What is the point of law? We have systems put in place to protect people and serve justice, but what happens when those systems fail to serve the people they aim to protect? What happens when those systems are built upon the false pretense that one life is more valuable than another? How should these systems be reformed? How do we respond when a human mistake costs someone their life?
These are some of the questions that the 2019 film adaptation of Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy” wrestles with. 019 that featured . The Multicultural Club hosted a showing of the film—starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx and Brie Larson—on February 25, with a discussion afterwards led by Dr. Alicia Jackson.
Both the book and the movie record Stevenson’s experience of representing prisoners sentenced to death for their crimes. He graduated from Harvard Law in 1985 and, because of his experience as an African American growing up in the United States, he decided to represent criminals on death row. In 1989 he founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which seeks to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment and racial inequality.
The movie was phenomenal, difficult, thought-provoking and definitely geared to pull on your heart strings. The acting and filming was so well carried out that from the beginning you stepped into the reality of the story. The adaptation remained quite accurate to the true story, which made it all the more heart-wrenching. Not a single eye was dry by the end of the movie.
While the movie primarily follows the case of inmate Walter McMillan, there are other cases that Stevenson takes on in which the clients do not get exonerated. One particular scene makes your stomach turn as you watch one of the characters facing his death sentence by the electric chair.
Throughout the movie, there are multiple instances of the utter dehumanization of incarcerated men and Stevenson himself. From the cagelike cells they live in to Stevenson’s humiliating experience of having to strip down naked in front of a police officer, the mistreatment of these people rings out as wrong.
Finally, the movie ends with this sobering statistic: “For every nine people executed in this country, one person on death row has been exonerated.” This margin of error which concerns human life is shocking to say the least and urges the viewer to consider this question: is the death of eight convicted felons worth the life of one innocent person?
The movie leaves the viewer in no doubt that the answer should be “absolutely not,” and that the death penalty needs to be altered or abolished. However, the reality is that there are really sadistic people out there who receive pleasure from harming others. What should their penalty be for the atrocious crimes they commit? When are lives irredeemable?
Arguably, never. As Christians, we see God pull people from all sorts of dark walks of life, with Saul’s conversion being a prime example. A prosecutor of Christians, Saul, through the grace of God, became one of the most influential apostles of Christ.
As a general rule, I personally end up with a middle ground/case-by-case stance concerning controversial subjects, but after watching “Just Mercy” and seeing the devastation and corruption that even simple human error can incur, I am drawn to the belief that the death penalty should be seriously revised and possibly abolished.
After watching a movie like “Just Mercy,” the viewer’s response shouldn’t end with remorse. I believe we have a responsibility to keep digging deeper into the issues of human injustice which plague our world and fight evil with good.