A discussion of ‘Just Mercy’ in criminal justice system
“Just Mercy,” the film based on the memoir of the same name by Harvard Law graduate Bryan Stevenson, ends with a sobering statistic: For every nine people executed in this country, one person on death row has been exonerated. Yet, at a talk in Boston following a recent screening of the film — which stars Michael B. Jordan as a young Stevenson, M.P.P./J.D. ’85, working to free innocent death row inmate Walter McMillian, played by Jamie Foxx — Harvard Law School Professor Carol Steiker noted that makes the United States No. 1 in a problematic category. “We remain today the only developed Western democracy that continues to retain the death penalty,” said Steiker, who directs the Criminal Justice Policy Program at the Law School and has written extensively on capital punishment. She called the U.S. practice something of a “historical accident” in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to declare it unconstitutional...