported Walter’s innocence. It was risky, but we hoped that national press coverage of our side of the story would change the narrative. A Washington Post journalist, Walt Harrington, had come to Alabama to do a piece on our work a year earlier and had heard me describe the McMillian case. He passed that information to a journalist friend of his, Pete Earley, who contacted me and became immediately interested. After reading the transcripts and files we provided him, he jumped into the case, spent time with several of the players, and quickly came to share our astonishment that Walter had been convicted on such unreliable evidence.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Children who commit serious crimes long have been vulnerable to adult prosecution and punishment in many states, but the development of juvenile justice systems has meant that most child offenders were sent to juvenile detention facilities. Juvenile justice systems vary across the United States, but most states would have kept Trina, Ian, or Antonio in juvenile custody until they turned eighteen or twenty-one. At most, they might have stayed in custody until age twenty-five or older, if their institutional history or juvenile detention record suggested that they were still a threat to public safety. In an earlier era, if you were thirteen or fourteen when you committed a crime, you would find yourself in the adult system with a lengthy sentence only if the crime was unusually high-profile—or committed by a black child against a white person in the South. For instance, in the infamous Scottsboro Boys case in the 1930s, two of the defendants, Roy Wright and Eugene Williams, were just thirteen years old when they were wrongfully convicted of rape and sentenced to death in Alabama. In another signature case of juvenile prosecution, George Stinney, a fourteen-year-old black boy, was executed by the State of South Carolina on June 16, 1944. Three months earlier, two young white girls who lived nearby in Alcolu, a small mill town where the races were separated by railroad tracks, had gone out to pick flowers and never returned home. Scores of people across the community went searching for the missing girls. Young George and his siblings joined the search party. At some point, George mentioned to one of the white adult searchers that he and his sister had seen the girls earlier in the day. The girls had approached them while they were playing outside and asked where they could find flowers. The next day, the dead bodies of the girls were found in a shallow ditch. George was immediately arrested for the murders because he had admitted seeing the girls before they disappeared and was the last person to see them alive. He was subjected to hours of interrogation without his parents or an attorney present. The understandable anger about the death of the girls exploded when word circulated that a black boy had been arrested for the murders. The sheriff claimed that George had confessed to the murders, though no written or signed statement was presented. George’s father was summarily fired from his job; his family was told to leave town or else they would be lynched. Out of fear for their lives, George’s family fled town late that night, leaving George behind in jail with no family support. Within hours of announcing the alleged confession, a lynch mob formed at the jailhouse in Alcolu, but the fourteen-year-old had already been moved to a jail in Charleston.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  They will tell you it's raining if that is what you want to hear, and they will tell you the sun is shining if that is what you want to hear. They really hate you-really hate you because in their eyes (and they're right) you stand between them and lif e. I want to come back to that in a moment. It is the most sinister of the facts, I think, which we now face. There is something else the Negro child can do, too. Every street boy-and I was a street boy, so I know-l ooking at the society which has produced him, looking at the standards of that society which are not honored by anybody, looking at your churches and the government and the politicians, un derstands that this structure is operated for someone else's benefit-not for his. And there's no room in it for him. If he is really cunning, really ruthless, really strong-and many of us are-he becomes a kind of criminal. He becomes a kind of criminal because that's the only way bc_s:� . Harlem and every ghetto in this city-every ghetto in this country-is full of people who live outside the law. They wouldn't dream of calling a policeman. They wouldn't, for a moment, listen to any of those professions of which we are so proud on the Fourth of July. They have turned away from this country for ever and totally. They live by their wits and really long to see the day when the entire structure comes down. The point of all this is that black men were brought here as a source of cheap labor. Tl.:!_ ey were indispensable to the economy. In order to justifY the fact that men were treated as though they were animals, the white republic had to brain wash itself into believing that they were, indeed, animals and deserved to be treate_d_lik.e._ ani.mals.._ Thc.rcfurtiUs. _ al rno_st im � l e__fu r_an-y.- Ncgro- child . to...disco.ve.r..__anything_�bQ.l!L bis actual history. The reason is that this "animal," once he sus- 682 OTH ER ES SAYS pects his own worth, once he starts believing that he is a man, has begun to attack the entire power structure. This is why America has spent such a long time keeping the Negro in his place, What I am trying to suggest to you is that it was not an accident, it was not an act of God, it was not done by well meaning people muddling into something which they didn't understand. It was a deliberate policy hammered into place in order to make money from black flesh.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Debbie Cook noticed that Marsha Colbey was no longer pregnant but did not have a baby, which stirred her interest in the details of the stillbirth. Marsha didn’t trust the woman and was evasive when she made inquiries. Cook, who worked at the elementary school attended by Mrs. Colbey’s children, eventually instructed one of the school cafeteria workers to call the police about the absent infant. Officer Kenneth Lewellen spoke with Ms. Cook and then went to Ms. Colbey’s home. Marsha, still grieving the loss of her baby and frustrated by the meddling, reacted badly to the police questioning. She initially attempted to misdirect the officer and the investigators in an effort to protect her privacy. It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but she was outraged by their prodding. When Lewellen noticed the marked grave beside the Colbey’s home, Marsha admitted it was the burial site for her recently delivered stillborn son. Kathleen Enstice, a forensic pathologist who worked for the state, was summoned to exhume the infant’s body. Marsha was shocked that law enforcement would do something so upsetting without justification. As soon as the baby was exhumed but before she had an opportunity to formally examine the body, Enstice told an investigator that she believed that the baby had been born alive. She later conceded that she had no basis for such an opinion and that without an autopsy and tests there was no way she could know if a baby had been born alive. As it turned out, Enstice had a history of prematurely and incorrectly declaring deaths to be homicides without adequate supporting evidence. The pathologist subsequently performed an autopsy at the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile. She not only concluded that Marsha Colbey’s baby was born alive but also asserted that the child would have survived with medical attention. Even though most experts agree that forensic pathologists—who primarily deal with dead people—are not qualified to estimate survival chances, the State allowed prosecutors to pursue criminal charges. Unbelievably, Marsha Colbey—a few short weeks after delivering her stillborn son—found herself arrested and charged with capital murder. Alabama is among the growing list of states that make the murder of a person under the age of fourteen a capital offense punishable by the death penalty. The child-victim category resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of young mothers and juveniles who were sent to death row. All five women on Alabama’s death row were condemned for the unexplained deaths of their young children or the deaths of abusive spouses or boyfriends—all of them. In fact, nationwide, most women on death row are awaiting execution for a family crime involving an allegation of child abuse or domestic violence involving a male partner.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  And then, as I opened the door, with a bitterness I didn’t plan, A souvenir of your beautiful country, I said. I closed the door behind me and sat down again on the bench. I was eager to leave but I hadn’t paid yet, and before I could speak to anyone I needed a moment to myself. So I sat, staring at nothing, at the floor, determined not to see anything for a while; I sat with my head in my hands, and then with my hands over my eyes, the heel of each palm fitted to the socket. It was a posture of distress, I suppose, though it wasn’t quite distress that I felt. I didn’t understand the bitterness with which I had spoken, bitterness not just toward the woman but toward the place, this country I had chosen; I hadn’t known I felt it, and I wondered how deep it went. There was something else troubling me, too, and after I had sat for a little while I realized that what the doctor had told me contradicted Mitko’s story. The last time I had seen him he said he needed money for injections, that the pills hadn’t worked, but it must have been a lie; there weren’t any injections to be had, pills were the only treatment he could get. For a moment it was as if I hung suspended, unsure of what I felt. I didn’t know why I was so surprised, I knew Mitko couldn’t be trusted, that he would do or say almost anything for money; and this was something I could hardly resent, when it had given me access to him in the first place. But I was angry, I felt I had been made a fool. Maybe I imagined we had gotten past this somehow, that the sickness we shared established a kind of solidarity between us, a shared ground. And I had been generous, too, I had helped him without getting anything in return. But that wasn’t true, I thought suddenly, I had gotten something in return, he had made sure of that when he followed me into the bathroom and made me see how much I wanted him. He hadn’t allowed me to be generous, that had been the point of what he had done. I had wanted to give without taking, but it must have been humiliating for him, not to have anything to bargain with, and I wondered now if I had liked his humiliation, if that was the pleasure I took in my generosity, that I was humiliating him in giving him what he needed while claiming not to need anything back.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I stopped in the prison yard to take a closer look at the truck. I couldn’t help walking around it and reading the provocative stickers. I turned back toward the front gate of the prison, trying to regain my focus, but I couldn’t make myself indifferent to what I perceived were symbols of racial oppression. I had been to this prison often enough to be familiar to many of the correctional officers, but as I entered I was met by a correctional officer I’d never seen before. He was a white man of my height—about six feet tall—with a muscular build. He looked to be in his early forties and wore a short military haircut. He was staring coldly at me with steel-blue eyes. I walked toward the gate that led to the lobby of the visitation room, where I expected a routine pat-down before entering the visitation area. The officer stepped in front of me and blocked me from proceeding. “What are you doing?” he snarled. “I’m here for a legal visit,” I replied. “It was scheduled earlier this week. The people in the warden’s office have the papers.” I smiled and spoke as politely as I could to defuse the situation. “That’s fine, that’s fine, but you have to be searched first.” It was difficult to ignore his clearly hostile attitude, but I did my best. “Okay, do you need me to take my shoes off?” The hardcore officers would sometimes make me remove my shoes before going inside. “You’re going to go into that bathroom and take everything off if you expect to get into my prison.” I was shocked, but spoke as nicely as I could. “Oh, no, sir. I think you might be confused. I’m an attorney. Lawyers don’t have to get strip-searched to come in for legal visits.” Instead of calming him, this seemed to make him angrier. “Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re not coming into my prison without complying with our security protocols. Now, you can get into that bathroom and strip, or you can go back to wherever you came from.” I’d had some difficult encounters with officers getting into prisons from time to time, mostly in small county jails or places where I’d never been before, but this was highly unusual. “I’ve been to this prison many times, and I’ve never been required to submit to a strip search. I don’t think this is the procedure,” I said more firmly.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, that which proceeds from a slight movement of the mind does not seem to be generically a mortal sin. But cursing sometimes arises from a slight movement. Therefore cursing is not a mortal sin. Objection 3: Further, evil deeds are worse than evil words. But evil deeds are not always mortal sins. Much less therefore is cursing a mortal sin. On the contrary, Nothing save mortal sin excludes one from the kingdom of God. But cursing excludes from the kingdom of God, according to 1 Cor. 6:10, “Nor cursers [Douay: ‘railers’], nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.” Therefore cursing is a mortal sin. I answer that, The evil words of which we are speaking now are those whereby evil is uttered against someone by way of command or desire. Now to wish evil to another man, or to conduce to that evil by commanding it, is, of its very nature, contrary to charity whereby we love our neighbor by desiring his good. Consequently it is a mortal sin, according to its genus, and so much the graver, as the person whom we curse has a greater claim on our love and respect. Hence it is written (Lev. 20:9): “He that curseth his father, or mother, dying let him die.” It may happen however that the word uttered in cursing is a venial sin either through the slightness of the evil invoked on another in cursing him, or on account of the sentiments of the person who utters the curse; because he may say such words through some slight movement, or in jest, or without deliberation, and sins of word should be weighed chiefly with regard to the speaker’s intention, as stated above ([2961]Q[72], A[2]). From this the Replies to the Objections may be easily gathered. Whether cursing is a graver sin than backbiting?Objection 1: It would seem that cursing is a graver sin than backbiting. Cursing would seem to be a kind of blasphemy, as implied in the canonical epistle of Jude (verse 9) where it is said that “when Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of blasphemy [Douay: ‘railing speech’],” where blasphemy stands for cursing, according to a gloss. Now blasphemy is a graver sin than backbiting. Therefore cursing is a graver sin than backbiting. Objection 2: Further, murder is more grievous than backbiting, as stated above ([2962]Q[73], A[3]). But cursing is on a par with the sin of murder; for Chrysostom says (Hom. xix, super Matth.): “When thou sayest: ‘Curse him down with his house, away with everything,’ you are no better than a murderer.” Therefore cursing is graver than backbiting. Objection 3: Further, to cause a thing is more than to signify it. But the curser causes evil by commanding it, whereas the backbiter merely signifies an evil already existing. Therefore the curser sins more grievously than the backbiter.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In hundreds of other cases, falsely accused women never received the forensic help they needed to avoid wrongful convictions. A few years earlier, before representing Marsha Colbey, we took on the case of Diane Tucker and Victoria Banks. An intellectually disabled black woman living in Choctaw County, Alabama, Ms. Banks was accused of killing her newborn child even though police had no credible basis for believing she had ever been pregnant. Banks had allegedly told a deputy sheriff that she was pregnant to avoid time in jail for an unrelated matter. When she was seen months later with no child, police accused her of killing her infant. Disabled and without adequate legal assistance, Ms. Banks was coerced into pleading guilty to killing a child who had never existed along with her sister, Ms. Tucker. Because she was facing capital murder charges and a potential death sentence, she made a deal to accept a prison sentence of twenty years. Law enforcement officials refused to investigate her claims of innocence prior to sending her to prison. We won her freedom after establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her arrest, which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive, let alone give birth to, a child. In addition to unexplained deaths of infants parented by poor women, other kinds of “bad parenting” have also been criminalized. In 2006, Alabama passed a law that made it a felony to expose a child to a “dangerous environment” in which the child could encounter drugs. This “child chemical endangerment statute” was ostensibly passed to protect children living in households where there were meth labs or drug-trafficking operations. But the law was applied much more broadly, and soon thousands of mothers with children living in poor, marginalized communities where drugs and drug addiction are rampant were at risk of prosecution. In time, the Alabama Supreme Court interpreted the term environment to include the womb and the term child to include a fetus. Pregnant women could now be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison for decades if there was any evidence that they had used drugs at any point during their pregnancy. Dozens of women have been sent to prison under this law in recent years, rather than getting the help they needed. The hysteria surrounding bad mothers made a fair trial for Marsha Colbey very difficult. During jury selection, numerous jurors announced that they could not be impartial toward Mrs. Colbey. Some jurors indicated that they found allegations of killing a child so disturbing that they could not honor the presumption of innocence. Several revealed that they had such a close relationship with one of the state investigators—a key State witness who had been especially vocal about identifying bad mothers—that they would give him “instant credibility” and would “believe everything [he] said was credible.” Another juror admitted trusting law enforcement witnesses he knew to the point where he would “believe anything they say.”

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We also make terrible mistakes. Scores of innocent people have been exonerated after being sentenced to death and nearly executed. Hundreds more have been released after being proved innocent of noncapital crimes through DNA testing. Presumptions of guilt, poverty, racial bias, and a host of other social, structural, and political dynamics have created a system that is defined by error, a system in which thousands of innocent people now suffer in prison. Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated. State governments have been forced to shift funds from public services, education, health, and welfare to pay for incarceration, and they now face unprecedented economic crises as a result. The privatization of prison health care, prison commerce, and a range of services has made mass incarceration a money-making windfall for a few and a costly nightmare for the rest of us. — After graduating from law school, I went back to the Deep South to represent the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. In the last thirty years, I’ve gotten close to people who have been wrongly convicted and sent to death row, people like Walter McMillian. In this book you will learn the story of Walter’s case, which taught me about our system’s disturbing indifference to inaccurate or unreliable verdicts, our comfort with bias, and our tolerance of unfair prosecutions and convictions. Walter’s experience taught me how our system traumatizes and victimizes people when we exercise our power to convict and condemn irresponsibly—not just the accused but also their families, their communities, and even the victims of crime. But Walter’s case also taught me something else: that there is light within this darkness. Walter’s story is one of many that I tell in the following chapters. I’ve represented abused and neglected children who were prosecuted as adults and suffered more abuse and mistreatment after being placed in adult facilities. I’ve represented women, whose numbers in prison have increased 640 percent in the last thirty years, and seen how our hysteria about drug addiction and our hostility to the poor have made us quick to criminalize and prosecute poor women when a pregnancy goes wrong. I’ve represented mentally disabled people whose illnesses have often landed them in prison for decades. I’ve gotten close to victims of violent crime and their families and witnessed how even many of the custodians of mass imprisonment—prison staff—have been made less healthy, more violent and angry, and less just and merciful.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  State officials blamed Mr. Smith for their inability to kill him in 2022, arguing that his appeals to stop his execution “frustrated the process” and shortened the time to carry out a lethal injection. Mr. Smith had sued to prevent the State from executing him because Alabama had bungled the two executions immediately preceding his. Two months earlier, Alan Miller survived a botched execution during which state officials strapped him down and jabbed him for several hours before returning him to his cell. The failed execution of Mr. Miller followed the disastrous execution of a condemned man named Joe James, who was killed by state officials after hours of unsuccessful stabbing to access his veins. The autopsy revealed that Mr. James suffered multiple cuts and injuries over the course of the three-hour execution process—one of the longest ever recorded. Reports circulated that the attempted execution of Mr. James was so upsetting that at least one member of the execution team fled the death chamber in distress. Citing these accounts, Mr. Smith persuaded a federal court to issue an order stopping his November 17, 2022, execution. But the State appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which vacated the stay and allowed the execution to proceed. State officials later contended that Mr. Smith’s successful litigation before the Supreme Court’s ruling left them only two hours to execute him before the expiration of his death warrant—too little time given the complications of accessing his veins. The governor ordered a review of the multiple botched executions. After a truncated internal review, the State announced that it would make no changes to the execution process. Instead, Alabama adopted a plan where state officials would have a whole week to execute a condemned prisoner instead of just one day. For its second execution of Mr. Smith, Alabama decided to try a new, untested method involving the use of nitrogen gas. Rather than inject lethal chemicals into his veins, Alabama planned to put a gas mask over Mr. Smith’s face and pump in nitrogen, which would kill him by depriving him of oxygen. Some experts contended this would amount to torture. One federal appeals court judge, the Hon. Jill Pryor, argued that the execution should be stopped. In a dissent from her colleagues’ decision allowing the execution to proceed, she wrote:

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  They finally brought Walter into the courtroom wearing the black suit and white shirt I’d brought him. He looked handsome and fit, like a different man. The deputies didn’t handcuff Walter or shackle him, so he walked into court waving to family and friends. His family had not seen him dressed in anything but his white prison uniform since the trial six years earlier, and many in the crowd gasped when he walked into the courtroom in a suit. For years Walter’s family members and supporters had been confronted with menacing stares and threats of expulsion whenever they expressed some spontaneous opinion during court proceedings, but today the deputies accepted their expressive cheerfulness in silence. The judge took the bench, and I stepped forward to speak. I gave a brief history of the case and informed the court that both the defendant and the State were moving the court to dismiss all charges. The judge quickly granted the motion and asked if there was anything further. All of sudden, I felt strangely agitated. I’d expected to be exuberant. Everyone was in such a good mood. The judge and the prosecutor were suddenly generous and accommodating. It was as if everyone wanted to be sure there were no hard feelings or grudges. Walter was rightfully ecstatic, but I was confused by my suddenly simmering anger. We were about to leave court for the last time, and I started thinking about how much pain and suffering had been inflicted on Walter and his family, the entire community. I thought about how if Judge Robert E. Lee Key hadn’t overridden the jury’s verdict of life imprisonment without parole and imposed the death penalty, which brought the case to our attention, Walter likely would have spent the rest of his life incarcerated and died in a prison cell. I thought about how certain it was that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people were just as innocent as Walter but would never get the help they need. I knew this wasn’t the place or time to make a speech or complain, but I couldn’t stop myself from making one final comment. “Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.” I sat down and the judge pronounced Walter free to go. Just like that he was a free man.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “Well, I don’t know and don’t care what other people do, but this is the protocol I use.” I thought about trying to find an assistant warden but realized that that might be difficult, and anyway, an assistant warden would be unlikely to tell an officer he was wrong in front of me. I had driven two hours for this visit and had a very tough schedule over the next three weeks; I wouldn’t be able to get back to the prison any time soon if I didn’t get in now. I went inside the bathroom and removed my clothes. The officer came in and gave me an unnecessarily aggressive search before mumbling that I was clear. I put my suit back on and walked out. “I’d like to get inside the visitation room now.” I tried to reclaim some dignity by speaking more forcefully. “Well, you have to go back and sign the book.” He said it coolly, but he was clearly trying to provoke me. There was a visitation log that the prison used for family visits, but it was not used for legal visits. I’d already signed the attorney book. It would make no sense to sign a second book. “Lawyers don’t have to sign that book—” “If you want to come in my prison, you’ll sign the book.” He seemed to be smirking now. I tried hard to keep my composure. I turned around and went over to the book and signed my name. I walked back to the visitation room and waited. There was a padlock on the glass door that had to be unlocked before I could enter the space where I’d meet my client. The officer finally pulled out his keys to unlock the door. I stood silently hoping to get inside without more drama. When he opened the door, I stepped forward, but he grabbed my arm to stop me. He lowered his voice as he spoke to me. “Hey, man, did you happen to see a truck out in the visitation yard with a lot of bumper stickers, flags, and a gun rack?” I spoke cautiously. “Yes, I saw that truck.” His face hardened before he spoke. “I want you to know, that’s my truck.” He released my arm and allowed me to walk inside the prison. I felt angry at the guard, but I was even more irritated by my own powerlessness. I was distracted from my thoughts when the back door of the visitation room opened and Mr. Jenkins was led in by another officer. Jenkins was a short African American man with close-cropped hair. He grasped my hand with both of his and smiled broadly as he sat down. He seemed unusually happy to see me. “Mr. Jenkins, my name is Bryan Stevenson. I’m the attorney you spoke—” “Did you bring me a chocolate milkshake?” He spoke quickly. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”