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.

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• 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)

  When the 60 Minutes piece aired months later, local officials were quick to discredit it. The Mobile Press Register headline was “DA: TV Account of McMillian’s Conviction a ‘Disgrace’ ”; the article quoted Chapman: “For them to hold themselves up as a reputable news show is beyond belief, and irresponsible.” The publicity was characterized as further injuring Ronda Morrison’s parents. The local writers complained that the Morrisons had to worry and deal with the stress that new publicity “could lead many people to think McMillian is innocent.” The local media were eager to join the prosecutors in criticizing the 60 Minutes piece because it implicated their coverage, which had largely presented only the prosecution’s theory and characterization of Walter and the crime. But people in the community watched 60 Minutes all the time and generally trusted it. Despite the local media reaction, the CBS coverage gave the community a summary of the evidence we’d presented in court and created questions and doubts about Walter’s guilt. Some influential community leaders also thought it made Monroeville look backward and possibly racist in a way that was not good for the community’s image or efforts at recruiting business, and business leaders started asking tough questions of Chapman and law enforcement about what was going on in the case. People in the black community were thrilled to see honest coverage of the case. They had been whispering about Walter’s wrongful conviction for years. The case had so traumatized the black community that many had become preoccupied with each court development and ruling. We frequently got calls from people simply seeking an update. Some callers sought clarification of a particular point in the case that had been the subject of serious debate in a barbershop or at a social gathering. For many black people in the region, watching the evidence that we had presented in court now laid out on national television was therapeutic. In the 60 Minutes interview with Chapman, he dismissed as silly the suggestion of any racial bias in Walter McMillian’s prosecution. He calmly professed his complete confidence and certainty that McMillian was guilty and that he should be executed as soon as possible. He expressed contempt for Walter’s attorneys and “people who try to second-guess juries.” We later found out that privately, despite the confidence expressed in his statements to local media and to 60 Minutes, Chapman had begun to worry about the reliability of the evidence against Walter. He couldn’t ignore the problems in the case that had been exposed at the hearing. Given our success in other death penalty cases, he must have feared the very real possibility of the appellate court’s overturning Walter’s conviction. Chapman had become the public face defending the conviction, and he realized that he’d put his own credibility on the line by relying on the work of local investigators—work that was now revealed as almost farcically flawed.

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

  “This trial was constructed with lies,” I said. I was wary about expressing such strong opinions to Walter’s family because I hadn’t investigated the case enough to be sure there was more evidence to convict Walter. But reading the record of his trial had outraged me, and I felt that anger returning—not just about the injustice done to Walter but also about the way it had burdened the entire community. Everyone in the poor, black community who talked to me about the case had expressed hopelessness. This one massive miscarriage of justice had afflicted the whole community with despair and made it hard for me to be dispassionate. “One lie after the other,” I continued. “People were fed so many lies that by the time y’all started telling the truth, it was just easier to believe you were the ones who were lying. It frustrates me to even read it in the trial record, so I can only imagine how you all feel.” The phone rang, and Jackie jumped up to answer it. She came back a few minutes later. “Eddie said that people are getting restless. They want to know when he’s going to be there.” Minnie stood up and straightened her dress. “Well, we should probably get going down there. They been waiting most of the day for you.” When I looked confused, Minnie smiled. “Oh, I told the rest of the family we would bring you down there, since it’s so hard to find where they live if you’ve never been there before. His sisters, nephews, nieces, and other folks all want to meet you.” I tried not to show my alarm, but I was getting worried about the time. We piled into my two-door Corolla, which was stacked with papers, trial transcripts, and court records. “You must spend your money on other things,” Jackie joked as we pulled away. “Yes, expensive suits are my spending priority these days,” I replied. “There’s nothing wrong with your suit or your car,” Minnie said protectively. — I followed their directions down a long, winding dirt road full of impossible turns through a heavily wooded area. As darkness fell around us, the road twisted through dense forest for several miles until it came to a short, narrow bridge with room for only one car to pass. It looked shaky and unstable, so I slowed the car to a stop. “It’s okay. It hasn’t rained that much, and that’s the only time when it’s really a problem,” Minnie said. “What kind of problem?” I didn’t want to sound scared, but we were in the middle of nowhere and in the pitch-black night I couldn’t tell whether it was a swamp, a creek, or a small river under the bridge. “It will be all right. People drive through here every day,” Jackie chimed in.

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

  Myers’s refusal to cooperate got him sent back to death row. Back at Holman, it wasn’t long before he again showed serious emotional and psychological distress. After a couple of weeks, prison officials were so concerned that they sent him to the state hospital for the mentally ill. The Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa did all of the diagnostic and assessment work for courts managing people accused of crimes who might be incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness. It had frequently been criticized by defense lawyers for almost never finding serious mental disabilities that would prevent defendants from going to trial. Myers’s time at Taylor Hardin did very little to change his predicament. He hoped that he might be returned to the county jail after his thirty-day stint at the hospital, but instead he was returned to death row. Realizing he could not escape the situation he’d created for himself, Myers told investigators he was ready to testify against McMillian. A new trial date was scheduled for August 1988. Walter had been on death row for over a year. As hard as he had tried to adjust, he couldn’t accept the nightmare his life had become. Although he was nervous, he had been convinced that he was going home back in February, when the first trial was scheduled. His lawyers seemed happy that Myers was struggling and told Walter it was a good sign when the trial was continued because Myers refused to testify. But it meant another six months on death row for Walter, and he couldn’t see anything encouraging about that. When they finally moved him to the Baldwin County Jail in Bay Minette for the August trial, Walter left death row confident he’d never return. He had become friends with several men on the row and was surprised by how conflicted he felt about leaving them, knowing what they would soon face. Yet when they called his name to the transfer office, he lost no time gathering his things and getting in the van to leave. — A week later, Walter sat in the van with shackles pinching his ankles and chains tightly wound around his waist. He could feel his feet beginning to swell because the circulation was cut off by the metal digging into his skin. The handcuffs were too tight, and he was becoming uncharacteristically angry. “Why you got these chains on me this tight?” The two Baldwin County deputies who had picked him up a week earlier had not been friendly on the trip from death row to the courthouse. Now that he had been convicted of capital murder, they were downright hostile. One seemed to laugh in response to Walter’s question. “Them chains is the same as they were when we picked you up. They just feel tighter because we got you now.” “You need to loosen this, man, I can’t ride like this.” “It ain’t going to happen, so you should get your mind off it.”

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

  My complaint made it through the review process at the Atlanta Police Department. Every few weeks I’d get a letter explaining that the police officers had done nothing wrong and that police work is very difficult. I appealed these dismissals unsuccessfully up the chain of command. Finally, I requested a meeting with the chief of police and the police officers who had stopped me. This request was denied, but the deputy chief met with me. I had asked for an apology and suggested training to prevent similar incidents. The deputy chief nodded politely as I explained what had happened. When I finished, he apologized to me, but I suspected that he just wanted me to leave. He promised that the officers would be required to do some “extra homework on community relations.” I didn’t feel vindicated. My caseload was getting crazy. The lawyers defending the Gadsden City Jail finally acknowledged that Mr. Ruffin’s rights had been violated and that he had been illegally denied his asthma medicine. We won a decent settlement for Mr. Ruffin’s family, so they would at least receive some financial help. I turned the other police misconduct cases over to other lawyers because my death penalty docket was so full. I had no time to make war with the Atlanta Police when I had clients facing execution. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how dangerous and unfair the situation was and how I’d done nothing wrong. And what if I had had drugs in my car? I would have been arrested and then would have needed to convince my attorney to believe me when I explained that the police had entered the car illegally. Would I get an attorney who would take such a claim seriously? Would a judge believe that I’d done nothing wrong? Would they believe someone who was just like me but happened not to be a lawyer? Someone like me who was unemployed or had a prior criminal record? I decided to talk to youth groups, churches, and community organizations about the challenges posed by the presumption of guilt assigned to the poor and people of color. I spoke at local meetings and tried to sensitize people to the need to insist on accountability from law enforcement. I argued that police could improve public safety without abusing people. Even when I was in Alabama, I made time for talks at community events whenever anyone asked.

• 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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I carried on being angry all day. My tiredness made it harder to resist and as I went into town later I was muttering audibly about people around me, and when they showed signs of offence, deviating abruptly into sarcastic good manners. I was full of outrage at an act in which the brittle shoppers in Liberty’s (where I went to buy socks) and the incurious drifters of Oxford Street (who got in my way) seemed all to be careless conspirators. At the Corry, I did a few ferocious exercises and then flaked out and dropped into the pool with more than usual relief. But even there the slowness and clumsiness of others enraged me, and I was becoming the victim of one of those premature oldsters who bump into one on purpose, just for the muffled charge of contact. I wondered what I would do or say if I saw Colin. Was the whole matter strictly speaking sub judice? Would it have been any service to James to deal angrily, even ironically, with the officer who had charged him? I had all sorts of plans, not necessarily the wiser for their violent neatness. James’s experience, like mine with the skinheads, made me abruptly selfconscious, gave me an urge to solidarity with my kind that I wasn’t used to in our liberal times. In the busy one o’clock changing-room, cross though I was, I looked at the others, the bankers, the teachers, the journos, the advertising johnnies, the managers of hamburger outlets, the actors, the consultants, the dancers from West End musicals, the scaffolders, the rack-renters, queuing for the hair dryer and clouding the air with Trouble for Men, with a kind of foreboding, as an exotic species menaced by brutal predators. It was outrageous that Colin should have joined the brutes. I could see him clearly in memory, his tan and his weird eyes—hungry and yet chilly—and his habit of hanging about, the feeling he gave that something might happen.

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

  Chapman stood up. I could tell he was annoyed by my lecturing and legal arguments, and I was pretty sure he thought I was being pushy. “That sounds like an issue you’ll need to raise on appeal, Mr. Stevenson. You can tell Mr. Houston that the charges against him are being dropped. I can do that for y’all, but that’s about it.” His tone was dismissive, and when he turned his back to me I knew he’d ended the meeting and was now eager to get me out of his office. I left his office extremely frustrated. Chapman had not been unfriendly or hostile. Yet his indifference to McMillian’s innocence claim was hard for me to accept. Reading the record had shown me that there were people who were willing to ignore evidence, logic, and common sense to convict someone and reassure the community that the crime had been solved and the murderer punished. But talking face-to-face with someone about the case made the irrational thinking swirling around Walter’s conviction much, much harder to accept. Chapman hadn’t prosecuted the case, and I had hoped that he might not want to defend something so unreliable, but it was clear that he was locked into this narrative just like everyone else who had been involved. I’d seen the abuse of power in many cases before, but there was something especially upsetting about it here, where not only a single defendant was being victimized but an entire community as well. I filed my stack of motions just to make sure that if they didn’t dismiss the charges they knew we would fight them. Walking down the hallway to my car I saw yet another flyer about the next production of To Kill a Mockingbird, which just added to my outrage. — Darnell had remained home after he posted bond. I stopped by his house to discuss my meeting with the D.A. He was thrilled to hear that the charges against him would be dropped, but he was still shaken by the whole experience. I explained that what the State had done to him was illegal and that we could pursue a civil action against them, but he had no interest in that. I didn’t actually think a civil suit was a good idea since it would just leave him vulnerable to more harassment, but I didn’t want him to think I was unwilling to fight on his behalf. “Mr. Stevenson, all I wanted to do is tell the truth. I can’t go to jail, and I’ll be honest—these folks have scared me.” “I understand,” I said, “but what they did is illegal and I want you to know you have done nothing wrong. They’re the ones who have acted very, very inappropriately. They’re trying to intimidate you.” “Well, it’s working. What I told you is true, and I stand by it. But I can’t have these folks coming after me.”

• 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 Collected Essays (1998)

  James Earl Grant was arrested in the more lib eral city of Ch arlotte, accused with two others of burning down the Lazy B riding stables in which fif teen horses died. He merited a mere 25. The other two men got a total of 30 years in the 197 2 trial-the fire was in 1968. In any event, some of the most pertinent details of the cases arc to be found in major newspapers and in the Congressional Record: Messrs. John Cony ers Jr., Ronald V. Dcllums and Ch arles B. Rangel speaking. And the mother of Ben Chavis, speaking from a church in Raleigh, N. C., has the most pertinent question, especially in light of the fact that her son is a Christian minister: "You in the Christian church, will you be diligent in keeping them from getting my son?" And the entire horror evolved from the manner in which a Wilmington judge decided to desegregate a Wil mington high school, and the tact that the black students wished to declare the birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a day of mourning. I have said that it is not a new thing I have to tell you, and, indeed, most of it is not new for me. I might in my own mind, 766 OPEN LETTER TO MR. CAR TER 767 as I write, be speaking of the Scottsboro Boys: where I came in, so to speak. If I know, you must certainly know of the silent pact made between the North and the South, after Reconstruction, the purpose of which was-and is-to keep the nigger in his place . If I know, then you must certainly know, that keeping the nigger in his place was the most extraordinarily effective way of keeping the poor white in his place, and also, of keeping him poor: The situation of the Wilmington ro and of the Charlotte 3 is a matter of Federal collusion, and would not be possible without that collus ion. When those black children and white children and black men and white men and black women and white women were marching, behind Martin, up and down those dusty roads, trespassing, trespassing wherever they were, in the wrong waiting room, at the wrong coffee counter, in the wrong de partment store, in the wrong toilet, and were carried off to jail, they found themselves before federally appointed judges, who gave them the maximum sentence. Some people died beneath that sentence, some went mad, some girls will never become pregnant again. Some of us, fol lowing Martin, and, however we may sometimes have dis agreed with him, feeling his love, and believing I have a dream! could sometimes raise in an evening $3o,ooo or $4-o,ooo or $5o,ooo-y es: which was gone in bail-bond money in the morning. And, yes, my friend, that is called collusio n.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The F.B.I. wishes to know if any one of us would like to sign an affidavit. I signed my affidavit in Korea says my brother, and turns away to watch the departing people. When we marched on Montgomery, the Conf ederate flag was flying from the dome of the Capitol: this gesture can be interpreted as insurrection. But when Muh ammad Ali decided to be true to his faith and refused to join the Army, the wrath of an entire Republic was visited on his head, he was stripped of his title, and was not all owed to work. In short, his coun trymen decided to break him, and it is not their virtue that thcv f. 'lil cd. It is his virtue. ( am not so much trying to bring to your mind the suffering OPEN LETTER TO MR. CAR TER 769 of a despised people-a very comforting notion, after all, for most Americans-as the state and the fate of a nation of which you are the elected leader. The situations of the Wilmington 10, and the Charlotte 3, are very small symptoms of the mon strous and continuing wrong for which you, as the elected leader, are now responsible. Too many of us arc in jail, my friend; too many of us arc starving, too many of us can find no door open. And I was in Charlotte, 20 years ago, three years afi:er the Supreme Court made segregation in education illegal, when it was decided that separate could not, by definition, be eqttal. Charlotte then begged for time, and time, indeed, has passed. I was in Boston a few months ago and Boston, now, is begging for time. Across the entire question of the education of our children all our chil dren-is dragged the entirely false issue of busing. A child's future does not change because he is bused into another neighborhood. Well, I dared to write you this letter out of the concrete necessity of bringing to your attention the situations of the Wilmington 10 and the Charlotte 3. I repeat, their situation is but a very small indication of the wretched in this country: the nonwhite, the Indian, the Puerto Rican, the Mexican, the Oriental. Consider that we may all have learned, by now, all that we can learn from you and may not want to become like you. At this hour of the world's history it may be that you, now, have something to learn trom us. I must add, in honor, that I write to you because I love our country: And you, in my lif etime, are the only president to whom I would have written. The New Ym·k Times, January 23, 1977 Last of the Great Masters THE WoRLD oF EARL HI NES B;• Staulcy Dance. Illustrated. 324 pp.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In the film, on the southern road, Billie leaves the bus to go relieve herself in the bushes. Wan dering along the countryside, Billie suddenly sees, on the road just before her, grieving black people, and a black body hang ing from a tree. The best that one can say for this moment is that it is mistaken, and the worst that it is callously false and self -serving- which may be a rude way of saying the same thing: luckily, it is brief. The scene operates to resolve, at one stroke, several problems, and without in the least involving or intimidating the spectator. The lynch scene is as remote as an THE DE VIL FIND S WO RK Indian massacre, occurring in the same landscape, and eliciting the same response: a mixture of pious horror, and gratified reassurance. The ubiquitous Ku Klux Klan appears, marching beside the bus in which the band is riding. The band is white, and they attempt to hide Billie, making, meanwhile, friendly gestures to their marching countrymen. But Billie, because of the strange fruit she has just seen hanging, is now beside herself� and deliberately makes herself visible, cursing and weeping against the Klan: she, and the musicians, make a suf ficiently narrow, entirely cinematic escape. This scene is pure bullshit Hollywood-American fable, with the bad guys robed and the good guys casual: as a result, anyway, of all this unhealthy excitement, this understandable (and oddly reas suring) bitterness, Billie finally takes her first fix, and is im mediately hooked. This incident is not in the book: for the very good reason, certainly, that black people in this country are schooled in adversity long before white people are. Blacks perceive danger far more swiftly, and, however odd this may sound, then at tempt to protect their white comrade from his white brothers: they know their white comrade's brothers tar better than the comrade does. One of the necessities of being black, and knowing it, is to accept the hard discipline of learning to avoid useless anger, and needless loss of lif e: every mother and his mother's mother's mother's brother is needed. The off-screen Billie faced down white sheriffs, and laughed at them, to their faces, and faced down white managers, cops, and bartenders. She was much stronger than this film can have any interest in indicating, and, as a victim, infinitely more complex. Otherwise, she would never have been able to tell us, so simply, that she sang "Strange Fruit" for her father, and got hooked because she tell in love. The film cannot accept-because it cannot use-this sim plicity.