Just Mercy Sheds Light on Lack of Change in AL Justice System – WBHM

Posted 12-20-2019 by Janae Pierre.

Bryan Stevenson (center) joins Walter McMillian and his family after his exoneration in 1993.

Equal Justice Initiative

The film Just Mercy premieresFriday in Montgomery. Its based on civil rights attorney Bryan Stevensons efforts to free Walter McMillian, who was wrongfully charged with murder in 1988 and sentenced to death row. A year later, Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery nonprofit that defends people who may have been wrongly convicted, often due to the color of their skin.

Anthony Ray Hintoncredits the Equal Justice Initiative with saving his life.

Had it not been for EJI, theres no doubt in my mind I would have been executed by now, he says.

In 1985, Hinton was convictedof murdering two fast food restaurant managers in Birmingham. Hinton told detectives he didnt do it, but he says they didnt care.

He [the detective] said but since yall always taking up for one another, take this rap for one of your homeboys who truly did it,' Hinton says. And that cost me 30 years of my life.

Thirty years. That washow long Hinton spent on death rowbefore the state exonerated him in 2015.Decades later, wrongful convictions are still not unusual in Alabama. Kira Fonteneauis the former public defender for Jefferson County.

Not much has changed, she says. The conditions that set people up to be wrongfully convicted still exist in the system today.

Take race, for example. Fonteneau says people of color are being locked up for things they didnt do.

And we see that because there are a lot of things that go along in the criminal justice system that often will make it either easier for people to plea or for their version of the events not to get told in trials, she says.

Fonteneau says often times people of color cant afford an attorney or an expert witness two things that are vital in many cases.

Carla Crowder is an attorney and executive director of Alabama Appleseed, an advocacy group that focuses on criminal justice issues. She says in Alabama, people of color are at a major disadvantagebecause of structural racism across the entire criminal justice system.

You have vastly disproportionate numbers of white prosecutors and district attorneys, Crowder says. The appellate courts are entirely white and the Alabama Supreme Court.

Thats why many civil rights attorneys believe Stevensons work, chronicled in his memoir,is so important.They say hes leveling the playing field to make sure people have the legal representation they need to fight a system much larger than themselves.

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Just Mercy Sheds Light on Lack of Change in AL Justice System - WBHM