Last week, I was lucky enough to attend an Amnesty International sponsored lecture given by Bryan Stevenson, NYU Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama (EJI). Mr. Stevenson has spent his career challenging bias against the poor and African Americans in the American criminal justice system.
The EJI is an amazing organisation that provides legal assistance to death row inmates in Alabama. There are currently hundreds of death row inmates across America without any legal representation. As Mr. Stevenson said, “They are literally dying for legal representation”. There is no public defender system in Alabama. Most lawyers who take death row cases are given a maximum of $1000 per case. The average length of a capital murder trial in Alabama is 3 days. The average length of the penalty phase is 3 hours. According to Mr. Stevenson, the proven error rate for death penalty convictions is now about 1 in 8.
I think everyone at the lecture was pretty horrified by those numbers, but inspired by Mr. Stevenson’s commitment to justice for everyone. He brings hope to people without hope, often just by turning up and listening to them. Mr. Stevenson believes that his greatest achievement is “continuing to struggle when struggle doesn’t make sense, believing we can make a difference.”
He spoke about the first time he ever met a death row inmate. The law firm that he was working with as an intern sent him to meet the convict just to tell him that he would not be executed this year. He was terrified that the convict would ask questions about the case that he could not answer. However, it turned out that the convict started to cry tears of happiness when he heard the news. He was so happy just to know that he had another year of life and that he could now arrange for his family to come visit him.
Mr. Stevenson described the problems of the judicial system in Alabama as resulting from “a profound absence of hope”. The notion that the lives of death row inmates have no meaning. He said that he always felt the need to confront that kind of hopelessness. Quoting former Czech leader Vaclav Havel, he said that “the kind of hope that makes a difference is not a preference for optimism over pessimism. It’s not the notion that things will work out in the end. It’s not some naive expectation that in the end things will be good. The kind of hope that really makes a difference is none of those things, but rather an orientation of the spirit. It’s how we position ourselves in the face of hopelessness.”
One story that really moved me was about a woman named Ms. Williams.
Walter McMillan is a man who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that he did not commit. (The jury had actually sentenced him to life without parole, but the judge changed the verdict to the death penalty). Mr. Stevenson spoke of the sense of despair in the African American community to which Mr. McMillan belonged. Many of them had been with Mr. McMillan at the very moment when he was supposed to have committed the crime. The EJI found dramatic evidence of Mr. McMillan’s innocence, including a recording that the police had made (and kept!) of them forcing a key witness to frame Mr. McMillan for murder. This led to a court appeal, which eventually led to Mr. McMillan’s release.
Ms. Williams was an old African American woman who was selected by her peers to be one of only a few representatives from the African American community to be allowed to attend the appeal. She was so proud to be selected. However, when she saw that there was a German Shepherd at the entrance to the courtroom, she started to cry and shake with fear. All she could think about was Selma, Alabama, in 1965 when she was chased by police dogs for marching for the right to vote. She appologised to everyone and left the courthouse in tears.
The next day she returned to the courthouse. Her sister told Mr. Stevenson that she had been up all night praying for the strength to walk past the dog. Ms. Williams entered the building saying, over and over again, “I ain’t scared of no dog”. She walked up to the dog and said “I ain’t scared of no dog”. She then entered the courtroom, walked up to Mr. Stevenson and said, “I’m here.” She repeated, “I’m here.” When the judge entered the room, everybody stood up. When the judge sat down, everybody sat down. Except for Ms. Williams. She stood tall and said again, out loud, “I’m here.”
Mr. Stevenson understood that she was not saying that she was physically there. Rather, she was saying that, “I may be old, I may be poor, I may be black, but I’m here because I have this vision of justice that compels me to stand up to injustice.”
When Mr. McMillan was released from Alabama’s death row prison, the first thing he did was walk up to Ms. Williams. He gave her a big hug, and said “I’m here because you were there for me.”
Mr. Stevenson understands the imporance of saying “I’m here”, wherever you see an injustice. Both Ms. Williams and Mr. Stevenson are made of the kind of hope that makes ordinary people do extraordinary things.
I urge everyone to listen to this lecture that Mr. Stevenson gave a few years ago.
There Is Power in Hope
February 12, 2007 in Comment | Leave a comment
I am starting this blog to profile people who inspire me. The title of the blog – Power In Hope – is taken from Barack Obama’s speech last week in which he announced that he was running for President in 2008. I want to write about inspirational people, whether famous or not, who show that there is power in hope. It seems to me that there are people who surround us in our normal daily lives that do extraordinary things. I want to keep track of all the inspiring stories that i read about, all the inspiring words that I hear, and all the inspiring things that I see around me. Hopefully, this will serve to inspire me and anyone else who cares to visit this blog.