Hi there. I hope you enjoyed the long weekend.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I only recently read Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson’s powerful memoir Just Mercy, which recounts Stevenson’s encounters with the well known but rarely confronted shortcomings of the American justice system: innocent people sentenced to death, impulsive children tried as adults and sentenced to life in prison, where they are raped and beaten.
The obvious starting point for reform is ending the death penalty, an issue I wrote about for The New South Rising earlier this year. But there’s far more, and as far as I’m concerned, Just Mercy should be required reading on the topic. It’s one thing to rationally know how unforgiving our penal system can be; it’s a very different thing to confront the actual horror stories that system has spun.
Today, I want to share a few articles and essays I’ve been reading, with the hope that it will help you wrap your head around the injustice of American justice, and what can be done about it.
The best starting point, aside from Just Mercy, is a recent feature from the New Yorker which dives deep into Louisiana’s correctional system, where inmates die in custody at a higher rate than in any other state. The important takeaway is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The high mortality rate is a result of indifference from policymakers as well as from an electorate shielded from witnessing the death and sorrow behind cinderblock and bars.
Of course, injustice isn’t limited to the penal system. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, we’ve seen a heavier focus on what civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky calls sexual justice— particularly on college campuses, where officials far too often turn a blind eye to rape and sexual assault. But sexual justice isn’t just about protecting victims and ensuring that perpetrators are prosecuted; it’s also an issue of ensuring due process from the accused, protecting them from a world that can be quick to jump to damning conclusions based on tweets rather than actual evidence. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg reviews Brodsky’s new book on the topic.
What’s being done about all of this?
Precious little for now.
In Congress, negotiations over a new criminal justice reform bill have stalled out. The Associated Press reports that a group of former prosecutors are calling on President Biden to take the lead on the issue, but the fact is, there are similar groups calling on Biden to spend more time on a dozen other issues, from voting rights to immigration.
And often, solutions that reform-minded prosecutors try to implement on the local level are far from evidence-based, leading to a backlash of complaints that the prosecutors are cultivating higher rates of violent crime. Take San Francisco, where, as a New York Magazine profile shows, the radical district attorney Chesa Boudin faces a near-constant recall effort against him.
But there is one promising development that I hope spreads like wildfire. As Vox explains, the Arizona Supreme Court recently ended the system of peremptory strikes during jury selection. In most American courts, attorneys and prosecutors are afforded a number of strikes they’re allowed to use to remove potential jurors from consideration without cause. In practice, that often means prosecutors strike as many Black potential jurors as possible when trying a Black defendant. That was repeatedly the case in Mississippi district attorney Doug Evans’s multiple trials of the wrongfully convicted Curtis Flowers, who is now suing Evans.
There are some weak arguments in favor of peremptory strikes, but the fact is, countries like Canada and the United Kingdom have already gotten rid of them, and their legal system hasn’t crumbled.
It’s not a panacea, but it’s certainly a start. Cheers to that.
Thank you for caring enough to read.
Be safe. Drink water. You are loved.
Talk to you Thursday.