⭐️ Delaware Student of the Week comes from the halls of Las Américas ASPIRA Academy
NEWS

Del native, civil rights lawyer on access to justice

Esteban Parra
The News Journal
  • Stevenson%2C who was born and raised near Milton%2C now heads the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery%2C Ala.
  • H will be at World Caf%E9 Live at the Queen Monday to speak and take questions about his inspiring memoir titled %22Just Mercy.%22

Society's challenge should be to resist reducing people to the worst thing they've done, said Bryan Stevenson, a Delaware native and noted civil rights attorney.

Anything else creates an atmosphere were people ignore what's driving urban problems, including addiction, disabilities or abuse. This doesn't mean what a criminal has done should be excusable or acceptable, but it does mean they are not just that crime, Stevenson said.

"I think that's how we've gotten to be an overly incarcerating society," said Stevenson, who will be at World Café Live at the Queen Monday to speak and take questions about his inspiring memoir titled "Just Mercy."

"We've just let our fear and our anger shape our thinking. I'm hoping that we are entering an era where we are prepared to be a little more complete, a little more thoughtful about what we do when it comes to punishment and incarceration," he said.

Stevenson, who was born and raised near Milton, now heads the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala.,, a private, nonprofit organization that provides legal representation for indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

His recently published "Just Mercy" focuses on much of his work, including the story of Walter McMillian – a black death row inmate Stevenson started representing in the late 1980s. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, while six black alibi witnesses testified that he had been at a church fish fry at the time of the crime.

The 11 white and one black jury members ignored the alibi witnesses and convicted him and recommended life in prison. The trial judge overrode the jury's sentencing verdict and sentenced McMillian to death.

Stevenson took on the case post-conviction, where he showed the state's witnesses had lied on the stand and the prosecution had illegally suppressed evidence. Stevenson uses this case to show a commitment to individual defendants, as well as to deeper problems in the American legal system.

"It is such a powerful book," said Gemma Buckley, who owns Ninth Street Book Shop with her husband, Jack. The store helped set up Monday's event.

What Stevenson does is bring "The New Jim Crow," a book accounting of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, to a personal level, Buckley said.

"He talks about the inmates on death row, in particular, who he represented, who literally in some cases he brought from the brink of death," she said. "These are very personal experiences. It just tears you apart to read this."

The book leaves you thankful for people like Stevenson and hoping for more like him, she said. "This is a call for action for change."

Growing up in southern Delaware gave Stevenson a unique perspective on what he writes about, he said.

"Southern Delaware when I was a kid was very much the South: it clearly identified with Southern norms, Southern values, Southern traditions," he said. "There was no high school for black children when my father grew up. The legacy of Jim Crow and segregation was very much around. The schools didn't integrate until I was in the second grade.

"And so that absolutely was formidable for me," he said.

Stevenson, whose visits Delaware to see his father and sister, said the First State is a microcosm of problems affecting the country. This includes children born into and growing up with violence. The only time society deals with this is after these children act out in the violence they grew up in.

But because of the state's small size, there is an opportunity for progress that's harder in a larger state with more people and complicated issues, he said.

It is a state with great wealth, but also tremendous poverty – something he grew up with, surrounded by poultry plants, migrant farmers workers. There has been progress, but there continue to be challenges and problems, he said.

Stevenson said he was encouraged by some of the leadership he is seeing now.

"We've got to have a different model," he said. "There have been too many young kids who have been traumatized by abuse and neglect and poverty and isolation. So we've got to talk about that, and that's a conversation for our courts, our schools, our social services agencies. It's a conversation for everybody who wants a state where everybody has the same opportunity to succeed."

Before he speaks at the Queen, Stevenson will be at the Arsht Hall on the University of Delaware's Wilmington Campus for a kick-off meeting of Delaware Access to Justice Commission. The commission is charged with providing a coordinated approach to investigating and addressing gaps and critical needs related to access to justice in Delaware.

Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine will sign an order creating four subcommittees. The order will direct that leaders from Delaware businesses, academia and the community will serve as voting members with input from all three branches of government.

Stevenson has agreed to assist with the subcommittee on fairness in the criminal justice system.

"Among its important duties, none will be more urgent than addressing the disturbing reality that nearly 60 percent of our male inmates are black in a state where only 22 percent of our citizens are black," Strine said in a statement to The News Journal. "The causes of these serious disparities are complex, but we have a moral duty to address them. Showing our commitment to this is the quality of the group that will address this issue, a group that includes former top prosecutors and judges, and the fact that we reached out to Bryan Stevenson and his Equal Justice Initiative for help.

"And make no mistake about it, the Commission is comprised entirely of public citizens precisely so that it can make whatever recommendations it believes are necessary to make our community more just."

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Bryan Stevenson on discussing his memoir titled "Just Mercy."

WHEN: 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Monday

WHERE: World Café Live at the Queen, 500 N. Market St., Wilmington

COST: Free