The Atlanta Lawyer October/November 2019 | Page 33

COMMUNITY CORNER Just Mercy What To Know Before Seeing The Movie Law School on full scholarship, Stevenson worked for the Southern Center for Human Rights. Based in Atlanta, the Center represents death-row inmates throughout the South. Following law school graduation, in 1994, Stevenson founded the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. He has developed community- based reform litigation designed to improve the administration of criminal justice and has saved dozens of wrongfully convicted individuals from the death penalty. The Movie The Attorney Bryan Stevenson, born in Delaware in 1959, is an attorney, activist for social justice, and founder of the award-winning Equal Justice Initiative. While attending Harvard The Documentary Earlier this year, HBO released its documentary True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality. Told primarily in Stevenson’s words, the film follows the attorney and activist as he struggles to eliminate racial injustice in the US criminal justice system. The documentary focuses on Stevenson’s life and career, exploring the early influences that motivated him to become an advocate. It also traces the intertwined histories of slavery, segregation, incarceration, inequality, oppression, and violence. In addition to highlighting Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative, viewers also experience the opening of Montgomery, Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and its National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Many Atlanta Bar Association members and readers of The Atlanta Lawyer magazine may be familiar with Bryan Stevenson’s critically-acclaimed book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. With the Just Mercy movie being released next month, we thought our readers would appreciate a refresher on the materials. Or, if you have not gotten a chance to read Stevenson’s bestseller, here are a few things to know before seeing his story on the big screen. Just Mercy is scheduled to be released on Christmas Day, December 25, 2019. It is a legal drama, based on the true story of Walter McMillian, a man wrongfully convicted of the robbery and of murder of an 18-year-old Alabama store clerk. Young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson appeals McMillian’s sentence, becoming entangled in a web of political maneuverings and overt racism. The film is directed by Dentin Daniel Cretton and stars Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson, Jamie Foxx as McMillian, and Brie Larson as local advocate Eva Ansley. Part of the movie was filmed in Conyers, Georgia. chapters focused on veterans, juveniles, the mentally ill, the impoverished and their road (or lack of road) to justice. Just Mercy examines current (2014) police procedures and incarceration rates, and challenges its readers to consider how and why are people in the U.S. justice system judged unfairly. The book posits that the true measure of a person’s character is how he or she treats the poor, accused, and condemned. DR. MEGAN HODGKISS Hodgkiss Consulting LLC [email protected] The Book Just Mercy is a New York Times bestseller, winning both the Carnegie Medal and an NAACP Image Award. The book is part memoir, part a call to arms for criminal justice reform. It weaves together stories from Stevenson’s work as an attorney with strong arguments about legal injustice. The narrative backbone is the story of the wrongfully convicted McMillian, with other www.atlantabar.org THE ATLANTA LAWYER 33