"Just Mercy": Bryan Stevenson on Ferguson, Prison Reform & Why the Opposite of Poverty is Justice

As Ferguson awaits the grand jury's decision in the Michael Brown shooting in Missouri, we speak to attorney Bryan Stevenson, author of the new book, "Just MercyA Story of Justice and Redemption." With growing focus on the failures of the criminal justice system, Stevenson has been fighting those injustices case by case. He is founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a group based in Alabama that represents some of this country's most marginalized people the poor and the wrongfully convicted. Stevenson has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court six times. In 2012, he won a landmark Supreme Court case that barred states from giving mandatory life sentences without parole to children. The Nobel Prizewinning South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called Stevenson "America's young Mandela." Others have compared him to Atticus Finch, the fearless, fictional hero of Harper Lee's seminal novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Stevenson's book tells many stories, but focuses in particular on his battle to free an AfricanAmerican man named Walter McMillian, who was falsely convicted and condemned to die for killing a white woman in Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Stevenson joins us to discuss his work, the situation in Ferguson, and why he argues that the opposite of poverty is not wealth, but justice.

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