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    I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson
    I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson
    I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson
    Ebook58 pages24 minutes

    I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson

    By Geoff Blackwell and Ruth Hobday

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    About this ebook

    The I Know This to Be True series is a collection of extraordinary figures from diverse backgrounds answering the same questions, as well as sharing their compelling stories, guiding ideals, and insightful wisdom.
    Bryan Stevenson has committed his career to fighting wrongful convictions, systemic poverty, and mass incarceration—here, he shares the lessons he's learned throughout his life.

    Stories include how his slave ancestry shaped his childhood, how a poignant conversation with a death row inmate impacted his work, and why he believes the worst thing that happens to a person shouldn't define their life.
    • Bryan Stevenson is one of today's most influential social justice attorneys and author of the bestselling book Just Mercy
    • This book is an encouraging road map for aspiring activists and anyone who believes in second chances
    • The landmark book series brims with messages of leadership, courage, compassion, and hope

    Inspired by Nelson Mandela's legacy and created in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, I Know This to Be True is a global series of books created to spark a new generation of leaders.

    This series offers encouragement and guidance to graduates, future leaders, and anyone hoping to make a positive impact on the world.

    • Royalties from sales of the series support the free distribution of material from the series to the world's developing economy countries
    • Great for those who loved Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela, and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChronicle Books Digital
    Release dateMar 24, 2020
    ISBN9781797203379
    I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson
    Author

    Geoff Blackwell

    Ruth Hobday and Geoff Blackwell are the creative team behind such bestselling projects as Nelson Mandela's Conversations with Myself. Worldwide travelers, they are based in New Zealand.

    Read more from Geoff Blackwell

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      Book preview

      I Know This to be True - Geoff Blackwell

      Introduction

      In July 1989 Bryan Stevenson received a phone call from Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama, USA. The man at the end of the line was Herbert Richardson, an African American death row inmate whose execution was scheduled for one month’s time. He begged Stevenson to represent him. If there was no hope, he said, he didn’t know how he could go on. Over the weeks that followed Stevenson made numerous attempts to stay the execution. The response was always the same: it’s too late.

      Richardson was a Vietnam War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. His mother had died when he was a small child and he had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. In a misguided bid to win his ex-girlfriend back, he had placed a homemade bomb on her porch in the hope that he would save her, and that they would rekindle their relationship. Instead, her young niece picked up the bomb and was killed instantly by the explosion. Despite his history of trauma and an obvious lack of intention to kill, Richardson was sentenced to death.

      Stevenson stayed with him in the minutes before his execution. He was distressed, upset, and humiliated from having the hair shaved off his body. They prayed together and hugged, and, on 19 August 1989 at 12:14 a.m., Richardson died by electric chair. He was forty-three.

      This case is just one of many that Bryan Stevenson has encountered throughout his long career as a public interest lawyer. But it had a profound impact – it transformed the way he thought about the death penalty and it fuelled him in his fight to avoid execution for death row prisoners.

      ‘The death penalty isn’t about whether people deserve to die . . . I think the threshold question is: Do we deserve to kill?’

      Stevenson grew up in the shadow of racial injustice. His great-grandparents had been born into slavery and he was raised in a racially segregated community in rural Delaware. As a law school graduate working for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, he encountered racial prejudice and oppression time and again – not just in the cases he took, but at times in his personal treatment from white members of authority.

      After co-founding the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in 1989, the injustices he was confronted with grew at a rapid pace. Located in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, EJI is a nonprofit law centre that provides free legal aid to death row prisoners. As the organization expanded, its programme broadened to include excessive punishment, wrongful convictions, children sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, and mentally ill prisoners who were sentenced without their mental state being taken into consideration.

      Stevenson has been guided by an unwavering belief that the worst

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