Just Mercy and an Examination of the Death Penalty
In my last post I shared resources I found helpful toward increasing my understanding of racial and social inequality. One of the many films I have watched since that post is Just Mercy, a film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, staring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, and based on the book by Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.
The film depicts the extremely compelling, true story of a Black man on Alabama’s Death Row for a heinous crime he did not commit. He was convicted of the crime based on false witness statements, and the film chronicles his experience and the dedicated Harvard-trained Black attorney who convinces him to fight to prove his innocence. The story is one of countless heartbreaking illustrations of racial and social inequality in the U.S. For example, our Just Mercy protagonist was just one of many people on Alabama’s Death Row in the 1980s who lacked resources for access to effective counsel, but this is still true today.
In 2015, I co-authored a paper about how capital punishment is medically unethical, as it requires a physician to help with the lethal injection process – a process that is in direct conflict with the Hippocratic oath taken by every physician. That oath is “Primum non nocere” in Latin, or “First do no harm.” In the paper, I and my co-author explain how in 2015 the United States was one of only 22 countries that still have the death penalty and that the American Medical Association is among many professional organizations that prohibit the participation of physicians in the physical act of execution. Today, the U.S is one of only 14 countries to have the death penalty.
As of December 12, 2019, the Death Penalty was legal in 29 states, according to a CNN article, Death Penalty Fast Facts, updated on January 7, 2020. The authors cite a comprehensive paper from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. The NAACP paper cites the Supreme Court Cases upholding the Death Penalty and the statistics of death row inmates broken down by race and other demographics. As of 2019, there were 2,656 inmates on Death Row and 1,104 of them were black.
In my own research on this topic, I discovered that many defendants with psychiatric conditions have ended up on Death Row, at least in part due to their mental illness. In addition, mental illness worsens or can develop due to the severe living conditions inmates experience on Death Row. Indeed, Just Mercy included a story line about a combat Veteran with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who committed his crime while symptomatic but was executed anyway after spending years on Death Row.
Just Mercy concludes by citing statistics showing a very high rate of error that this country has in executing defendants who are either innocent or less culpable by reason of mental illness. Whatever our personal feelings are about the death penalty, the stories told in Just Mercy force us to consider why and who we execute in this country. In addition to the resources included in my previous post, I highly recommend this film as another avenue for better understanding social and racial injustice in our country.