Hope

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)

  Sometimes the letters contained only a few words or a single question like, “Do you have friends?” We filed a petition to challenge Joe’s sentence as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. We knew that there would be procedural objections to filing it nearly twenty years after his sentencing, but we thought the Supreme Court’s recent decision banning the death penalty for juveniles could provide a basis for relief. In 2005, the Court recognized that differences between children and adults required that kids be shielded from the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. My staff and I discussed how we might use the constitutional reasoning that banned the execution of children as a legal basis for challenging juvenile life-without-parole sentences. We filed similar challenges to life-without-parole sentences in several other cases involving children, including Ian Manuel’s case. Ian was still being held in solitary confinement in Florida. We filed cases in Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, Delaware, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and South Dakota. We filed a case in Pennsylvania to help Trina Garnett, the girl who had been convicted for arson. She was still struggling at the women’s prison but was excited about the possibility of our doing something to change her sentence. We filed a case in California for Antonio Nuñez. We filed two cases in Alabama. Ashley Jones was a fourteen-year-old girl who had been convicted of killing two family members when her older boyfriend tried to help her escape her family. Ashley suffered from a horrific history of abuse and neglect. When she was still a teenager serving her sentence at the Tutwiler Prison for Women, she started writing to me to ask about various legal decisions she’d read about in the newspaper. She never asked for legal assistance; she simply asked about what she’d read and expressed interest in the law and our work. She started sending notes congratulating me and EJI whenever we won a death penalty appeal. When we decided to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children, I told her we might be able to finally challenge her sentence. She was thrilled. Evan Miller was another fourteen-year-old condemned to die in prison in Alabama. Evan is from a poor white family in North Alabama. His difficult life was punctuated by suicide attempts that started at age seven when he was in elementary school. His parents were abusive and had drug addiction problems, so he was in and out of foster care, but he was living with his mother at the time of the crime. A middle-aged neighbor, Cole Cannon, had come over one night seeking to buy drugs from Evan’s mother. The fourteen-year-old Evan and his sixteen-year-old friend went to the man’s house with him to play cards. Cannon gave the teens drugs and played drinking games with them. At one point, he sent the boys out to buy more drugs. The boys returned and stayed over as it got later and later.

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

  He lost several fingers working in a prison factory and was now disabled as a result of his forced labor at Angola. I traveled back and forth between the trial courts in Orleans Parish quite a bit on the Carter and Caston cases. The Orleans Parish courthouse is a massive structure with intimidating architecture. There are multiple courtrooms aligned down an enormous hallway with grand marble floors and high ceilings. Hundreds of people crowd the hallways, bustling between the various courtrooms each day. Hearings in the vast courthouse are never reliably scheduled. Frequently, there would be a date and time for the Carter and Caston resentencings, but it seemed to mean very little to anyone. I would arrive in court, and there would always be a stack of cases, and clients with lawyers gathered in an overcrowded courtroom, all waiting to be heard at the time of our hearings. Overwhelmed judges tried to manage the proceedings with bench meetings while dozens of young men—most of whom were black—sat handcuffed in standard jail-issued orange jumpsuits in the front of the court. Lawyers consulted with clients and family members scattered around the chaotic courtroom. After three trips to New Orleans for sentencing hearings, we still did not have a new sentence for Mr. Carter or Mr. Caston. We met with the district attorney, filed papers with the judge, and consulted with a variety of local officials in an effort to achieve a new, constitutionally acceptable sentence. Because Mr. Carter and Mr. Caston had both been in prison for nearly fifty years, we wanted their immediate release. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I was back in court for the fourth time trying to win the release of the two men. There were two different judges and courtrooms involved, but we felt if we won release for one it might then become easier to win release for the other. We were working with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and their lawyer Carol Kolinchak had agreed to be our local counsel in all of the Louisiana cases. At this fourth hearing, Carol and I were busily trying to process papers and resolve the endless issues that had emerged to keep Mr. Carter and Mr. Caston incarcerated. Mr. Carter had a large family that had maintained a close relationship with him despite the passage of time. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many family members had fled New Orleans and were now living hundreds of miles away. But a dozen or so family members would dutifully show up at each hearing, some traveling from as far away as California. Mr. Carter’s mother was nearly a hundred years old. She had vowed to Mr. Carter for decades that she wouldn’t die until he came home from prison. Finally, it seemed like we were close to success.

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

  The letters were usually short statements about what he’d eaten that day or what show he’d seen on television. Sometimes they were just two or three Bible verses he had copied. He would always ask me to write him back and let him know if his handwriting was improving. Sometimes the letters contained only a few words or a single question like, “Do you have friends?” We filed a petition to challenge Joe’s sentence as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. We knew that there would be procedural objections to filing it nearly twenty years after his sentencing, but we thought the Supreme Court’s recent decision banning the death penalty for juveniles could provide a basis for relief. In 2005, the Court recognized that differences between children and adults required that kids be shielded from the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. My staff and I discussed how we might use the constitutional reasoning that banned the execution of children as a legal basis for challenging juvenile life-without-parole sentences. We filed similar challenges to life-without-parole sentences in several other cases involving children, including Ian Manuel’s case. Ian was still being held in solitary confinement in Florida. We filed cases in Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, Delaware, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and South Dakota. We filed a case in Pennsylvania to help Trina Garnett, the girl who had been convicted for arson. She was still struggling at the women’s prison but was excited about the possibility of our doing something to change her sentence. We filed a case in California for Antonio Nuñez. We filed two cases in Alabama. Ashley Jones was a fourteen-year-old girl who had been convicted of killing two family members when her older boyfriend tried to help her escape her family. Ashley suffered from a horrific history of abuse and neglect. When she was still a teenager serving her sentence at the Tutwiler Prison for Women, she started writing to me to ask about various legal decisions she’d read about in the newspaper. She never asked for legal assistance; she simply asked about what she’d read and expressed interest in the law and our work. She started sending notes congratulating me and EJI whenever we won a death penalty appeal. When we decided to challenge death-in-prison sentences imposed on children, I told her we might be able to finally challenge her sentence. She was thrilled. Evan Miller was another fourteen-year-old condemned to die in prison in Alabama. Evan is from a poor white family in North Alabama.

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

  When I sat down after the argument, I regretted that decision. I would have appreciated some sympathetic faces in the courtroom to signal to the court that this case was different, but there were none. An assistant attorney general then presented the State’s arguments—capital cases on appeal were managed by the attorney general, not the local district attorney. The State’s lawyer argued that this was a routine capital murder case and that the death penalty had been appropriately imposed. Following the oral argument, I still had hope that the court would overturn the conviction and sentence because it was so clearly unsupported by reliable facts. State law required credible corroboration of accomplice testimony in a murder case, and there simply wasn’t any in Walter’s case. I believed that the court would have a hard time affirming a conviction with so little evidence. I was wrong. — I drove to the prison to deliver the news. Walter didn’t say anything as I explained the situation, but he had a strange, despairing look on his face. I had tried to prepare him for the possibility that it could take years to get his conviction overturned, but he had gotten his hopes up. “They aren’t ever going to admit they made a mistake,” he said glumly. “They know I didn’t do this. They just can’t admit to being wrong, to looking bad.” “We’re just getting started, Walter,” I replied. “There is a lot more to do, and we’re going to make them confront this.” I was telling the truth: We did have to press on. Our plan was to ask the Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its decision, and if that turned out to be a dead end, we would seek review in the Alabama Supreme Court. And we had uncovered even more evidence of Walter’s innocence. After filing the appeal brief, I’d continued investigating the case intensively. If we hadn’t come up with so much new evidence to prove Walter’s innocence, I think the court’s ruling would have been even more overwhelming. I told Walter before I left the prison, “They don’t know what we now know about your innocence. As soon as we present the new evidence to them, they’ll think differently.” My hopefulness was genuine, in spite of everything that had happened already. But I was underestimating the resistance we would face. I’d finally been able to hire some additional lawyers for the organization, which gave me more time to investigate Walter’s case. One of my new hires was Michael O’Connor, a recent Yale Law School graduate with a passion for helping people in trouble that had been kindled by his own struggles earlier in life. The son of Irish immigrants, Michael had grown up outside of Philadelphia in a tough working-class neighborhood. When his high school friends started experimenting with hard drugs, so did Mike, and he soon developed a heroin addiction.

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

  At the oral argument months earlier, I’d been hopeful as I walked into the imposing Alabama Judicial Building and stood in the grand appellate courtroom that was formerly a Scottish Rite Freemasonry temple. Constructed in the 1920s, the building was renovated into a cavernous courthouse in the 1940s, complete with marble floors and an impressive domed ceiling. It stood at the end of Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, across the street from the historic Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had pastored during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A block away was the state capitol, adorned with three banners: the American flag, the white and red state flag of Alabama, and the battle flag of the Confederacy. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals courtroom was on the second floor. The chief judge of the court was former governor John Patterson. He had made national news in the 1960s as a fierce opponent of civil rights and racial integration. In 1958, with the backing of the Ku Klux Klan, he defeated George Wallace for governor. His positions were even more pro-segregation than Wallace’s (who, having learned his lesson, would become the most famous segregationist in America, declaring in 1963 “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” just a block away from this courthouse). When he was attorney general before becoming governor, Patterson banned the NAACP from operating in Alabama and blocked civil rights boycotts and protests in Tuskegee and Montgomery. As governor, he withheld law enforcement protection for the Freedom Riders—the black and white college students and activists who traveled south in the early 1960s to desegregate public facilities in recognition of new federal laws. When the Freedom Riders’ bus traveled through Alabama, they were abandoned by the police. Alone and unprotected, they were beaten violently, and their bus was bombed. Still, I forced myself to be hopeful. That was all long ago. During my argument, the court’s five judges looked at me with curiosity but asked few questions. I chose to interpret their silence as agreement. I hoped they saw so little support for the conviction that they didn’t think there was much to discuss. Judge Patterson’s only remark during the oral argument came at the end, when he slowly but firmly asked a single question that echoed through the mostly empty courtroom. “Where are you from?” I was thrown by the question and hesitated before answering. “I live in Montgomery, sir.” I had foolishly discouraged McMillian’s family from attending the oral argument because I knew that the issues were fairly arcane and that there would be very little discussion of the facts. Supporters would have to take off from work and make the long drive to Montgomery for an early morning argument. Since each side had only thirty minutes to present, I hadn’t thought it worth the effort.

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

  Key, Circuit Judge, Retired, this court did not have the opportunity to compare the demeanor of the witness during trial testimony and his recantation testimony. A review of the other factors set out above does not provide conclusive evidence that the witness, Ralph Meyers, perjured himself at the original trial. There is ample evidence that pressure has been brought to bear on Ralph Meyers since his trial testimony which could tend to discredit his recantation. There is absolutely no evidence in the trial record or the recantation testimony that places Ralph Meyers somewhere other than the scene of the crime at the time it was committed. This case having been remanded to the Court for a determination of whether there is evidence to support the theory that Ralph Meyers perjured himself at the original trial and this court having determined that there is insufficient evidence to support that theory, it is therefore ORDERED, ADJUDGED and DECREED that the trial testimony of Ralph Myers is not found to have been perjured testimony. Done this 19th day of May, 1992. THOMAS B. NORTON, JR. Circuit Judge While Chapman had suggested that Myers must have been pressured to recant, the district attorney presented no actual evidence to support that claim, which made the judge’s ruling hard to understand. I had advised Walter and his family that we would likely need to go to an appellate court for any real chance of relief, despite how positive everyone thought the hearing had been. I was optimistic about what our evidence might accomplish in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. We were now regularly arguing cases in front of that court. Following my first McMillian argument, we had filed almost two dozen death penalty appeals, and the court was starting to respond to our advocacy. We had won four reversals in death penalty cases in 1990, four more in 1991, and by the end of 1992, we’d won relief for another eight death row prisoners. The court frequently complained about being forced to order new trials or grant relief, but nonetheless ruled in our favor. In a few years, some of the appellate court judges would be attacked and replaced in partisan judicial elections by candidates who complained about the court’s rulings in death penalty cases. But we persisted and continued raising reversible errors in capital cases. We were pushing the court to enforce the law in these cases, and when they refused, we were having success getting the Alabama Supreme Court and federal courts to grant relief. Based on this recent experience, I thought we could win relief for McMillian on appeal. Even if the court was unwilling to rule that Walter was innocent and should be released, the withholding of exculpatory evidence was extreme enough that the court would have a hard time avoiding the case law requiring a new trial.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He also suggested that the speaker had implied that this conference was primarily interested in an ide alistic reconstruction of the past. "But our attitude," said Cesaire, "toward colonialism and racial discrimination is very concrete. Our aims cannot be realized without this concrete ness." And as fo r the question of race: "No one is suggesting that there is such a thing as a pure race, or that culture i� a racial product. We are not Negroes by our own desire, but, PRINCES AND POWERS in effect, because of Europe. What unites all Negroes is the injustices they have suffe red at European hands." The moment Cesaire finished, Cheik Anta Diop passion ately demanded if it were a heresy fr om a Marxist point of view to try to hang onto a national culture. "Where," he asked, "is the European nation which, in order to progress, surrendered its past?" There was no answer to this question, nor were there any further questions fr om the audience. Richard Wright spoke briefly, saying that this conference marked a turning point in the history of Euro-African relations: it marked, in fa ct, the beginning of the end of the European domination. He spoke of the great diversity of techniques and approaches now at the command of black people, with particular emphasis on the role the American Negro could be expected to play. Among black people, the American Negro was in the technological vanguard and this could prove of inestimable value to the de \'eloping African sovereignties. And the dialogue ended im mediately aftenvard, at six-fifty-five, with Senghor's statement that this was the first of many such conferences, the first of many dialogues. As night was falling we poured into the Paris streets. Boys and girls, old men and women, bicycles, terraces, all were there, and the people were queueing up before the bakeries fo r bread. J. Fifth Avenue ) Up town: A Letter fr om Harlem T HERE is a housing project standing now where the house in which we grew up once stood, and one of those stunted city trees is snarling where our doorway used to be. This is on the rehabilitated side of the avenue. The other side of the avenue-for progress takes time-has not been reha bilitated yet and it looks exactly as it looked in the days when we sat with our noses pressed against the windowpane, long ing to be allowed to go "across the street." The grocery store which gave us credit is still there, and there can be no doubt that it is still giving credit.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter. It is no wonder, in the meantime, that the American writer keeps running otT to Europe. He needs sustenance for his journey and the best models he can find. Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits oflitc, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of lite's possibilities. In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior lite is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people ha\'c a tangible ctlcct on the world. 2. Princes and Powers T HE Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists (Le Cong1'es des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs) opened on Wednesday, September 19, 1956, in the Sorbonnc's Amphi theatre Descartes, in Paris. It was one of those bright, warm days which one likes to think of as typical of the atmosphere of the intellectual capital of the Western world. There were people on the cafe terraces, boys and girls on the boulevards, bicycles racing by on their fa ntastically urgent errands. Every one and everything wore a cheerful aspect, even the houses of Paris, which did not show their age. Those who were unable to pay the steep rents of these houses were enabled, by the weather, to enjoy the streets, to sit, unnoticed, in the parks. The boys and girls and old men and women who had nowhere at all to go and nothing whatever to do, for whom no pro vision had been made, or could be, added to the beauty of the Paris scene by walking along the river. The newspaper vendors seemed cheerful; so did the people who bought the newspapers. Even the men and women queueing up before bakeries-for there was a bread strike in Paris-did so as though they had long been used to it. The conference was to open at nine o'clock. By ten o'clock the lecture hall was already unbearably hot, people choked the entrances and covered the wooden steps. It was hectic with the activity attendant upon the setting up of tape recorders, with the testing of car-phones, with the lighting of flash bulbs. Electricity, in fa ct, filled the hall. Of the people there that first day, I should judge that not quite two-thirds were colored. Behind the table at the front of the hall sat eight colored men. These included the American novelist Richard Wright; Aliounc Diop, the editor of Presence Africaine and one of the principal organizers of the conference; poets Leopold Sen ghor, fr om Senegal, and Aimc Ccsaire, fr om Martinique, and the poet and novelist Jacques Alexis, fr om Haiti. From Haiti, also, came the President of the contcrence, Dr.

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

  I told the congregation that Walter’s case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill? Finally and most important, I told those gathered in the church that Walter had taught me that mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion. Walter genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him, the people who convicted him, and the people who had judged him unworthy of mercy. And in the end, it was just mercy toward others that allowed him to recover a life worth celebrating, a life that rediscovered the love and freedom that all humans desire, a life that overcame death and condemnation until it was time to die on God’s schedule. After the service, I didn’t stay long. I walked outside and looked down the road and thought about the fact that no one was ever prosecuted for Ronda Morrison’s murder after Walter’s release. I thought about the anguish that must still create for her parents. There were lots of people who came up to me who needed legal help for all sorts of things. I hadn’t brought business cards, so I wrote my number down for each person and encouraged them to call my office. It wasn’t likely that we could do much for many of the people who needed help, but it made the journey home less sad to hope that maybe we could. In memory of Alice Golden Stevenson, my mom Postscript O n a warm Good Friday morning in 2015, I walked out of a Birmingham jail with an innocent man who had been condemned on Alabama’s death row for nearly thirty years. Anthony Ray Hinton had been locked down in solitary confinement for three decades at Holman Correctional Facility in a 5-by-7-foot cell just down the hall from the chamber where more than fifty condemned people were executed during his time on the row. In the electric chair years, he complained he could smell burning flesh after the midnight executions. Mr. Hinton arrived at Holman in the 1980s, before Walter McMillian was sent to death row. In 2000, we presented test results that confirmed Mr. Hinton’s innocence, and I begged prosecutors to retest the gun evidence that was the sole basis for his conviction, but for fifteen years they refused.

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

  I was immediately thrown into litigation with pressing deadlines and didn’t have time to find a place to live—and my $14,000 annual salary didn’t leave me with much money for rent—so Steve kindly took me in. Living in Steve’s small Grant Park duplex allowed me to question him nonstop about the complex issues and challenges our cases and clients presented. Each day we dissected big and small issues from morning until midnight. I loved it. But when a law school classmate, Charles Bliss, moved to Atlanta for a job with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, we realized that if we pooled our meager salaries, we could afford a low-rent apartment. Charlie and I had started at Harvard Law School together and had lived in the same dorm as first-year students. He was a white kid from North Carolina who seemed to share my confusion about what we were experiencing during law school. We frequently retreated to the school gym to play basketball and to try to make sense of things. Charlie and I found a place near Atlanta’s Inman Park. After a year, a rent increase forced us to move to the Virginia Highlands section of the city, where we stayed for a year before another rent increase sent us to Midtown Atlanta. The two-bedroom apartment we shared in Midtown was the nicest place in the nicest neighborhood we’d yet found. Because of my growing caseload in Alabama, I didn’t get to spend much time there. My plan for a new law project to represent people on death row in Alabama was starting to take shape. My hope was to get the project off the ground in Alabama and eventually return to Atlanta to live. My docket of new death penalty cases in Alabama meant I was working insane hours driving back and forth from Atlanta and simultaneously trying to resolve several prison condition cases I had filed in various Southern states. Conditions of confinement for prisoners were getting worse everywhere. In the 1970s, the Attica Prison riots drew national attention to horrible prison abuses. The takeover of Attica by inmates allowed the country to learn about cruel practices within prisons such as solitary confinement, where inmates are isolated in a small confined space for weeks or months. Prisoners in some facilities would be placed in a “sweatbox,” a casket-sized hole or a box situated where the inmate would be forced to endure extreme heat for days or weeks. Some prisoners were tortured with electric cattle prods as punishment for violations of the prison’s rule.

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

  Finally and most important, I told those gathered in the church that Walter had taught me that mercy is just when it is rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion. Walter genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him, the people who convicted him, and the people who had judged him unworthy of mercy. And in the end, it was just mercy toward others that allowed him to recover a life worth celebrating, a life that rediscovered the love and freedom that all humans desire, a life that overcame death and condemnation until it was time to die on God’s schedule. After the service, I didn’t stay long. I walked outside and looked down the road and thought about the fact that no one was ever prosecuted for Ronda Morrison’s murder after Walter’s release. I thought about the anguish that must still create for her parents. There were lots of people who came up to me who needed legal help for all sorts of things. I hadn’t brought business cards, so I wrote my number down for each person and encouraged them to call my office. It wasn’t likely that we could do much for many of the people who needed help, but it made the journey home less sad to hope that maybe we could. Postscript [image file=image_rsrc32M.jpg] On a warm Good Friday morning in 2015, I walked out of a Birmingham jail with an innocent man who had been condemned on Alabama’s death row for nearly thirty years. Anthony Ray Hinton had been locked down in solitary confinement for three decades at Holman Correctional Facility in a 5-by-7-foot cell just down the hall from the chamber where more than fifty condemned people were executed during his time on the row. In the electric chair years, he complained he could smell burning flesh after the midnight executions. Mr. Hinton arrived at Holman in the 1980s, before Walter McMillian was sent to death row. In 2000, we presented test results that confirmed Mr. Hinton’s innocence, and I begged prosecutors to retest the gun evidence that was the sole basis for his conviction, but for fifteen years they refused. In February 2015, we finally won a unanimous ruling from the United States Supreme Court that compelled prosecutors to reexamine the evidence. The new tests confirmed his innocence and Anthony Ray Hinton became the 152nd person to be exonerated after being wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. His compelling story is the subject of a new book, The Sun Does Shine, and Mr. Hinton now works as a community educator at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But at the bottom of my heart I do not believe this. I think that people can be better than that, and I know that people can be better than they arc. We arc capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is. Anyway, the point here is that we arc living in an age of revolution, whether we will or no, and that Amer ica is the only Western nation with both the power and, as I hope to suggest, the experience that may help to make these revolutions real and minimize the human damage. Any at tempt we make to oppose these outbursts of energy is tanta mount to signing our death warrant. Behind what we think of as the Russian menace lies what DOWN AT THE CROSS 33 9 we do not wish to face, and what white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro: reality-the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun in exorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifYing darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the dark ness of my skin so intimidates them. And this is also why the presence of the Negro in this country can bring about its destruction. It is the responsibility of fr ee men to trust and to celebrate what is constant-birth, struggle, and death are con stant, and so is love, though we may not always think so and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths-change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not-safety, for example, or money, or power.

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

  Besides. No instrument can achieve ultimate perfection by virtue of its own form, but only by virtue of the principal agent: although by virtue of its own form it can cause some disposition to the ultimate perfection. Thus a saw, by reason of its own form, causes the cutting of the wood, but the form of the bench is produced by the art that employs the instrument: likewise in the body of an animal, resolution and consumption is the result of the animal heat, but the formation of flesh, and regulation of increase and other such things, come from the vegetative soul, which uses heat as its instrument. Now, to God the first agent by intellect and will, all intellects and wills are subordinate, as instruments under the principal agent. Consequently their operations have no efficacy in respect of their ultimate perfection, which is the attainment of final beatitude, except by the power of God. Therefore the rational nature needs the divine assistance in order to obtain its last end. Further. Many obstacles prevent man from reaching his end. For he is hindered by the weakness of his reason, which is easily drawn into error which bars him from the straight road that leads to his end. He is also hindered by the passions of the sensitive faculty, and by the affections whereby he is drawn to sensible and inferior things, since the more he adheres to them, the further is he removed from his last end: for such things are below man, whereas his end is above him. Again he is often hindered by weakness of the body from doing acts of virtue, whereby he tends to beatitude. Therefore he needs the help of God, lest by such obstacles he turn away utterly from his last end. Hence it is said (Jo. 4:44): No man can come to Me, unless the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him: and (15:4): As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. Hereby we refute the error of the Pelagians, who asserted that man can merit the glory of God by his free-will alone. CHAPTER CXLVIII THAT THE ASSISTANCE OF DIVINE GRACE DOES NOT COMPEL MAN TO VIRTUEPOSSIBLY, it might appear to some that the divine assistance compels man to do well, since it is said (Jo. 4:44): No man can come to Me unless the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him: and on account of the saying (Rom. 8:14): Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God: and again (2 Cor. 5:14): The charity of Christ presseth us. And it would seem that compulsion is implied in being drawn, led and pressed.

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

  The State’s primary evidence against Mr. Hinton involved a third crime where a witness identified him as the assailant. But we found a half-dozen people and security records that proved that Mr. Hinton was locked inside a secure supermarket warehouse working as a night laborer fifteen miles away at the time of the crime. We got some of the nation’s best experts to review the gun evidence, and they concluded the Hinton weapon could not be matched to the murders. I had hopes that the State might reopen the case. Instead they persisted in moving toward execution. The media was not interested in the story, citing “innocence fatigue.” “We’ve done that story before,” we heard again and again. We kept getting very close decisions from appellate courts denying relief, and Mr. Hinton remained on death row facing execution. It would soon be thirty years. He was always upbeat and encouraging when I met with him, but I was increasingly desperate to find a way to get his case overturned. I was encouraged by the fact that nationwide the rate of mass incarceration had finally slowed. For the first time in close to forty years, the country’s prison population did not increase in 2011. In 2012, the United States saw the first decline in its prison population in decades. I spent a lot of time in California that year supporting ballot initiatives and was encouraged that voters decided, by a huge margin, to end the state’s “three strikes” law that imposed mandatory sentences on nonviolent offenders. The initiative won majority support in every county in the state. California voters also came very close to banning the death penalty; the ballot initiative lost by only a couple of percentage points. Almost banning the death penalty through a popular referendum in an American state would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier. We were able to finally launch the race and poverty initiative I’d long been hoping to start at EJI. For years I’d wanted to implement a project to change the way we talk about racial history and contextualize contemporary race issues. We published a racial history calendar for 2013 and 2014. We started working with poor children and families in Black Belt counties across the South. We brought hundreds of high school students to our office for supplemental education and discussion about rights and justice. Also, we worked on reports and materials that seek to deepen the national conversation about the legacy of slavery and lynching and our nation’s history of racial injustice.

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

  I answer that, Confidence takes its name from “fides” [faith]: and it belongs to faith to believe something and in somebody. But confidence belongs to hope, according to Job 11:18, “Thou shalt have confidence, hope being set before thee.” Wherefore confidence apparently denotes chiefly that a man derives hope through believing the word of one who promises to help him. Since, however, faith signifies also a strong opinion, and since one may come to have a strong opinion about something, not only on account of another’s statement, but also on account of something we observe in another, it follows that confidence may denote the hope of having something, which hope we conceive through observing something either in oneself—for instance, through observing that he is healthy, a man is confident that he will live long. or in another, for instance, through observing that another is friendly to him and powerful, a man is confident that he will receive help from him. Now it has been stated above (A[1], ad 2) that magnanimity is chiefly about the hope of something difficult. Wherefore, since confidence denotes a certain strength of hope arising from some observation which gives one a strong opinion that one will obtain a certain good, it follows that confidence belongs to magnanimity. Reply to Objection 1: As the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 3), it belongs to the “magnanimous to need nothing,” for need is a mark of the deficient. But this is to be understood according to the mode of a man, hence he adds “or scarcely anything.” For it surpasses man to need nothing at all. For every man needs, first, the Divine assistance, secondly, even human assistance, since man is naturally a social animal, for he is sufficient by himself to provide for his own life. Accordingly, in so far as he needs others, it belongs to a magnanimous man to have confidence in others, for it is also a point of excellence in a man that he should have at hand those who are able to be of service to him. And in so far as his own ability goes, it belongs to a magnanimous man to be confident in himself. Reply to Objection 2: As stated above ([3353]FS, Q[23], A[2]; [3354]FS, Q[40], A[4]), when we were treating of the passions, hope is directly opposed to despair, because the latter is about the same object, namely good. But as regards contrariety of objects it is opposed to fear, because the latter’s object is evil. Now confidence denotes a certain strength of hope, wherefore it is opposed to fear even as hope is. Since, however, fortitude properly strengthens a man in respect of evil, and magnanimity in respect of the obtaining of good, it follows that confidence belongs more properly to magnanimity than to fortitude. Yet because hope causes daring, which belongs to fortitude, it follows in consequence that confidence pertains to fortitude.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  This done I retired to the service of the goddesse in hope of greater benefits, considering I had received a signe and token, whereby my courage increased every day more and more to take upon me the orders and sacraments of the temple: insomuch that I oftentimes communed with the Priest, desiring him greatly to give me the degree of the religion, but he which was a man of gravitie, and well renowned in the order of priesthood, deferred my affection from day to day, with comfort and better hope, as parents commonly bridle the desires of their children, when they attempt or indeavour any unprofitable thing, saying, that the day when any one should be admitted into their order is appointed by the goddesse, the Priest which should minister the sacrifice is chosen by her providence, and the necessary charges of the ceremonies is alotted by her commandement, all which things he willed me to attend with marvailous patience, and that I should beware either of too much hastinesse, or too great slacknesse, considering that there was like danger, if being called I should delay: or not called I should be hasty: moreover he said that there was none of his company either of so desperate a mind, or so rash and hardy, as to enterprise any thing without the commandernent of the goddesse, whereby he should commit a deadly offence, considering that it was in her power to damne and save all persons, and if any were at the point of death, and in the way to damnation, so that he were capable to receive the secrets of the goddesse, it was in her power by divine providence to reduce him to the path of health, as by a certaine kind of regeneration: Finally he said that I must attend the celestiall precept, although it was evident and plaine, that the goddesse had already vouchsafed to call and appoint me to her ministery, and to will me refraine from prophane and unlawfull meates, as those Priests which were already received, to the end I might come more apt and cleane to the knowledge of the secrets of religion. Then was I obedient unto these words, and attentive with meek quietnesse, and probable taciturnity, I daily served at the temple: in the end the wholesome gentlenesse of the goddesse did nothing deceive me, for in the night she appeared to me in a vision, shewing that the day was come which I had wished for so long, she told me what provision and charges I should be at, and how that she had appointed her principallest Priest Mythra to be minister with me in my sacrifices.

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

  We found the white man who was running the store on the day that Ralph Myers came in for the purpose of giving a note to Walter. Walter had tried to persuade his original lawyers to speak to this man, but they had failed to do so. After Walter described the location of the store, we were able to track him down. The storeowner recounted his memory of that day: Myers had sought out Walter—but had to ask the storeowner which of the several black men in the store was Walter McMillian. Months after the crime, the storeowner was adamant that Myers had never seen Walter McMillian before. In a church basement, Walter’s sister found flyers advertising the fish fry held at Walter’s house; they confirmed that the event had taken place on the same day as the Morrison murder. A white storeowner who had no relationship to Walter or his family had kept a copy of that flyer for some reason, and he confirmed that he had received it before the Morrison murder. We even tracked down Clay Kast, the white mechanic who had modified Walter’s truck and converted it to a low-rider. He confirmed that the work had been done over six months after Ronda Morrison was murdered. This proved that McMillian’s truck had had no modifications or special features and therefore could not have been the truck described by Myers and Hooks at the trial. I was feeling very good about the progress we were making when I got a call that would become the most significant break in the case. The voice said, “Mr. Stevenson, this is Ralph Myers.” Our secretary had told me there was a “Mr. Miles” on the phone, so I was a little shocked to hear Ralph Myers on the other end of the line. Before I could compose myself, he spoke again. “I think you need to come and see me. I have something I need to tell you,” he said dramatically. Myers was imprisoned at the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama, and Michael and I made plans to meet him there in three days. Michael and I had started running a few miles at night after work to help us wind down from the increasingly long work days. Montgomery has a beautiful park that houses the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which brings nationally acclaimed playwrights and actors to Alabama to perform Shakespeare and modern theatrical productions. The theater is set among hundreds of acres of beautifully maintained parkland with lakes and ponds. There are several trails for running. That evening we spent most of our run speculating about what Myers would tell us. “Why would Myers call us now?”

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

  Before long his property was littered with busted vehicles and scrap metal. In 1998, Walter and I were asked to go to Chicago to attend a national conference where exonerated former death row prisoners were planning to gather. By the late 1990s, the evolution of DNA evidence had helped expose dozens of wrongful convictions. In many states, the number of exonerations exceeded the number of executions. The problem was so significant in Illinois that in 2003, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, citing the unreliability of capital punishment, commuted the death sentences of all 167 people on death row. Concerns about innocence and the death penalty were intensifying, and support for the death penalty in opinion polls began to drop. Abolitionists were becoming hopeful that more profound death penalty reform or possibly a moratorium might be achievable. Our time in Chicago with other exonerated former death row prisoners was energizing for Walter, who seemed more motivated than ever to talk about his experience. Around the same time, I started teaching at the New York University School of Law. I would travel to New York to teach my classes and then fly back to Montgomery to run EJI. I asked Walter to come to New York each year to talk with students, and it was always a powerful moment when he walked into the classroom. He was a survivor of a criminal justice system that had proven, in his case, just how brutally unfair and cruel it could be. His personality, presence, and witness said something extraordinary about the humanity of people directly impacted by systemic abuse. His firsthand perspective on the plight of people wrongfully convicted was deeply meaningful to students, who often seemed overwhelmed by Walter’s testimony. He usually spoke very briefly and would give short answers to the questions posed to him. But he had an enormous effect on the students who met him. He would laugh and joke and tell them he wasn’t angry or bitter, just grateful to be free. He would share how his faith had helped him survive his hundreds of nights on death row. One year, Walter got lost on the trip to New York, and he called to tell me that he couldn’t make it. He seemed confused and couldn’t offer a coherent explanation of what had happened at the airport. When I got back home, I went to see him and he seemed his usual self, just a little down. He told me that his junkyard business wasn’t going great. When he described his finances, it became clear he was spending the money we’d secured for him more quickly than seemed prudent. He was buying equipment to make his collection of cars simpler, but he wasn’t generating the kind of revenue necessary to support the costs.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It spoke first of the great importance of the cultural inven tory here begun in relation to the various black cultures which had been "systematically misunderstood, underestimated, sometimes destroyed." This inventory had confirmed the pressing need for a re-examination of the history of these cul tures ( "Ia verite historique11) with a view to their re-evaluation. The ignorance concerning them, the errors, and the willful distortions, were among the great contributing fa ctors to the crisis through which they now were passing, in relation to themselves and to human culture in general. The active aid of writers, artists, theologians, thinkers, scientists, and techni cians was necessary fo r the revival, the rehabilitation, and the development of these cultures as the first step toward their integration in the active cultural life of the world. Black men, whatever their political and religious belicts, were united in believing that the health and growth of these cultures could not possibly come about until colonialism, the exploitation of undeveloped peoples, and racial discrimination had come to an end. (At this point the conference expressed its regret at the involuntary absence of the South Atiican delegation and the reading was interrupted by prolonged and violent ap plause.) All people, the document continued, had the right to be able to place themselves in fruitful contact with their na tional cultural values and to benefit from the instruction and PRINCES AND POWERS education which could be afforded them within this frame work. It spoke of the progress which had taken place in the world in the last fe w years and stated that this progress per mitted one to hope fo r the general abolition of the colonial system and the total and universal end of racial discrimination, and ended: "Our conference, which respects the cultures of all countries and appreciates their contributions to the prog ress of civilization, engages all black men in the defense, the illustration, and the dissemination throughout the world of the national values of their people. We, black writers and art ists, proclaim our brotherhood toward all men and expect of them ( <nous attendom d'eux') the manifestation of this same brotherhood toward our people." When the applause in which the last words of this document were very nearly drowned had ended, Diop pointed out that this was not a declaration of war; it was, rather, he said, a declaration of love-for the culture, European, which had been of such importance in the history of mankind. But it had been very keenly fe lt that it was now necessary fo r black men to make the effort to define themselves au lieu d'etre toujours dejini par les autres. Black men had resolved "to take their destinies into their own hands." He spoke of plans for the setting up of an international association fo r the dissemination of black culture and, at five-twenty-two, Dr.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The few mothers who tried to intervene found that their daughters ignored them because the girls didn’t credit their moms with wisdom in relationships. Like Gary, the young women raised in good intact homes entered adulthood expecting that their future relationships would work, not fail. By their early twenties, they were in no rush to select a life mate but did have notions about the kind of relationship they wanted. Most postponed serious commitments, including marriage, until after they began to establish themselves in the workplace. But when the time is right they are reasonably confident, although admittedly also apprehensive, that they will choose well and settle down to raise a family. They feel that they have a good start and fair chance to make it on their own. It is interesting to note that there were a few women from divorced families who married early and went on to establish happy, lasting marriages. Like those raised in good intact families, they went in search of men who would be good providers and caring parents. They knew that a good marriage takes commitment and hard work. Where did their understanding come from? I think it helped that they had attentive fathers or stepfathers who kept a close check on them, albeit sometimes from a distance, following their progress in school and their social relationships. The father’s standards made a difference in the woman’s expectation of herself and of the men in her life. The experiences of this small, select group who made appropriate choices and were happily married calls attention to the enduring importance of a father-daughter relationship in which the young woman feels cherished and valued. These bonds exert a powerful protective influence on the young woman’s adult choices and relationships with men. T FIFTEEN Evolving Relationships o find Paula for our twenty-five-year interview, I called the only number I had: her mother’s house in Berkeley. To my surprise a very young voice answered. “My grandma can’t come to the phone now. Can I take a message?” Taking a chance, I offered my name and that I was an old friend of the family. Then I ventured, “I’m really trying to get hold of your grandmother’s daughter, Paula. Can you tell your grandma?” After a short hesitation, the child said, “Paula’s my mom. She’s here. I’ll get her.” Paula’s voice was strong and straightforward. “Sure I’ll see you. I can come any day after my classes. A lot’s happened since our last meeting. I’d like you to meet Racer, too. He’s doing okay, I think. But then sometimes I’m not so sure. I’ll tell my mom you called. See you on Tuesday.” The woman who walked through my door was a new person.