WEBVTT - Bryan Stevenson Wants 'Equal Justice' 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:09.920 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing, 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:15.880 My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:20.400 hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:26.239 their careers, what relationships influenced their work. A recent New 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:30.640 Yorker magazine article told the story of Chanelle Jackson and 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:37.199 Alabama jury found Jackson guilty of murder old Twelve jurors 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.960 voted against sending him to the electric chair, but Alabama 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.080 is one of three states where a judge can override 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.040 the jury's decision, and the judge, who was up for 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:51.320 re election that year, did just that. Chanel Jackson was 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:57.640 sentenced to death. Eventually, Jackson acquired a new lawyer, Brian Stephenson, 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.880 who is my guest today. Evenson is founder and director 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.240 of the Equal Justice Initiative, and Alabama based nonprofit that 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:11.920 fights for retrials, death sentence reversals, and exonerations. Stevenson is 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:15.800 a fierce opponent of judicial override and works against the 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:21.399 penalty system. He says is defined by error, bias, and unreliability. 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:25.280 Our sentences for virtually every offense are way way out 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.720 of control. It's not just the death penalty in life 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.480 without parole. It's ten years for simple possession of marijuana. 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.440 It's you know, fifteen years for writing a bad check. 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.319 It's all of that stuff. And I absolutely believe that 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:41.480 people saw what I saw. They could not be comfortable, 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.360 they could not be siglent, they could not continue doing 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:48.000 what we're doing without having to do something. I don't 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.080 think there's been a time in our American history where 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:52.960 there are more innocent people in jails and prisons than 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.760 right now. You know, we have this tremendous prison increase. 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.720 Three people in nineteen seventy two, two point three million today. 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:02.760 There's no way to avoid the fact that whatever the 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:05.040 proportion of innocent people that are being wrongly convicted, and 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.519 it's high because of this increase in the number of 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:10.600 people being sent to prison, We've never had as many 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:13.280 innocent people in jails and prisons than we have today. 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.080 And people read about innocent people getting out for the 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.040 first time. The Innocence Project and DNA is something the 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:21.720 important work all of those folks, but it's a fraction 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.000 of the innocence population. They're dealing with, just that small, 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:30.160 very small group of people whose crimes allow for biological 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:32.880 evidence that can be tested which will exonerate them. That's 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.600 a two of the innocent population, and it will haunt you. 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:39.359 I've been representing a man named Anthony ray Hinton. So 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.160 this is a case of a man who in was 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.000 accused of two different murders. There were three fast food 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.359 robberies in Birmingham and the police couldn't figure out who 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:51.880 did it. They collected the bullets. They thought that the 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.480 bullets might have been fired from the same weapon. And 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.320 the third crime, the witness didn't die. The victim didn't die, 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:00.239 and he went through a photo lineup and he picked 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.160 out this guy, Anthony bray Hinton, who had no prior 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:04.839 history of violent crimes. So they go to his mother's house. 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:07.639 They find an old gun and they test the gun. 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:09.280 They said, well, this is the gun that produced all 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:11.920 these bullets, and based on that, they charge him with 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.880 all of the murders. He goes to trial. He says, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.120 wait a minute, I have a lock solid alibi. I 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:19.959 was fifteen miles away in a warehouse at the time 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.639 of this third crime, and there's twenty people who can 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.440 confirm that he was there. But now they're locked in 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:26.799 to him. So they're not going to kind of be 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.400 dissuaded by that. They put on their experts who say, yeah, 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:31.240 this is the gun that fired all of these bullets. 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:35.120 Because he's poor, he didn't have any money for a 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:37.200 good weapons expert, so his lawyer had to get a 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.800 civil engineer who never testified in this kind of case, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:42.680 who was blind in one eye, who couldn't actually turn 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.960 on the machine, who has literally laughed off the stin convicted, 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.760 sentenced to death, he's been on death row for twenty 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:53.720 eight years, fifteen years ago. We get involved, we get 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:55.840 the best experts in the country. They all say, no 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:58.760 way in the world this gun produced these ros. Well, 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:00.520 the state says, we're not going to back down, and 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:02.680 they says, well, we don't have an answer to what 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:04.960 these experts are saying, but we've got a conviction in 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:06.680 the death sentence and we're just going to run with that, 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.760 and every cours more expedient for them, and it's more 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:14.320 effective and politically because if they have to say, you 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.280 know what, we made a mistake, then people start to 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:18.720 ask questions. In the article in the Channel Jackson case, 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.719 you read about how all these judges who are running 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.120 for office absolutely and we're getting contributions from prosecutors who 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.040 are trying cases before everybody toughens up about the law 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.640 that they almost act in a different ways. Absolutely, we 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:34.440 have elected judges. They run as partisan and partisan elections. 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:36.560 You run as a Democrat or a Republican and you 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.720 campaign on your toughness. And so to actually acknowledge that 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:42.719 there's a problem with the death punty suggests that the 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.880 death penalty isn't a reliable It creates a political vulnerability. 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.080 We've been litigating for fifteen years. So just last year February, 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:54.200 we got the United States Supreme Court to overturn the conviction. 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.400 And I'm now kind of each day trying to get 0:04:57.440 --> 0:04:59.680 this man out of prison. But it wakes me up 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:03.000 at it just so burdened me. And the thing I 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.440 just went to see this client last week, Mr twenty 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.359 eight years you know, and this he's a remarkable person. 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.599 But when when also knowing that by admitting they were wrong, 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.000 how much they would win? Yeah, absolutely, as you wind 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:20.160 up having the purity and the dignity of the office 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.040 elevated by them. You know, sometimes we make mistakes. I'm 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.120 really sorry I've made that argument. Let's give this guy 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.560 a couple of million bucks to live his life in 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:30.360 the remaining years of his life, and at this point 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:32.320 we would just take freedom. But I've made that argument 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.560 to every attorney general since I said, look, if you said, 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.240 did you almost gain any ground with any of them? 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:39.320 Were some of them close? They were all the same. 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:42.080 They all acted at the first conversation like, oh, yeah, 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:43.840 that's a good point. But when they thought about it 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.320 more and they got into that political context, they all retreated. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.480 But I've said to each of them, if you say, 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:51.440 we even evaluated this case and we've concluded that this 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:54.880 one is innocent, you gain credibility. Your ability to kind 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:57.080 of do the stuff is actually enhanced. But they can't 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:01.600 even do that, and so yes, that will haunt you. 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.320 Is there's something about the d NA no pun intended 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.279 of the prosecutors mistake? Well, I do. I think throughout 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.039 our country we've been acculturated into believing that you never 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.200 back down, you never never absolutely, and I think actually 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.400 as a country that's our biggest problem. We have become 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:23.599 unwilling to acknowledge that we make mistakes. What we do 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:25.080 is tell people around the world how great we are. 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.000 That's right, and that arrogance actually sets us up for 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.839 the kind of conflicts that then follows. You know, this 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:32.640 whole work we're doing on race and poverty is actually 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.479 rooted at trying to persuade America that actually we need 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.560 to just own up to all of the terrible things 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.360 we've done and have a conversation about it. Be truthful 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.240 to have an almost South African reconciliation. Absolutely, that's what 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:45.919 we're trying to do. Actually, we've been doing this stuff 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.360 on slavery. We're about to issue this report on lynching, 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:52.040 which dominated from the end of reconstruction into World War Two. 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.080 My whole view is that, you know, if you come 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.560 to the South, we like to romanticize the mid nineteenth century, 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.479 put up all these Confederate mon mento memorials, And the 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.120 truth of it is, in America and we were in 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.880 a society with slavery, we became a slave society. We 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:10.880 actually created a myth and ideology that allowed slavery to 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.440 be defensible. These people of color are different, they're not 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:15.600 as smart, they don't work as hard, blah blah blah, 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.600 and the Thirteenth Amendment didn't do anything to address that myth. 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.680 And in that respect, slavery didn't end, it evolved, it 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.240 turned into something else, and we had decades of terrorism. 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:26.920 And these older people come up to me because they 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.680 get angry when people start talking about nine eleven is 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.160 the first time we're dealing with terrorism, because they feel 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:35.040 implicated by that. They said, we grew up with terrorism, 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:37.960 We had to worry about being lynched and bombed and threatened, 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.280 and that legacy terrorism, if it's against someone else, that's 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.040 exactly right, and that legacy we're doing in other countries 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.239 is in terrible all right, exactly, and we haven't actually 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.960 recognized our capacity to actually engage in terrorism. And I 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.760 want to be very careful. I've learned to be hyper 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:54.640 careful about these things because if this goes out over 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.280 the year, I don't want people to the street. I'm 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:58.360 not saying every act of the U. S Military and 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.200 the soldier is an act of terrorist. I'm just saying 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.200 there are things that resemble terrorists. And I never blamed 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:07.240 the soldiers that the government has ordered done well, it's 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.560 just our attention to where the lines are. If we're 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.040 thinking about where the lines are and recognizing that we 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.520 can go pass those lines, if we're not paying attention 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:17.880 to those lines. That's all we're trying to talk about here. 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.760 And there's no question that lynchings were terrorism. Public spectacle 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.360 lynchings in the nineteen hundreds, in the early part of 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.080 the twentieth century were terrorism, and they sent thousands millions 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:30.640 of African Americans into communities like New York and Boston 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.480 and Chicago and Detroit, in Oakland and Los Angeles, not 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:36.960 as people looking for opportunities, but as exiles and refugees 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.679 from terror. And that legacy of being terrorized by oh 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.400 I absolutely do shape the way these communities emerged. And 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:46.360 we never kind of talked about it. You couldn't get 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.520 Congress to actually pass an anti lynching law because the 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.000 Suntherners were saying, no, we will not back down from this. 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:53.960 And even during the Civil rights movement, and this is 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:55.560 part of where I get in trouble because I'm a 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.280 little provoked by how all we want to do when 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.160 we talk about the nineteen forty and fifties and sixties 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.600 is celebrate the civil rights movement, to celebrate the progress 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.920 that we made and free it. If everybody gets to celebrate, 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.440 there are no qualifying questions that you have to add 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.560 answer before you get to participate, and we've reduced it 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.720 almost to this kind of three day event where Rosa 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:21.480 Parks gives up her seat on the first day. Dr 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:23.840 King leads a march on Washington on the second day, 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:25.960 and then we pass all these laws on the third day. 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.400 And it provokes me because we're ignoring the decades of 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.560 damage that we did to everybody by humiliating people of 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:34.880 color every day of their life. I grew up in 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:37.400 a community where I saw my parents humiliated every day 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:40.840 of their life. The damage we did in southern Delaware 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.120 on the Eastern Shore, where the movie theaters were segregated, 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.040 where the schools were second, I started my what did 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.800 you see, Well, I started my education in a colored school. 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.880 I would drive past the Milton Public School and see 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.880 all the white kids going to this big, beautiful brick building, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.000 and then we would go into this shack and I 0:09:58.080 --> 0:09:59.880 would go to the beach. Where are the best parts 0:09:59.880 --> 0:10:01.520 of the beach. We couldn't go to because they were 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:04.400 racially segregated. I didn't like movies when I was a kid, 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.679 caring in the sixties. Yeah, I didn't like movies because 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.280 you had to sit in the back. It was such 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.800 a humiliating experience. And then after integration with the schools, 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.440 I'd see my friends, but I couldn't be with them 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.400 in some of these other spaces until there was complete desegregation, 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:21.040 and it hurts. I used to get mad at my 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:23.600 parents for not taking me to town because we lived 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.760 out in the country there's nothing to do, but they 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:27.520 didn't want me to go with them in town because 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:29.480 they didn't want me to see them humiliated by any 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.520 white person that they encountered. And it accumulates these injuries, 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:34.960 this burden, this problem, and we haven't talked about it. 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.319 And even for white people, a generation of whom were 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.440 taught that they are better than other people because of 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.520 their skin color, we haven't helped them recover from that 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.480 lie because we just tried to play it off. And 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.959 we needed truth and reconciliation after nine and we didn't 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.240 do it. And because of that, we've now set ourselves 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:56.000 up for the conflicts and controversies that were still experiencing, 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.680 where the police are the face of this racial order, 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.000 and this presumption of guilt haunts us and follows all 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:04.760 these young people called. The Bureau of Justice is now 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.200 reporting that one in three black male babies born in 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.760 the twenty one century is expected to go to jail 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.000 or prison. That wasn't during the twentieth century, wasn't during 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.720 the nineteenth century. It became it's only getting worse, and 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.400 it's well, I think it's because we've never confronted this 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.800 presumption of guilt, which is a result well, I think 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.760 it's a result of this racial narrative that has existed 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:30.400 for so long that we're not actually proactively trying to 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.240 do that. So there were many people who, first of all, 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:35.920 I'm gonna use some phrases I'm not really comfortable with, 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.880 because when you hear people say let's continue the conversation, 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:40.800 let's be part of the it makes me want to 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.240 vomit because I'm sick of convert We've had quite a 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:47.400 bit too much conversation action. But my point is to 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:49.920 to borrow those words, you know, in the conversation, if 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.320 you will. A lot of people assuming there were saying, 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.319 let's let's take race out of this now. If you 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.120 if you notice something like my criticisms of Obama have 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.720 nothing to do with race. But but you come roaring 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:03.520 in with with the with the racial question, you can't. 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:07.760 It is a defining feature of American life. It has 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.600 so kind of compromised. But you tag, but do you 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:13.600 think it's changed? And I will tell you what, tell 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.480 you why. To me, America was always the big table. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.400 There was bounty at the table, and there were jobs. 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.520 And this is a metaphor for the jobs and the 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.080 money and the housing and the lifestyle and the cars 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.440 and the vacations. And over the last fifty years, there's 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:29.400 less seats at the table. And now there's still more 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.640 seats at this table, and it's still a great table. 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:34.680 That the trick became in order to keep the critical 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:36.839 massive American satisfied. We had to make sure that a 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:39.080 lot of people didn't even get near the table. And 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.079 I thinks about economics, it's not about race. Well, I 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:47.120 believe that racism has has metastasized into really what is 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.040 an economic question? We were going to use color as 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.559 an excuse to keep you off the playing field and 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:54.840 keep you from competing because there's not enough at the 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:56.679 seats at the table anymore. Well, I don't think we 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.440 can separate race and economics. I mean the slavery about 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.400 the economic viability of this new generational people would come 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.439 to this great Land and how to make it profitable. 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.320 And we got people enslaved here, not because we thought 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.559 we were doing something proactive to help Africans, but because 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.199 we had these economic needs, We had these labor needs. 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:17.880 And the same is true in post reconstruction. You know, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.800 Convict Leasing and Jim Crow and all of these institutions 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:25.280 were about helping people stay profitable, helping them stay secure. 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.760 And even the nineties and fifties and sixties it had 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.120 these social features, but there were real economic tensions there. 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:33.559 So I think for people of color and poor people, 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.079 they were always in another room too. When we talk 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.079 about that table, we let some people of color get 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:42.240 in there enough to take this exactly, but it's always 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:46.600 been this still in their absolutely. To get back to 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:48.880 this point I'm making, and that is that I believe 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:53.680 that there's two hierarchies here. One is people in power politically, 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:58.720 and then there's the uh, the power of the masses 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.920 of people who I mean, to me, my daughter, my 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:06.920 eldest daughter, has grown up since nineteen in a wash 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:11.439 intolerance and cultural equality. These are kids who they know 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.280 the name of Kanye West's baby, and they don't know 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:19.080 who their senator is, and a celebration of all things 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:24.160 black in culture, fashion, They worship Beyonce. They are completely 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.400 color blind black, white, music, sports, culture, what have you. 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:30.080 They worship and they don't and they don't see that, 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.440 and yet still more black people are going to prison. 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:34.480 Well that's where's that disconnect. Well, I think it's because 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.720 it's become culturally complicated, but I don't think the fundamentals 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.400 have really changed. I go to a gym in Alabama 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.920 where I see these young guys firefighters, police officers that 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:45.320 I used to go to. Different I mean, it's a 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:46.800 different time. I don't go to that gym anymore. But 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.680 these young white guys who are listening to rap artists, 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.120 they're listening to Kanye, they're listening to Beyonce, but they 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.080 have Confederate American tattoos. And when they enforce when they 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.160 work as police officers and they see young black men, 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.040 they presume they're guilty, they presume they dangerous, they presume 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:04.560 that they're up to something, and they target them and 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.440 they've victimized them. At the same time that they are 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:11.400 persuaded that they couldn't possibly be racially biased because they 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.200 like Kanye and they like Beyonce. And that cultural narrative 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.040 has always existed, right, people would go to the movies 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.640 in the first half of the century and watch black 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.400 performers acting roles that comforted them and feel like that 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.520 somehow made them beyond race. But in truth, they bought 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:31.200 into the same narrative of racial difference. They bought into 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:35.400 the same idea that these uh, these barriers that kind 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.320 of are are really condemning and condemned and and harp, 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.400 you know, and just really disrupting the lodge of the poor, 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:45.000 and people of color didn't have any implications for them. 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.960 They didn't have to apologize for anything. And I think 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.880 that reality is still there. And you know, you don't 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:53.520 have to be an overt rate, you don't have to 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:55.040 be bad, you can have all of these other things. 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:57.120 You can even have good black friends and all this stuff. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:15:58.880 I'll tell your story. I was in a courtroom in 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.560 the Midwest, just not not too long ago. It was 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:04.920 it was actually a juvenile case, and was the first 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:07.560 time I'd gone there. Was representing a young kid, a 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.960 young white kid, asking when you say you're representing someone, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.720 how do they get you? Yeah, how does someone now? 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:16.800 Ryan Stevenson twenty years ago was different. You can bring 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:18.640 them up on the phone. How did they get you 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:25.120 to show we we get hundreds of requests wedding well, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.680 we get hundreds of requests each week. We only represent 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:29.920 a small portion of the people. But when we have 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.280 a campaign, like when we were doing the juvenile work, 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:34.560 trying to get the court to end life without parole 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.440 sentences for kids, we were taking those cases and I 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.600 took I want to stay active. I like being an 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:41.920 active lawyer. So I took, you know, a small set 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:43.600 of those and I would go to courts and went 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.520 to South Dakota. I went to these states, Iowa, Indiana 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.280 to do these hearings. I always have cases that I'm 0:16:49.280 --> 0:16:52.320 working on directly personally, even though there are much smaller 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.520 subset than the people who request us. But I was 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.600 in this courtroom in the Midwest, just getting ready for 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.440 the hearing, had my suit on, had my shirt on, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.480 had my time, sitting at defense counsel's table. The judge 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:04.960 walks in and he sees me sitting at defense counsel's table, 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.040 followed by the prosecutor, and he looks over at me 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.120 and he says, hey, hey, hey, you get out of here. 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.280 I don't want any defendant sitting in my courtroom without 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:13.080 their lawyers, you go back out there in the hallway 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:15.720 and wait until your lawyer gets here. And I stood 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:17.560 up and I said, oh, I'm sorry, your honor, I 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:20.760 didn't introduce myself. My name is Brian Stevenson. I am 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.879 the lawyer. And the judge starts laughing, and the prosecutor 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:27.240 starts laughing, and I make myself laugh too, because I 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:29.840 don't want to disadvantage my client. I'm laughing because I'm 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:32.639 horrif it's horrifying. Right. Then the client comes in again, 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.359 this young white kid. We do the hearing, but afterward, 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:37.000 I'm sitting in my car and I thought to myself, 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.680 what is it about this judge that when he sees 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:43.040 a middle age black man in a suit sitting at 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:46.199 defense counsel's table, he can't imagine that that's the lawyer. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:50.080 And is that going to manifest? What what state was 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.600 that in? This was actually in Iowa. Judge wasn't a 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.440 bad guy. We actually had a good outcome, but it's 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:57.399 the way it was. The outcome. Well, we got the 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.880 client of reduced sense. He was one of the people 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.560 who didn't end up with life without parole. But it's 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:08.280 the way I ever mentioned again. Nope, nope, make your 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:10.560 hands for any kind of even implied apology. I don't 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.240 even think he worried about it. It was just to 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.080 even aware. No, it was just funny, you know. And 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:17.040 the truth of it is, though, when that judge is 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:21.440 imposing sentences on young definitive color, their race is shaping 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.120 his comfort level with putting them in prison forever. It's 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.439 impacting the way he thinks about their guilt and the 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:31.199 propriety of these very harsh sentences. And he can go 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.880 home and go have dinner with some nice African American 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.320 woman or man, and he can listen to this music. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.600 But that narrative has not. We have to do something 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.000 proactive to actually shield ourselves from acting on these biases 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.960 that have been going on for decades. You can bet 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.080 that Stevenson, who was currently a law professor at New 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:54.600 York University, is educating his students on this particular bias. 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.119 If you want to learn more about the prison system 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.320 in the United States, take a listen to my conversation 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.200 with Martin Horn, former New York City Commissioner of Correction 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:13.080 and Probation. He recommends big changes for our society. I 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.720 would legalize drugs across the board. You would really legalize 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:19.920 which draft all of them. You would legalize all dress. 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.760 I would sell it in the liquor stores, right, and 0:19:23.760 --> 0:19:26.520 I would tax the hell out of it. Find Martin 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:30.040 Horn in the archives that here's the thing. Dot org. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.760 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.440 My guest is Brian Stephenson, who has argued six cases 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.439 before the U. S. Supreme Court. In two thousand twelve, 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.239 Stevenson gave a ted talk. He cited his grandmother as 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:03.400 a big influence. He told a story of how one day, 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:05.800 when he was nine, she took him aside and told 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:08.840 him he wasn't like the other grandkids. He was special. 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.200 She told him not to repeat their conversation and made 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.600 him vow never to drink beer. When he was fourteen, 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.920 his older brother offered him a beer, and Brian remembered 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:21.199 his promise beer. I said, no, I don't feel right 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:22.719 about that. You'll go ahead, y'all go ahead, And then 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:24.639