Bryan Stevenson Case Summary

Bryan Stevenson is a young Harvard intern on his way to meet a man on death row and is mostly undereducated about the prison systems, and what he wants to do exactly in life and with his career. On his flight he meets the director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, Steve Bright. He tells the scared and nervous Bryan “them without the capital get the punishment,” applying class is largely involved in the justice systems and capital punishment. After only working at a law firm for a short amount of time, he is assigned to meet with one the death row inmates and is instructed to assure the condemned man that he will “not be killed in the next year.” When Bryan finally met the man Henry, although nervous at first, they instantly clicked and Bryan realized

My passion lies in helping underrepresented and marginalized groups who face oppression and injustices by dominant society, like Bryan, and this realization of just how many lives are affected by capital punishment makes me consider studying this particular field, as well. It is easy to simply right off these people and define them by their actions, without realizing that they too are someone’s child, sibling, partner, friend, and/ or parent. One thing that really stood out to me was that when these death row inmates’ families come to visit, they have to sit behind a glass window, as if their loved one is potentially dangerous to them. However, when they are meeting with a paralegal or a lawyer, then they are allowed to sit together, without any barrier, which only emphasizes just how inhumane these inmates are treated and disregarded as. This also shows how money is much more valuable to the state than their ideas of family and