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Speaker 1: This is my legacy.

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Speaker 2: As we begin Black History Month, today's bonus drop invites

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Speaker 2: us to look honestly at where we've been and where

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Speaker 2: we're being called to go. Groundbreaking civil rights attorney and

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Speaker 2: founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Brian Stephenson is joined

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Speaker 2: by Anthony ray Hinton, who was wrongfully convicted and spent

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Speaker 2: twenty eight years on death row. Together, they reflect on

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Speaker 2: the moral failures of our justice system today and what

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Speaker 2: it costs when society looks away. This is a conversation

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Speaker 2: about dignity, courage, and hope carried forward across generations.

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Speaker 3: Let's jump in.

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Speaker 4: After representing over one hundred and forty people on death row,

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Speaker 4: what have they taught you about what's possible when we

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Speaker 4: see people's full humanity? Do we really have the capacity

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Speaker 4: as a society to create a system this certainly has

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Speaker 4: far less flaws.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think we'll ever have the capacity to

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Speaker 1: get to a place where we should be trying to

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Speaker 1: kill people. I don't think that's something we can do.

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Speaker 1: And I think, to be honest, you know, Mark, I

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Speaker 1: think if we made the investment into helping the poor

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Speaker 1: and provided people with the legal health they needed, if

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Speaker 1: we confronted this history of racial bias and discrimination and

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Speaker 1: overcame the presumption of dangers and guilt. If we made

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Speaker 1: the commitment to healthcare for the millions of people who

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Speaker 1: are traumatized by violence, that are struggling and dealing with

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Speaker 1: all of these challenges, if we made the commitment to

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Speaker 1: creating opportunities for the people who are marginalized and vulnerable

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Speaker 1: and disfavored, and treat it so bad that if we

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Speaker 1: did all of those things, I then think we would

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Speaker 1: not want the death penalty. We would know that that's

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Speaker 1: not something that is effective and responding to this, and

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Speaker 1: I just think basically, we don't really want to be

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Speaker 1: a cruel society. We don't really want to be a

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Speaker 1: cruel nation. But more broadly, we absolutely could do so

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Speaker 1: much better with the with the in it, with our

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Speaker 1: crimino legal system.

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Speaker 3: You know what I'm sitting here thinking. Uh. When I

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Speaker 3: was arrested, the officer told me there was five things

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Speaker 3: that was doing the convictment and he said, number one,

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Speaker 3: you black. Number two, a white man is gonna say

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Speaker 3: you shot it. Number three, you're gonna have a white judge.

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Speaker 3: Number four, you're gonna have a white prosecutor the number five,

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Speaker 3: you're gonna have an all white jewelry. No way in

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Speaker 3: there did he ever say we have evidence, we have fingerprints,

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Speaker 3: we have on our witness, we got you on camera,

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Speaker 3: or we got someone that gave us a description. And

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Speaker 3: even to this day, that still hunts me because this

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Speaker 3: detective knew they didn't need no evidence. They they had

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Speaker 3: the only evidence they need, and that is that I

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Speaker 3: was black. And until we got above skin color, we

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Speaker 3: will never be able to have a system mask you

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Speaker 3: just a and that's my Honi's pict You grew up

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Speaker 3: in Alabama.

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Speaker 5: And when you think about the story that you just shared,

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Speaker 5: and after thirty years of being incarcerated wrongly, have you

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Speaker 5: seen any progress in our country?

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Speaker 3: Would I would say, yes, I've seen some progress, but

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Speaker 3: we haven't progressed as much as I had thought would

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Speaker 3: be after spending thirty years on a cage. Or if

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Speaker 3: I'm being honest with you, I think America is more

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Speaker 3: racist now than it was in his sixties. It's just

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Speaker 3: done more somewhat undercover, and so you have to be

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Speaker 3: somewhere on the lookout for it. I understand when I

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Speaker 3: go in a store, I'm being watched I can have

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Speaker 3: on or, as they say, a Cavin climbed suit. I

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Speaker 3: could have on a nice tar, I could my shoes

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Speaker 3: could be shy, But I'm still looked on as though

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Speaker 3: I'm there to rob someone. And it's the way you

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Speaker 3: go to a restaurant. I notice they see us in

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Speaker 3: a certain place, or I'm looking for all of these

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Speaker 3: things because I'm really trying to see how far have

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Speaker 3: we come. And I still believe that we made progress.

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Speaker 3: But in the same token, we lost a lot of

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Speaker 3: progress as well. And so if I had to see

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Speaker 3: here this morning and say or we better, I've said

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Speaker 3: this before. I definitely believe that we are somewhat better,

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Speaker 3: because that was the time in the state of Alabama

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Speaker 3: windows they came to get me. They probably would have

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Speaker 3: hold me in the middle of the tree in the backyard,

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Speaker 3: or they could have kept me. So at least I

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Speaker 3: got to jail, and that tells me that we made

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Speaker 3: some progress.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's also interesting that question is

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Speaker 1: a really powerful question when I think about the legal system.

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Speaker 1: So and just Merseley, I wrote about Walt McMillan a

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Speaker 1: bunch of other people, and it was actually easier in

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Speaker 1: the early nineties to prove someone's innocence, and when they

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Speaker 1: were relieved because the court was so unprepared for that,

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Speaker 1: the culture and the society was so unprepared for that.

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Speaker 1: When you had overwhelming evidence of innocence, people were like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, we got to do something. And you know,

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Speaker 1: he spent six years on death row. By the time

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Speaker 1: I met mister Hinton at the end of the nineties,

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Speaker 1: things had started to shift, and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: people were getting used to innocent people being on death row.

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Speaker 1: I remember calling media and people would say things like, well,

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Speaker 1: is there something extra. We've done the innocent story before.

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Speaker 1: That's not new news any longer, and they just weren't interested.

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Speaker 1: And the courts got acculturated to the fact that there

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Speaker 1: are innocent people on death row, and that added to

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Speaker 1: the chat. We presented the evidence within a year after

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Speaker 1: we started working with casts, and the court should have

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Speaker 1: said in two two thousand, oh my god, this is

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Speaker 1: a mistake. We're gonna let you. But instead they didn't,

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Speaker 1: and we had to fight and fight and fight, and

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Speaker 1: we had to go all the way to the US

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court. I went to the Attorney General, we went

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Speaker 1: to the prosecutor said, look at this evidence, and they

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Speaker 1: was like no. And actually, since he's been released in

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Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, I'm going to suggest it's even harder now

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Speaker 1: than it was in twenty fifteen. The court we had

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Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen we don't have today. You know, we

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Speaker 1: got a unanimous ruling, which gives me a lot of hope,

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Speaker 1: But there are people who are innocent and wrongly convicted

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Speaker 1: on death row right now who are not going to

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Speaker 1: have the same opportunity for release because we've just turned

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Speaker 1: our back. Our courts today are operating in a way

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Speaker 1: where they're much less concerned about the plight of innocent

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Speaker 1: people on death row. They're much less concerned about the

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Speaker 1: plight of the before, people who have been dictimized, people

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Speaker 1: who've been exploited because of their disabilities, and so in

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Speaker 1: that regard, I actually think we are in a worse

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Speaker 1: position than we were, you know, twenty twenty five years ago,

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Speaker 1: at least on these legal questions. And I feel like

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Speaker 1: we've made a lot of progress when we're sitting in

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Speaker 1: this office, when you know, when our first that we

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Speaker 1: didn't have a room like was to sit this at

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Speaker 1: the Eji. You know, it's a.

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Speaker 5: Nicely appointed room. May I Well, we.

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Speaker 1: Created these sites, which I'm really proud of, so there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of progress. But we started doing our narrative

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Speaker 1: work because I'm a product of Brown Versus Board of Education.

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Speaker 1: I grew up in the community where black children couldn't

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Speaker 1: go to the public schools. County was eighty percent white,

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Speaker 1: twenty percent of black. If you had a vote, they

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Speaker 1: would have never voted to end racial segregation. It took

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Speaker 1: lawyers coming in to impose the rule of law to

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Speaker 1: force those school doors open. And I began to worry

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Speaker 1: about twelve years ago that we might not be able

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Speaker 1: to win Brown versus Board of Education. And today I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty persuaded that we could not win Brown versus What Education.

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Speaker 1: I don't think our court today would do something that

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Speaker 1: disruptive on behalf of disfavored people as the Court did

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, and that means we have absolutely

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Speaker 1: not made the kind of progress that we need to make.

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Speaker 1: We're in a worse place, which means that we're going

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Speaker 1: to have to engage even more to create the kind

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Speaker 1: of hopeful, healthy future that I believe all of us

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Speaker 1: want to see.

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Speaker 6: We love it if you could share this episode with

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Speaker 6: someone who you admire, someone who shows up for you,

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Speaker 6: who cares about you, who lives their legacy every day.

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Speaker 6: We'll be back in a moment.

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Speaker 1: Now back to my legacy.

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Speaker 4: Is the institution the problem or is it the individual

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Speaker 4: system of judges.

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Speaker 1: It's a great question. It's a great question. I think

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Speaker 1: it's a combination of both. So, for example, in the

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Speaker 1: state courts places like Alabama and jeyget our judges are elected.

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Speaker 1: And there was a time when if you were a

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Speaker 1: good judge and you were doing good work enforcing the

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Speaker 1: rule of law, no one would even run against you

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Speaker 1: because it was supposed to be apolitical. That's changed over

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Speaker 1: the last thirty years, and now we have judges who

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Speaker 1: are politicians and they're engaging in the same politics of

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Speaker 1: fear and anger that our elected officials in other areas are.

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Speaker 1: So they're saying, I'm for the death penalty, I'm for this,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to do away with that, I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to let people out of jails and prisons on technicalities.

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Speaker 1: And those individuals have now taken on the role of

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Speaker 1: judges and they're not operating as judges, they're operating as ideologues,

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Speaker 1: which means that they don't want to be associated with

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Speaker 1: releas inside of somebody from death row, even if the

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Speaker 1: evidence is of inos. And so in that sense, it

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Speaker 1: is the individuals. But in another sense, it's also the institutions,

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Speaker 1: because even in our federal courts, where people have life

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Speaker 1: tak we've lowered the bar. We now insist on a

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Speaker 1: kind of ideological affiliation when we appoint judges, and these

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Speaker 1: institutions have tolerated that. I mean your recall when President Obama,

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Speaker 1: when Justice Spilia died, President Obama should have appointed his replacement,

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Speaker 1: and the Institution of the United States Senate said, nope,

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Speaker 1: we're not going to play by the rules any longer.

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Speaker 1: We're not going to allow any candidate to move forward.

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Speaker 1: And now you're seeing institutions basically turning their back on

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Speaker 1: the rule of law, the obligations that courts must meet,

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Speaker 1: and so in that sense, it's also institutional. And so

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Speaker 1: I think we have to change both. I don't need

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Speaker 1: a judge who believes everything I believe. I don't need

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Speaker 1: them to be share my politics, but I do need

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Speaker 1: them to commit to the rule of law that the

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Speaker 1: law says you cannot torture. We don't allow torture. If

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Speaker 1: the law says you cannot convict someone who's not guilty,

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Speaker 1: we don't convict guilty innocent people. The law says you

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Speaker 1: can't engage in racial bias and jury selection, we don't

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Speaker 1: tolerate that. And we can have different political perspectives, but

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Speaker 1: that has to be your role. Otherwise I say, don't

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Speaker 1: be a judge, be a different kind of politician. And

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Speaker 1: so it is created a crisis. And I think that's

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Speaker 1: a really important question mark because I think we're really

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Speaker 1: in a moment of true institutional crisis. Because once you

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Speaker 1: lose the integrity and the reliability and the credibility of

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Speaker 1: the legal system, we're vulnerable to all kinds of excess.

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Speaker 1: When you study what happened in Nazi Germany in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, you had these politicians hitting on these others,

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Speaker 1: but you also have a legal system that could have

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Speaker 1: kept them in check. But when the legal system collapsed,

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Speaker 1: there was no check. I'm very worried about the moment

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Speaker 1: we are in. And you know, at least for me,

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Speaker 1: I say to judges. Mister Hinton and I have both

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Speaker 1: spoken to judges and lawyers said Ultimately, you're going to

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Speaker 1: be judge by what you do and what you don't do.

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Speaker 1: This moment that we are in is not going to

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Speaker 1: be the final story. In thirty years, people are going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about what was happening in twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: And I get frustrated because, you know, people say, if

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Speaker 1: I had have been alive during the time of slavery,

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Speaker 1: I would have been an abolitionist. Nobody says, oh, I

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Speaker 1: would have been in slavery. They also I would have

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Speaker 1: been an abolitionist. Everybody says, if I've been alive at

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Speaker 1: the beginning of the twenty century, I've been fighting against

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Speaker 1: Lynchings Martin. You know, everybody says if I've been there

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Speaker 1: Elva and Salva nineteen says, I've been in March and

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Speaker 1: win doctor Key, I would have participated in the boycott.

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Speaker 1: But I don't think you get to say that. If

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five you are tolerating the abuse of law,

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Speaker 1: the violation of the law, you're not doing what's right.

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Speaker 1: You're doing what's politically favored. If you don't do what's

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Speaker 1: right now, you can't claim to have been on the

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Speaker 1: right side of right in all those other periods of time,

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Speaker 1: and that's going to be the test our judges and

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Speaker 1: our institutions are going to have to pass in the

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Speaker 1: year that comes, and these this critical time period that

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Speaker 1: we're in right now.

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Speaker 6: If you're looking for stories that move you, insights that

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Speaker 6: shift you in conversations as deeply within you hit the

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Speaker 6: subscribe button right now. It's the best way to support

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Speaker 6: this podcast and support your journey. We'll be back in

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Speaker 6: a moment now, back to my legacy.

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Speaker 5: One of the things that we say is that, you know,

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Speaker 5: for those who said that they would have marched with

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Speaker 5: doctor King, we say, are you marching now?

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Speaker 1: That's right?

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Speaker 5: And I think it's important to underscore what you said

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Speaker 5: about the safeguards because we also talk about in our

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Speaker 5: house that the judicial system we went during the civil

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Speaker 5: rights movement, we went to the judicial system for relieve

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Speaker 5: and if that had not been in place, we would

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Speaker 5: not have seen the victories that we that we saw,

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Speaker 5: and that is what's so scary about what's now.

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Speaker 1: What's going on now.

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Speaker 5: We talk about the fact that our daughter, Martin Luther

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Speaker 5: King's granddaughter has fewer rights now at seventeen than the

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Speaker 5: day she was born, and her generation has progressively lost rights,

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Speaker 5: and that has not happened since the end of Reconstruction

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Speaker 5: and the beginning of the passage of black codes. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: but I will also say that for me, I have

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Speaker 5: a lot of hope because.

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Speaker 1: Of this generation.

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Speaker 5: I mean, these these kids are truly, truly extraordinary, and

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Speaker 5: I think that they're more resolute.

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Speaker 1: After the election.

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Speaker 5: The hardest call that I had to make we were

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Speaker 5: in Washington was to our our daughter, not no matter

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Speaker 5: what side or who you voted for, just the fact

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Speaker 5: that you kind of had a sense that America was

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Speaker 5: not ready for a black woman.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, to.

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Speaker 5: Have to apologize to her, to say, and to all

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Speaker 5: black women, black girls, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that this

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Speaker 5: is still happening. But she actually, she and her generation,

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Speaker 5: you know, she was more resolute than ever the morning after.

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Speaker 5: And and so I do have a lot of hope

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Speaker 5: in this generation. I really think we're we're going to

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Speaker 5: see truly one of the greatest generations that this country

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Speaker 5: has has seen.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that, because I do think that's

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Speaker 1: what we had been taught. I mean, I feel like

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Speaker 1: I mean, I live now in Montgomery, Alabama. I walk

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Speaker 1: these streets where a generation ago people would put on

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Speaker 1: their Sunday best and they'd go places to push for

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Speaker 1: the right to boat. They'd go places to push to

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Speaker 1: be respected, and oftentimes while they were on their knees praying,

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Speaker 1: they'd getting battered and bloodied and beaten. And they would

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Speaker 1: go home and wipe the blood off in James the

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Speaker 1: colast and they'd go back and do it again. And

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Speaker 1: they didn't know what the outcome of the people who

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Speaker 1: did in the Montgomery boycott, which is so active this week,

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Speaker 1: they didn't know what the outcome was going to be.

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Speaker 1: Nobody had guaranteed that that was going to succeed. They

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Speaker 1: had to have that hope. And I think that's the

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Speaker 1: greatest lesson I was given, I think both of us

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Speaker 1: were given, is that we are the heirs of generations

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Speaker 1: of hopeful people. My great grandparents were enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia.

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Speaker 1: Yet my great grandfather learned to read while he was

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Speaker 1: in slave. Even though he could have lost his life.

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Speaker 1: He could have been killed because it was against the

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Speaker 1: law for an enslaved person to learn to read. He

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Speaker 1: had a hope of freedom so powerful that he was

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Speaker 1: willing to risk his life. In the eighteen fifties. He

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Speaker 1: didn't know a civil war would come a decade later,

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Speaker 1: but he had that. He had that skill. And my grandmother,

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Speaker 1: who worked as a domestic in whole life, I tell

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Speaker 1: people now, after emancipation, my great grandfather would stem in

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Speaker 1: the portrait of her home and he'd read the newspaper

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Speaker 1: formerly enslaved people who didn't know how to read. Every

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Speaker 1: week only in slave people would come over and he

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Speaker 1: would stand up and read the newspaper from front to back.

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Speaker 1: And my grandmother said when he started reading, she'd push

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Speaker 1: her siblings aside. She'd get next to him, and she'd

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Speaker 1: wrap her arms around his leg. And I said, Mama,

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Speaker 1: why do you do that? She said, I'd wrap my

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Speaker 1: arm around his leg because she said I wanted to

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Speaker 1: learn to read too. And she said, I thought you

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Speaker 1: learned to read by touching somebody while they read. And

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Speaker 1: her father said, no, that's not how you learn or read.

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Speaker 1: I'll teach you how to read, and you talk. My

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Speaker 1: grandmother how to read. And my grandmother and I worked

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Speaker 1: as a domestic. She was a reader. She had hope

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Speaker 1: that education could open things, and she made sure all

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Speaker 1: of her ten children were readers. Her grandchildren, I go

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Speaker 1: visit my grandmother. She'd stand on the porch, even on

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Speaker 1: a cold day, with a stack of books and you'd

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Speaker 1: have to read something before she would let you get

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Speaker 1: in the house to the house. And when I got

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Speaker 1: to law school at Harvard, you know, the first day

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Speaker 1: they put us in this group and everybody was asked,

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Speaker 1: why are you in law school? And they were all

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Speaker 1: talking about how they were the son or the daughter,

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Speaker 1: or the grandson or the granddaughter, or the nephew or

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Speaker 1: the niece of the lawyer. And I started squirming because

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Speaker 1: I knew I wouldn't related to any lawyers. And after

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Speaker 1: the seventh or ade student in booked some family connection,

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Speaker 1: I realized something I hadn't even realized until that moment,

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Speaker 1: and I realized that not only was I not related

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Speaker 1: to a lawyer, I realized I'd never even met a lawyer.

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Speaker 1: That's how they got to me. I felt so diminished.

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Speaker 1: I didn't answer the question. I just told a joke,

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Speaker 1: tried to get it. And I called my mom and said, Mom,

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Speaker 1: I don't belong in this law school. And my mom,

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Speaker 1: so what are you talking about? She said, you belong

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Speaker 1: wherever you go. She said, you're the smartest person in

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Speaker 1: the world. You can do anything you want to do. Now,

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Speaker 1: you put those kids together and you tell them why

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Speaker 1: you're in that law school. And I felt better after

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Speaker 1: I talked to my mother. But I didn't think I

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Speaker 1: could organize another student meeting, but eventually I did, and

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Speaker 1: I told them, uh, you know, I'm in this law

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Speaker 1: school because my great grandfather was in slave but he

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Speaker 1: had a hope of freedom. My grandmother worked poor jobs,

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Speaker 1: low jobs, but she had a hope. My mother, I

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Speaker 1: had a hope. I grew up in a poor, racially

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Speaker 1: segregated community. You didn't see much hope outside the doors.

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Speaker 1: People had out houses, not everybody worked at the poultry plants.

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Speaker 1: But my mom went into debt when we were children,

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Speaker 1: and she bought us the World book Encyclopedia. Yes, and

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Speaker 1: we had those books in our house. And I told

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Speaker 1: my classmates that I'm not related to a lawyer, never

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Speaker 1: met a lawyer, but I read all about the lawyers

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Speaker 1: in the books. And I tried to be honest, because

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Speaker 1: you know, when you're ten and the Christmas comes along

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Speaker 1: and you go outside and your friends are like, well,

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Speaker 1: I got a basketball, I got a bicycle, I got

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Speaker 1: a baseball I'd have to say, well, I got Volume

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Speaker 1: G of the World book Psychoplagy. Didn't hear that good then.

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Speaker 1: But I was in that law school because I was

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Speaker 1: given hope by the generations that have come before me.

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Speaker 1: And I think the greatest thing we can do for

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Speaker 1: your children and for the children that are coming is

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Speaker 1: to give them that hope, not let them be defined

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Speaker 1: by the despair and the challenges. And that's why, you know,

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Speaker 1: I think we're proud to be with you, because you're

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Speaker 1: also giving a lot of people hope. And part of

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Speaker 1: what has to happen is and here we are talking

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Speaker 1: to you in a space where people can learn about

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Speaker 1: mister Hinton's story, they can learn about the work we're doing.

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Speaker 1: They can know about this that wasn't always easier possible.

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Speaker 1: It takes effort to even create this, but that does

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Speaker 1: make me also very very hopeful about what we can achieve.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe, share,

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Speaker 2: and follow us on at my Life Legacy movement on

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Speaker 2: social media and YouTube. New episodes drop every Tuesday, with

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Speaker 2: bonus content every Thursday.

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Speaker 1: At its core, this podcast.

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Speaker 2: Honors doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the

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Speaker 2: power of connection. A legacy plus studio production distributed by

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Speaker 2: iHeartMedia creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward come executive producer

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Speaker 2: Lisa Lyle. Listen on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you

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Speaker 2: get your podcasts.