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Notes
1 I speak here, for now, only of those condemned within the USA, not the many human beings routinely (and too often, invisibly) condemned to death by the American military state abroad, such as the thousands of extrajudicial killings by drone strikes, as recently revealed by the New York Times, and by the Brown University’s Watson Institute; see Watson Institute, “Afghan Civilians,” The Costs of War, April 2021, https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan.
2 As of Just Mercy’s publication in 2014, at least 152 people condemned to die in the United States had been fully exonerated as innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted, thanks to the work of groups like the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Institute.
3 To put this 55,000 figure in perspective, here are the total number of people imprisoned (for sentences of any length) in the following countries as of this writing: England (86,618), France (67,700), Germany (62,194), and Canada (41,145). Over 200,000 people in the USA are sentenced to “life in prison” including those with the possibility of parole. See Ashley Nellis, “No End In Sight: America’s Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment,” The Sentencing Project, February 17, 2021, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/no-end-in-sight-americas-enduring-reliance-on-life-imprisonment/.
4 We should also add here the effective death sentence imposed on prisoners who are routinely denied needed medical care for serious and life-threatening illnesses. See for instance the urgent case of Kevin Rashid Johnson, Minister of Defense of the Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party: “Demand Appropriate Cancer Treatment for Rashid!” Kevin “Rashid” Johnson (blog), July 6, 2022, https://rashidmod.com/?p=3210.
5 Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, First edition (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014).
6 I review some of the relevant facts in my short essay on Jacobin’s “Lower the Crime Rate” issue: Joseph G. Ramsey, “Don’t Judge an Issue Just by Its Cover – 12 Important Points from Jacobin’s Latest Issue: ‘Reduce the Crime Rate,’” The Multiracial Unity Blog (blog), November 27, 2021, https://multiracialunity.org/2021/11/27/dont-judge-an-issue-just-by-its-cover-12-important-points-from-jacobins-latest-issue-reduce-the-crime-rate/. A few key takeaways: “That last year alone [2020] 21,570 people in the USA were murdered, a significant surge from the years prior”; “That a black person in the US is 35 times more likely to be killed by another civilian than by a police officer”; and that “Even if ALL prisoners whose primary charge is a drug offense were released tomorrow, that would reduce the prison population by only 20 percent, still leaving the US by far the main jailer in the world.”
7 The November 1, 1986, murder of Ronda Morrison.
8 Myers later recants, thanks to Stevenson’s efforts, leading eventually to McMillian’s release, but not before Walter has spent decades at death’s door, with lasting family and mental health consequences.
9 Stevenson further makes clear how pervasive old school white supremacy still can be in parts of the Deep South, from open segregationists of the 1960s who now sit as high court judges, to prison guards whose trucks sport confederate flags and racist bumper stickers. We return to the guards below.
10 Also required is the expansion of the functional meaning of ‘community’ itself.
11 Walter McMillian’s core narrative is interspersed with discussions of a dozen or so other cases, some of them other death penalty cases, but also including what Stevenson terms death-in-prison cases, i.e., “life without the possibility of parole,” particularly cases involving juvenile offenders, the mentally impaired, and women condemned for “killing” pregnancies or fending off domestic abusers.
12 In the book, there is no mention of this death row clanking chorus. Instead, Stevenson details Herb’s final hours, some spent with his new wife and her family, some with Stevenson in the preparation cell beside the death chamber. The execution itself is not described.
13 One statistic that raised my eyebrows: 20 percent of people in US jails and prisons are military veterans – yet another way that the ravages of empire boomerang home.
14 It is impossible to miss the irony that the very government that is allowing Herb to be killed is the one that trained him to kill, in Vietnam.
15 Though Stevenson’s comments predate the onset of the debate around “cancel culture,” one can read here also a challenge to the disturbing punitiveness that afflicts parts of the contemporary US left as well.
16 One of the bumper stickers reads: “IF I’D KNOWN IT WAS GOING TO BE LIKE THIS, I’D HAVE PICKED MY OWN DAMN COTTON” (192, caps in original).
17 One wonders how many of the approximately 100,000 people sitting in solitary confinement in the US on any given day are there for similarly justified resistance.
18 This prompts a question: What could or should be done to enable more of the system’s own guards to speak out and act against a system that deforms them as well?
19 No doubt the ruling desire to cut taxes on the wealthy and reduce social spending on things like mental health counseling and drug treatment also can be seen in this light.
20 Except for the “financial efficiency” argument, which entices those who accept it to pursue “cheaper and more economical” means of punishment.
21 Even if the actions of some individuals may serve to perpetuate harm more than others.
22 Stevenson discusses the damage done by “Three Strikes and You’re Out” laws, as well “Mandatory Minimum” and “Truth in Sentencing” laws, all of which reduce judge and jury’s ability to factor in mitigating factors when deciding a person’s fate.
23 Or, as another tradition might put it: “But for the grace of god, there go I.”
24 Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Break Point (Boston, Beacon Press, 1970), 15. Quoted in Richard Ohmann, English in America: A Radical View of the Profession (New York, Oxford University Press, 1976), 79.
25 For examples of left-activist punitiveness, consider the widespread calls on the left for teenager Kyle Rittenhouse to be given a death sentence or “life” without parole for his actions on the streets in Kenosha, Minnesota. One could also cite liberal-left calls for maximum sentences to be handed down onto killer cops or racist vigilantes such as the brutal murderers of Ahmaud Arbery.
26 Sarah K. S. Shannon et al., “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010,” Demography 54, no. 5 (October 1, 2017): 1795–1818, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0611-1.