How to Be the Kind of Person Who Changes the World (Even in Small Ways)

Mel Robbins (00:00:36):

Bryan Stevenson is my personal hero who has saved over 140 people from death row, many of whom were innocent. He's won the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, the Blockbuster movie, just Mercy. He's portrayed by none other than Michael B. Jordan. And today he's here on the podcast bringing his biggest cases to life for you,

Bryan Stevenson (00:00:58):

Life for you. If someone tells a lie, they're not just a liar. If someone takes something that doesn't belong to them, they're not just a thief. We all don't want to be reduced to the worst thing we've ever done.

Mel Robbins (00:01:12):

I am just so moved by what force you all. Yeah, thank you.

(00:01:20):

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am absolutely thrilled that you're here. I have goosebumps. I cannot wait for our conversation today. And look, it's always an honor to spend time with you and to be together. But today, oh my gosh, we get to spend time together with somebody who has been a mentor, a personal hero of mine. His work, his life inspires me so much. So I just am thrilled that we get to be together for this. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a minute and welcome you personally to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I'm glad that you're here, and because you made the time to listen to this particular episode, here's what it tells me. It tells me you are the kind of person who really cares. You care about people, about doing good in the world, about becoming the kind of person who is more compassionate, even when it feels hard to be compassionate.

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And if you're listening right now because someone in your life shared this with you, here's what I want to point out to you. They also know that you're someone who cares deeply and who is ready to make a meaningful impact. I think that's pretty cool that you have people in your life like that. And so welcome because today the person that you're about to meet is going to show you exactly how to be that kind of person who has a more purpose-driven life. I'm so thrilled and honored to have one of my personal heroes here in our Boston Studios today. He came here for one reason. He came here to inspire you. I mean this for me. It is one of the highlights of my entire career because joining us today is the remarkable Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson is a world renowned constitutional law and civil rights attorney.

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He is also a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School, and that's probably the least impressive thing I could say about Bryan. Bryan has argued and won multiple landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court. He's also the author of a mega bestselling book that documents his life work Just Mercy, which was named one of the most influential books of the decade by CNN, and I think it's one of the most influential books of this century. This book was then turned into this amazing feature film starring none other than Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Fox and the movie went on to win four NAACP image awards. He's received some of the highest honors that a human being can be awarded, like the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, the American Bar Association Medal and the National Medal of Liberty from the ACL U. Bryan is also the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that for over 30 years has provided legal representation to people on death row.

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Children tried as adults and individuals with intellectual disabilities and other people who have been unfairly incarcerated or abused by the legal system. Under Bryan's leadership, the Equal Justice Initiative have helped change laws across the country and won reversals or release for more than 140 death row prisoners, many of whom were innocent and were wrongly convicted for crimes they did not commit. These are innocent people's lives that he saved, and it's not just 140 people, that's 140 families and communities that were also saved by his work. And look, I know when you hear the words death row, you might be thinking, wait, death row. Aren't those the worst people? Isn't that why they're on death row? Grace is not one of those things you think about until you need it. Hope is not something you think you need until you're in despair. Bryan is here to show you how to look deeper within yourself, to be more compassionate, to be more curious about people's stories, to live a purpose-driven life, how to stand up for people and causes that are often overlooked or misunderstood. Because in doing that, he'll remind you that grace and hope might just be the most powerful gift you can give to the world, to other people and to yourself. So please help me welcome the extraordinary Bryan Stevenson to the Mel Robbins podcast, Bryan Stevenson. It is an absolute honor to meet you and to just be able to sit down and learn from you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for being here.

Bryan Stevenson (00:05:59):

My pleasure.

Mel Robbins (00:06:01):

Could you speak directly to the person who's with us right now and tell them what they might experience that could be different in their life if they truly take to heart everything that you're about to share with us and teach us today?

Bryan Stevenson (00:06:20):

I think if you embrace compassion as a way of life, it will make you feel strong and it will make you feel beautiful. And we underestimate the power of feeling beautiful as a human being and strong as a human being. And for me, embracing compassion, letting it guide us as we encounter people, as we navigate complex and difficult situations, as we try to overcome heartbreak and a lot of the things that just happen in life when we lead with compassion. I just think there's a beautiful return on that approach and it certainly has affirmed me and I've seen it inspire people as well.

Bryan Stevenson (00:07:54):

I want them to know that justice matters, that how we treat one another matters. My work and the work of the Equal Justice Initiative is about doing justice for people who are experiencing injustice. It's about valuing mercy as a way to recover from harm and hardship. And I'm persuaded that a more just world is a more beautiful world, a more just world is a world with less conflict and division and strife. It's a world with more love. And so my work is really about trying to increase the justice quotient in our nation. And everybody experienced the beauty of justice.

Mel Robbins (00:08:38):

What does that mean to you? What does the word justice mean?

Bryan Stevenson (00:08:41):

I think justice is a constant struggle. It's not a destination, it's not a fixed place. It's the way we navigate the inevitable conflicts and divisions that come in a world where there's a hierarchy of power. Some people have less power than other people, and when people who have less power are harmed or victimized or mistreated, it's hard for them sometimes to have recovery for that, and that's injustice. And for people who have more power, it's important to appreciate the power you have and the obligation you have to use that power to make sure other people aren't being harmed anymore than is necessary. And so for me, justice is this navigation of how we move through the world when there's difference, when there's not equality and how we recover from harm and wrongdoing and abuse. It's something that I think essentially is the constant struggle we have to commit to. Just like a relationship is not something you can say, I've got a relationship and now you're done. It requires nurturing, it requires give and take. It requires questioning. It requires checking in. I mean, injustice is in many ways the same way. We have to constantly be thinking about was that just, was that right? Is this the best we can do? Is there something that's fairer? Is there something that's going to lead to a better outcome than what we've done?

Mel Robbins (00:10:23):

And the word mercy,

Bryan Stevenson (00:10:25):

I think for me, for a long time when someone did something remarkable to express their sorrow and regret, I used to think that's when they deserve mercy, and that's when we should perhaps give them a second chance because they're demonstrating so much remorse and regret. What I now believe is that mercy isn't something that is dependent on what someone else does. I think it's dependent on who we are. I think we should give it to people even when we're not seeing the regret and the remorse that we'd like to see. It's a way of moving through the world and to want mercy when we make mistakes, I believe requires us to give mercy when other people make mistakes. It doesn't mean that you don't demand respect and accountability when people do bad things. It doesn't mean that you let people walk all over you, but it does mean that you're not looking for the worst in others. You're not trying to create a world of us versus them. You're not trying to build division where you're on one side of the wall and other people on the other side of the wall and they don't deserve mercy and you do. It's the opposite of that. It's the way in which we think about tearing down walls, creating less harm, less injury, less misunderstanding by being willing to give as much mercy as we hope people will give us.

Mel Robbins (00:11:58):

Well, one of the things that is true, whether you're dealing with something that somebody has done that ends up in criminal court or you're just dealing with a friend or a family member or a situation at work where somebody treats you in a way that is not fair or that you don't deserve, we do tend to focus on the thing, the bad act. And what is so true about human beings is that by the time somebody does something to hurt you, there has been a much longer history of bad things that has typically happened to that person that led to this moment that we then Judge. Bryan, before we get into all the remarkable work that you do, your background and these transformational themes of hope and grace and compassion, is there a story that you would want to share from your work with a person who's never even considered the idea of extending grace to somebody in prison or somebody condemned to death row?

Bryan Stevenson (00:13:07):

Yeah, I think it's the beauty of a journey. You keep learning things, and I represented a man who was intellectually disabled. He asked me to try to prevent his execution. He'd already been through the appeals process even though I knew it would be very hard to stop the execution. We jumped in because our courts have actually banned the execution of people with intellectual disability. So I went to the trial judge and said, he's intellectually disabled. You can't execute him. But the trial judge again said, too late. Somebody should have filed that motion. Years ago, the appellate court said, too late. The federal court said Too late, and I did the hardest thing I have to do, which is to pick up the phone and talk to this man. I said, I'm so sorry, but I can't stop this execution. And then he did the thing that I dread. He started to cry. He became very emotional and he was literally sobbing on the other end of the phone. And I just gave him space and I was holding the phone. And then he said, please don't hang up Mr. Stevenson. There's something I want to say to you. I said, of course. And then he tried to say something to me, but in addition to being intellectually disabled, when he got overwhelmed, when he got distraught and challenged, he had a speech impediment and he would really struggle to get his words out.

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So he began stuttering terribly. He could not get out a single word, and I was standing there holding the phone and tears were literally running down my face. It was so challenging that my mind wandered. And I remembered when I was a little boy, my mom had taken us to church and I was talking to my friends and there was this little skinny kid I'd never seen. And I remembered on this night turning to that kid and saying, Hey man, what's your name? And this little boy tried to answer my question, but he also had a speech impediment and he couldn't get his words out and he stuttered terribly. And then I remembered that I did something really ignorant when that little boy couldn't get his words outright. I laughed and my mother saw me laughing and she gave me this look I'd never seen before, and she came over and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me aside.

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She said, Bryan, don't you ever laugh at somebody because they can't get their words out, right? And even at 10, I was a little bit of a young lawyer and I was like, mom, I wasn't laughing. I couldn't hear. There was lights going on, there were things happening all around me. And my mother said, no, Bryan, you know better than that. And then she looked at me, she said, now you go back over there and you tell that little boy you're sorry. I said, okay. And I took a step and my mom wasn't satisfied. She grabbed me by that arm. She said, wait, after you tell that little boy you're sorry, I want you to hug that little boy. And I kind of rolled my eyes. I said, okay, mom. And I took a step, and then she grabbed me by the arm again. She said, wait, after you hug that little boy, I want you to tell that little boy you love him. I said, mom, I can't go over there and tell that little boy I love him. She gave me that looks. I said, all right. And I remembered going over to that little boy saying, look man, well, I'm sorry. And then I lunged at him and gave him my little boy version of a man hug. And then I remember trying to say as insincerely as I possibly could, I said, well, I don't know. Well, I love you. And what I'd forgotten was how that little boy hugged me back.

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And then he whispered flawlessly in my ear. He said, I love you too. And I was thinking about that while my client was trying to get his words out. And finally my client got his words out and he said, I just want to thank you for fighting for me. And the last thing that man said to me says, I want you to know that I love you for trying to save my life. He hung up the phone, they pulled him away. They strapped him to a gurney and they executed him. That moment was the moment when I said, I just can't do this anymore. It just seemed too much. And I think it was because I realized with great intensity how broken he was. And the question I had in my mind is, why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is it about us that when we see brokenness in other people, we want to hurt them for it, kill them for it, and I represent the broken.

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All of my clients have been broken by poverty, broken by trauma, broken by addiction, broken by illness, broken by disability, broken by despair. And then I realized I work in a broken system because the people with power won't get proximate. They don't have hope. They're unwilling to be compassionate. And I was sitting there just thinking about why do I do what I do? And that was the moment when I had this realization. I don't do what I do because I've been trained as a lawyer. I don't do what I do because somebody has to do it. I don't even do what I do because it's about human rights or justice. That's part of it. But what I realized that night that I'd never realized before is that I do what I do because I am broken too. I am not unflawed, I am not unblemished.

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I am not uncomplicated in the same ways that the people I represent are. But I do believe in the power of redemption. I do believe in grace. I do believe in mercy. I do believe in restoration because I have been the beneficiary of so much grace and so much mercy that man before he was executed, gave me something so powerful, so beautiful, so affirming. And that's why I think we should do better for the broken that we encounter. We should think better of the broken that we encounter because just as we can give to them, they can give to us. And it does for me become important to talk about the fact that we can't create a perfect world, but we can create a world that's filled with more grace, more mercy, and more love.

Bryan Stevenson (00:19:09):

I am grateful that I am the heir of so many hopeful people, people who had to do things much harder than I've had to do by living in Montgomery, Alabama. I have a vantage point that I feel really privileged by the generation of people who came before me in that community would have to put on their Sunday best. They'd go places to push for the right to vote, push for the right to be treated fairly. They'd be on their knees praying and they'd get beaten and battered and bloodied, and they'd go home and change their clothes and wipe the blood off and they'd go and do it again. And I haven't been beaten and battered and bloodied as the people who came before me. I stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less. It's their hope that shapes my hope.

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My great grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia. When I went to Harvard Law School, they tried to make everybody feel welcome on the first day, and they took out groups of 13 students. And my group leader just asked everybody in the group, why are you in law school? And the people in my group started invoking these familial connections. They were all talking about how they were the son or the daughter, the grandson, the granddaughter, the nephew, the niece of a lawyer. And after the fifth one, I started to squirm a bit because I knew I wasn't related to a lawyer. And then after the seventh or eighth person who made that same invocation of a family relation, I really started to feel, and then I realized that not only was I not related to a lawyer, I realized I'd never even met a lawyer.

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And by the time they got to me, I just felt so out of place that I didn't answer the question. I told a joke, I tried to distract people. And as soon as that meeting was over, I called my mom. I said, mom, I don't belong at this law school. And I had one of those kind of mothers. My mother said, what are you talking about? You belong wherever you go. You're the smartest person in the world. You can do anything you want to do. And then she said, now you need to go find those kids and tell them while you're really in law school. And I felt better after talking to my mom, but I didn't think I could actually pull those kids together. But two weeks into law school, I still felt off. And I finally did what she encouraged me to do.

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And I found as many of the kids in my little group as I could. And I said, I didn't tell the truth. On the first day of law school, I need to tell you why I'm in law school. And I told them that my great-grandfather, I said, I'm in law school because my great-grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia. And despite the fact that it was against the law for an enslaved person to learn to read or write, my great-grandfather risked his life to learn to read and write. He could have been sold, he could have been killed, but he had a hope of freedom. So great that he was willing to risk his life. And this was the 1850s. He didn't know a civil war was coming the next decade, but he still had that hope of freedom. And after emancipation, my grandmother told me that my great-grandfather would sit on the porch of their home and read the newspaper to people who were formerly enslaved who didn't know how to read because he wanted them to know what was going on.

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And she loved the fact that he knew how to read. And she would push her siblings out of the way when he started reading. And she would wrap her arms around his leg when he started reading because she wanted to learn to read. And she thought, you learned to read by touching somebody while they read, and he figured out what she was doing. He said, no, Victoria, that's not how you learn to read. I'll teach you how to read. And he taught her how to read. And my grandmother worked as a domestic her whole life, but she was a reader. She had this hope that reading could create a better world, a bigger world, a more fulfilling world, and she gave it to her children. My grandmother had 10 children. My mom was the youngest of her 10 kids. I'd go visit my grandmother and sometimes she'd stand on the porch and before she would let you in, you would have to read something from a book.

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That's how committed she was to reading. As I said, we grew up in this poor community. A lot of people didn't have a lot of things that were people who had outhouses. They didn't have running water. Most of the people worked in poultry plants. You didn't see a lot of hope outside the door. But when I was a little boy, my mother went into debt and bought us the World Book Encyclopedia. She bought us these books, and you could see so many beautiful things in these books, the things you couldn't see outside the door. And she had this hope that this investment in books that she couldn't afford would do something for her children. And I can't claim to have always understood that because then when 10 Christmas comes along and you go outside and your friends are like, well, I got a bicycle. I got a baseball, I got a basketball.

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And I'd have to say, well, I got Volume G of the World Book encyclopedia. But I told my classmates at Harvard Law School, I'm here because there are generations of hopeful people who have positioned me here. It's the hope of my enslaved great grandfather. It's the hope of my grandmother who had to flee the south because of terror, violence and lynching. It's the hope of my parents and their hope is what sustains me. And all of a sudden I didn't feel diminished at Harvard Law School. In fact, I felt like maybe I had something that other people might not have.

Bryan Stevenson (00:24:39):

That's a great question. No, I had no idea. I knew I wanted to help the poor. I knew I wanted to give back in the ways that people had given me as a child of the civil rights movement. I knew I wanted to do something about the justice quotient in this country, but I didn't know where that would take me. And to be honest, I was kind of frustrated in my first two months at Harvard because nobody seemed to be talking about the poor or equality or justice. I finished my first year and I went over to the school of government to get a degree in public policy. And I remember the day, two months into that program, when I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and I thought, wow, I'm even more miserable here than I was at the law school because they were teaching us how to maximize benefits and minimize costs, but it didn't seem to matter whose benefits got maximized and whose costs got minimized.

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And I went back to the law school and was really in the middle of this existential crisis until I took a course that required me to get proximate. That's when things came together for me. My law school professor, Elizabeth Bartlet, who I'm forever grateful to, taught a course where she allowed her students to spend one month working with the human rights organization somewhere in the country. And I went to Atlanta, Georgia to work with what was then called the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. This group of lawyers who represented people on death row. And they seem so, seem so purposeful. They got up early. They had a clarity of purpose that I just loved. And after I'd been there a week, one of them said, O'Brien, we want you to go to death row and meet somebody we haven't had time to meet. Just explain to him that he's not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. We're worried he may not know that. So of course, I said, yes. I got in my car. I started driving to Jackson, Georgia. But then it hit me that I was just this law student. I didn't know anything. I had never been to death row. I'd never been.

Mel Robbins (00:26:30):

Had you been inside a prison?

Bryan Stevenson (00:26:31):

I had not been in a maximum prison. I'd done some work at a low level prison in the Boston area, but first time in any kind of secure maximum prison. And I just started to feel completely unprepared. And I parked my car and I went into the prison. The guards were not very nice. They sent me to the back in this visitation room, and I was so anxious that I tried to rehearse exactly what I was going to say. And then they brought this condemned man into the room, and I remember being struck by how burdened with chains he was. He had handcuffs on his wrist. He had a chain around his waist, he had shackles on his ankles. It took them 10 minutes to unchain him. And he walked over to me and I was so overwhelmed, I just started to apologize. I said, I'm so sorry.

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I'm just a law student. I don't know anything about the death penalty. I don't know anything about criminal procedure. I don't know anything about appellate procedure, civil procedure. And then I remembered what I was supposed to say. I said, but they sent me down here to tell you that you're not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And when I said that, the man said, wait, wait, wait. Say that again. I said, you're not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And the man said, wait, wait, say that again. I said, you're not at risk of execution anytime in the next year. And that's when this man hugged me and he said, thank you, thank you, thank you. He said, you're the first person I've met in the two years I've been on death row who's not a death row prisoner or death row guard.

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He said, I've been talking to my wife and kids, but I haven't let them come and visit because I was afraid I'd have an execution date and I don't want them to have to deal with that. He said, now, because of you, I'm going to see my wife. I'm going to see my kids. And I couldn't believe how even in my ignorance, just being proximate could have an impact on the quality of someone's life. Then man and I turned out we're exactly the same age. We had the same birth date. Same month, same day, same year. He started asking me questions about my life. I asked him questions about his life, and we just fell into this conversation and I forgot I was a law student. I forgot he was a condemned person on death row. We were just two people talking, and the visit was only scheduled for an hour, but we kept talking.

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I just lost track of time and one hour turned to two hours, two hours turned to three hours. The guards were waiting for me to finish, and after three hours they got angry and they couldn't take it anymore. So they came bursting into the room and they grabbed this man and they threw him against the wall. They pulled his arms back, they put the handcuffs on his wrist really tightly. They wrapped the chain around his waist. They were treating very roughly. They put the shackles back on his ankles, and I begged them to be gentler. I said, look, it's not his fault. It's my fault. He didn't do anything wrong, but they ignored me. Then they started shoving this man toward the door, really pushing him, and it upset me. I said, please, you don't have to do that. He didn't do anything wrong, but they ignored me, and they got that man near the door.

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And I'll never forget how when he got near the door, he planted his feet and when they tried to shove him through the door, he didn't move. And then he turned to me and he looked at me and he said, Bryan, don't worry about this. You just come back. And then he did this thing I'll never ever forget. I stood there and I watched him close his eyes, throw his head back, and then he started to sing and he started singing this hymn. He started singing, I'm pressing on the upward way, new heights. I'm gaining every day, still praying as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. Everybody stopped. And then the guards recovered and they started pushing him down the hallway. And you could hear the chains clanging as they pushed him down the hallway, but you could hear this condemned man singing about higher ground.

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When I heard that song, when I heard him singing, that's when everything changed for me. That was the moment that I knew I wanted to help condemned people get to higher ground. But I also knew at that moment that my journey to higher ground was going to be tied to his journey. And when I went back to Harvard Law School, I was completely changed. You couldn't get me out of the law school library after that because I needed to know everything about federalism and comedy and appellate procedure and criminal procedure and habeas corpus and all of the procedural doctors. I needed to become a master of the law because I wanted to help condemned people get to higher ground. And now 40 years later, sometimes people say, well, how have you helped all these people get relief? How have you won these cases at the Supreme Court?

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And I know they want me to say it's because I'm hardworking, and we try to be smart and we try to be tactical, and we do try to be tactical and smart and work hard. But the truth is, is that if I've helped anybody during my 40 years as a lawyer, it's not because I'm hardworking or smart or tactical. It's because I got close enough to a condemned man to hear his song. And I believe that there are songs still being sung in jails and prisons all across this country. I think in places where there's poverty and despair and oppression, there are songs still being sung. And when we get close enough to hear those songs, those melodies teach us something about what being human is about. They teach us something about what justice is about. And I think we should get proximate not just to help other people. I think we should get proximate to help ourselves because it's been the greatest gift that someone could give to me to be in the midst of justice and condemnation, to stand next to the condemned and the hated and disfavored, and to see the power of love create something beautiful, which is what happens when we are committed to proximity, when we're committed to seeing the humanity and dignity of every human being.

Mel Robbins (00:32:03):

One of the things that your grandmother said is that you can't understand important things from a distance. You have to get close. What does that mean to you?

Bryan Stevenson (00:32:14):

I do believe that when we are proximate to the poor, to the excluded, to the marginalized, we hear things we won't otherwise hear. We see things that we won't otherwise see. And I don't think it's just the way we deal with poverty and injustice. I think in life to be a good leader, to be a good parent, to be a good teacher, we have to be close to the people we are trying to serve. We have to understand what they're seeing, what they're hearing. And when we're distant, we can't do that as well. We judge. We judge to get proximate. We have to sometimes choose to get closer to people who are struggling, people who have fallen down problems in the world that need our attention. We don't shield ourselves from the world's problems, but we have enough character and enough generosity and enough courage that we will actually go places where people are suffering and struggling and help if we can help.

Mel Robbins (00:33:16):

I think it is our better nature. I think it is our hard wiring.

Bryan Stevenson (00:34:29):

It can feel challenging and exhausting, but it's also really empowering if we have the ability to catch a stone, to exercise that ability and to know we're not only helping the person who would've been the target of that violence, but we're also helping the person who threw the stone. Because what they don't realize yet is that to get to redemption, to get to grace, to get to the beloved community that we talk so much about. We can't throw stones at one another because we're angry and afraid. And sometimes people get overwhelmed and they can't remember that until they pick the stone up and they throw it. And I not only want to help the person they're throwing the stone at, but I want to help them have the opportunity to recover from the mistake of harsh judgment, of violent judgment against someone in a way that's less consequential. And one of the things that I'd like to believe is that if you catch one stone, it becomes easier to catch the next one.

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Even though it's bigger, it becomes a way of life. It becomes a way of moving through the world. And I am grateful that people have caught stones for me growing up in a poor racially segregated community. I started my education in a colored school when I was a little boy. They didn't let black children attend the public schools. There were no high schools for black people in our county when my dad was a teenager, so he couldn't go to high school. So I was raised in this poor community where most of the adults didn't have high school degrees, not because they weren't smart or hardworking, but there literally were no high schools for black people. And then lawyers came into our community and made them open up the public schools. And because these lawyers got proximate to poor kids like me, I got to go to the public schools. Now

Mel Robbins (00:36:31):

How old are you, Bryan?

Bryan Stevenson (00:36:33):

I am 65.

Mel Robbins (00:36:34):

See, I think it is shocking to just consider that there are people in the United States. You're only 65 years old.

Bryan Stevenson (00:36:47):

That's right.

Mel Robbins (00:36:48):

And when you were in elementary school, you, you're just 10 years older than me, you were in an elementary school segregated for colored children.

Bryan Stevenson (00:36:59):

Yeah.

Mel Robbins (00:37:00):

I mean, it is so just shocking to me how we have forgotten the history that is even so recent and the ways it's playing out to this day.

Bryan Stevenson (00:37:14):

Yeah, I think that's so true, Mel. And I do think one of the failures we have tolerated is our unwillingness to remember to confront honestly this history. There are people in other parts of the country who were 15 years younger than me who didn't experience integration in education until the 1970s, late 1970s because there was so much resistance to this. And the thing that even in my county, which was 80% white and 20% black, if you had a vote on whether to let Bryan Stevenson into the public schools, we would've lost the vote because the majority of people didn't want that integration. It took a commitment to the rule of law that these lawyers enforced for those school doors to open, which is why I ultimately became a lawyer because there was a power in using the rule of law to help disfavored people, to help marginalized people, to help people who people wanted to exclude. And when I finished law school in the eighties, this population of people being sent to jails and prisons, and most specifically the people who were being condemned to death facing execution were the people who I felt were most in need of the rule of law

Mel Robbins (00:38:32):

And justice

Bryan Stevenson (00:38:33):

And justice

Mel Robbins (00:38:34):

And compassion,

Bryan Stevenson (00:38:35):

All of that,

Mel Robbins (00:38:36):

Because they hadn'tg gotten it most of their life.

Bryan Stevenson (00:38:37):

That's exactly right. And for me, stone catching is like embracing people who are struggling, who are falling down, who are not sure they can do it. And it's the gift we all get. I mean, one of the things I'm persuaded is that no matter what your education level, no matter where you live, no matter how old you are, no matter what you think about this or that, we all have the capacity to get close to someone who's fallen down, who's suffering, who's struggling, who's overwhelmed, and wrap our arms around them and affirm their humanity and their dignity. For me, that's what stone catching is all about. It's about affirming the humanity and the dignity of the people whose humanity and dignity is being questioned, who have become hopeless and despairing about their humanity and dignity. And as the recipient of that kind of stone catching and that kind of affirmation, I don't feel any choice but to participate in sharing that with the people I encounter.

Mel Robbins (00:39:39):

It has been extraordinarily transformative for me to move through my life with this lens of understanding that judging somebody from one paragraph in the book of their life, there's no way you can get the whole story and that it's easier to give people mercy and compassion and understanding and grace when you put it in the context of everything that this person has had to endure or experience does not justify what people do. But it certainly makes you a person that has more compassion and grace. And it brings me to something that you often say, which is each of us is more than the worst thing we've done. What does that mean to you?

Bryan Stevenson (00:40:29):

It means that if someone tells a lie, they're not just a liar. If someone takes something that doesn't belong to them, they're not just a thief. I think even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. And we shouldn't be judged by just that one bad act. I think we all don't want to be reduced to the worst thing we've ever done.

(00:40:52):

No human being wants to be imprisoned by one mistake, one falsehood, one bad reaction. We desperately yearned to be seen as something more than that. And I think it's worth committing to a worldview that allows that to shape our thinking.

(00:42:18):

To put it in there for life and all of these other things. But we don't have the ability to put crimes in prison. We can only put people in prison and people are not crimes. They can commit crimes and we could want to hold them accountable for the crimes they've committed. But there's a difference between a person and a crime. And when we focus on the person, the conversation tends to shift. We tend to think differently. A woman who's been abused for 20 years and suffered just unimaginable pain and humiliation at the hands of someone who just thought they could do whatever they want, who finally reacts even violently, is not just a violent offender. She is someone who is trying to manage decades of abuse and mistreatment. And if our laws and our policies don't reflect the fact that she is more than that moment of violence, that moment of reaction, then we're going to do something unjust. We're going to put her in prison for life without parole. We may even sentence her to death. We have reduced her to this worse act. I've never represented anybody who was only the crime they've committed. And that's the difficulty of not being more explicit about this concept that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done.

Mel Robbins (00:43:41):

And the other thing that I think is really important, I think about this a lot, which is it's not even that you're more than the worst thing you've ever done. I also believe you can become more than the worst thing you've ever done. And I love the distinction because I've never really thought about it that way, that we are trying to put a crime in prison, that all we've focused on is the punishment and containment piece. We have not focused on the person piece and making someone whole so that if they are released after serving their sentence, they have been rehabilitated so they can step back into life. I mean, I also am horrified by how we then put so many obstacles and continue to judge and punish people after they have served the sentence for the crime and made it even harder for them to live a life where they can contribute and be somebody that has done the time, they have changed who they are. Because clearly, if you listen to this show, you know that I am a person who believes that absolutely anybody can become a better person.

Bryan Stevenson (00:44:59):

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think what's been very gratifying about my work is that I see that play out every day in the clients that I represent. I represent a lot of children. And when you are 13 or 14 and you end up being sentenced to life in prison, in an adult facility, there's a presumption that you must be awful and irredeemable. And I just think that's a mistake. I think what distinguishes children from adults is that they're in a constant state of change. They are not who they are going to be in a decade, physically, emotionally, psychologically, biologically. We change as we go through adolescence, and in many states we don't permit that change to take place. We have 13 states in the United States that have no minimum age for trying a child as an adult. So I represent eight and 9-year-old kids sometimes who are facing 50 and 60 year prison sentences,

Mel Robbins (00:46:02):

Eight and 9-year-old kids?

Bryan Stevenson (00:46:03):

8 and 9-year-old children. We have these 13 states where there's no minimum age when these laws took effect. About 40 years ago, I started getting calls from parents of five and 6-year-old children who were being put in handcuffs and kindergarten for behaviors. And it was this kind of zero tolerance, this mindset that children can just be crimes. And I think what you're saying about the capacity for change is most dramatic in that population for me, because one of the things I quickly learned is that when I represent young kids, I can't just be a lawyer. I've got to be a parent and a brother and a counselor and a friend. Because children and these really hostile, violent environments are still yearning for affection. They're still yearning for something that makes them feel valuable. And so one of the things I quickly realized is that my young clients were constantly wanting me to visit them every week, and they'd be in prisons hundreds of miles away.

(00:47:13):

And I was like, so I started doing this thing where I would say, I'm going to send you a book. When you read the book, I will come and see you to talk about it. And my clients, who were, many of them very reluctant readers, some of them not good readers, started this whole reading thing. And I would send them harder and harder books and I would pick the books. And then I started letting them pick the books. The client who was sentenced to life when he was 14, and I've now represented him for 30 years. And a couple of years ago, he called me late at night and I was a little kind of revoked because he's not supposed to call that late. But I picked up and I said, why are you calling so late? He says, it's an emergency. I said, what's the emergency?

(00:47:57):

He said, I finished the book that you sent me and you have to come and see me. I said, I don't even remember what book I sent you. And then he told me that he had just finished reading The Brothers, Kara Motov by Dostoevsky, my favorite book in college. It was a book that just changed my thinking. And when he started talking excitedly about all of the things he wanted to discuss that he read in this book, it just moved me so much. And here I was talking to someone who people think is beyond redemption, beyond hope, beyond restoration. And he's talking about how much he loves the characters in this book who are constantly being compassionate, who are navigating difficulty. And I think that's the gift of believing that we can become better.

Mel Robbins (00:48:46):

I am going to read you a poem that is the beginning of chapter eight. This is page 1 47 from your remarkable book, just Mercy. And the poems entitled Unceded Tears. Imagine Teardrops left uncared from pain trapped inside, waiting to escape through the windows of your eyes. Why won't you let us out? The tears question the conscious, relinquish your fears and doubts and heal yourself. In the process, the conscience told the tears, I know you really want me to cry, but if I release you from bondage in gaining your freedom, you die. The tears gave it some thought before giving the conscious an answer. If crying brings you to triumph, then dying, not such a disaster. That's by Ian Emanuel, union Correctional Institution. When we talk about grace, it's often easier to give a child grace, but not in the criminal justice system. Can you describe what it's like to walk into a prison system that has been built for and designed for adults and find yourself sitting across from an eight, nine, or 10-year-old child?

Bryan Stevenson (00:50:14):

Yeah. I think one of the most tragic things that's happened over the last half century is this false idea that some children aren't children. And it was spread by criminologists and a lot of policy people in the 1980s who were going around arguing that some kids look like kids and sound like kids. They said, but these aren't children. And they actually came up with this term. They said, these are super predators. And that label was applied to a lot of children, and we started doing very unhealthy things. We created pipelines from to jail houses. We started lowering the minimum age for trying children as adults. We created this zero tolerance mindset, and we added to the stress that hundreds of thousands of kids are living with because they're growing up in violent families and violent communities. They're not being embraced, they're not being hugged, they're being associated.

(00:51:08):

Ian, whose poem you read was 13 years old when he was arrested and ultimately convicted of a crime. It was a non-homicide offense. It took place in Florida. He was so small that they had to cut the legs off of the uniform and to get him something that would fit him, they decided not to put him in general population because children in adult facilities become targets for a lot of sexual abuse and violence and mistreatment. So they put him in solitary confinement where they deprived him of any contact with other human beings. And of course, they didn't change the rules for this 13-year-old child. They applied the adult rules. So to get out of solitary, he had to never make a mistake. He had to never complain, never be loud, never do this, never do that. And as a young kid in that environment, he was never able to do that. So he ended up spending 18 years in solitary confinement,

Mel Robbins (00:52:11):

18 years?

Bryan Stevenson (00:52:12):

18,

Mel Robbins (00:52:13):

Is that legal?

Bryan Stevenson (00:52:14):

It is something we are constantly challenging, but there are no restrictions currently in our law that would prohibit something like that. And so the first time I met him, I couldn't even be in the same room with him. They didn't allow him to touch another human being. And so his poetry comes out of a kind of isolation, a kind of anguish that is heartbreaking. And what was really frustrating was the person who he robbed and shot was absolutely appalled that he was being treated that way and she was actually advocating for him to be released or to have a different sentence. And we worked on his case for a very long time and ultimately won his release. And I'm so proud that now he's living in New York, he's doing poetry, he's speaking to young people, he's doing things.