Summary
Chapter Sixteen: The Stonecatchers’ Song of Sorrow
On May 17, 2010, Stevenson is in his office when the U.S. Supreme Court announces that life imprisonment without parole for children convicted of non-homicide crimes is constitutionally impermissible. He and his staff rejoice. He thinks of many of his clients now entitled to reduced sentences. Two years later there is another major victory: the same ruling, but including children convicted of homicides as well, meaning no child could be sentenced to die in prison.
With new hope, the EJI pursues more cases to protect the rights of children. Stevenson is also encouraged by rates of mass incarceration finally slowing down in 2011 and 2012. And in 2013, Alabama recorded the lowest number of new death sentences since the mid-1970s.
The EJI starts a race and poverty initiative to deepen the national conversation about racial injustice in America, focusing on four areas: slavery; terrorization tactics directed toward African Americans, such as lynching and convict leasing, a practice which criminalized former slaves and then leased them to businesses, effectively forcing them back into slavery; Jim Crow laws, which legalized segregation and suppression of basic rights, then created a legacy of racial profiling; and fourthly, mass incarceration, which could only be fully understood through the lens of America’s racial history.
Though they encounter resistance, the EJI are able to get reduced sentences for the clients who were imprisoned as children. They start a reentry program for people who have spent many years in prison. The EJI takes on two cases of men held at Angola prison, an ex-plantation notorious for its prison labor practices. One had been held for forty-five years, and another for fifty. Both cases were successful and resulted in immediate release for the men.
Afterward, an older black woman sitting on the courthouse steps beckons Stevenson over. She says she comes to the courthouse to help people deal with the pain of their situations. She says after her grandson was killed, she cried when the boys who killed him were sentenced to life and a woman consoled her. She later took up the responsibility herself, being a person others could lean on: who could catch the stones people throw at each other.
Epilogue
Walter dies on September 11, 2013: while living with his sister Katie in the last years of his life, he falls and fractures his hip. With little hope of recovery, the hospital sent him home and he soon passed away quietly in the night. The funeral is on a rainy Saturday morning. The church is packed with people: mostly poor, rural black people, huddled together for the sad occasion. Stevenson watches photos of the day Walter was released pass on a TV screen near the casket. They are both happy in the photos. He remembers a time Walter told him about a traumatic experience when he could smell a man being killed in the electric chair. He said he felt sick, and that people were supposed to die on God’s schedule.
A choir sings and then Stevenson takes the pulpit, talking about how Walter had become like a brother to him. He outlines everything Walter had survived, and says that Walter’s strength, resistance, and perseverance were a triumph worth celebrating, and an accomplishment to be remembered. Walter had made him understand the need to reform a criminal justice system that treats people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. The death penalty was not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit: the question should be whether the country deserves to kill. Walter had taught Stevenson that mercy is just when rooted in hopefulness and freely given. Walter genuinely forgave the people who unfairly accused him and judged him unworthy of mercy.
Afterward, he thinks about how Ronda Morrison’s murder had never been solved, and how this must have anguished her family. People ask him for legal help and he gives them his number, encouraging them to call the office. He hopes he can help.
Stevenson concludes the memoir by stating that since the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling, nearly two thousand people condemned as children have a chance to go home, and nearly two thousand have been released. Many of his clients have been able to go home or have had their sentences reduced. He continues to meet stone-catchers along the way—people who inspire him and make him believe that all of us can do better for one another. The work continues.
Analysis
With the news that the Supreme Court has ruled in the EJI’s favor, Stevenson learns that his hope and resilience have led to concrete advances for criminal justice reform.
Having helped stabilize mass incarceration rates, the EJI continues its social justice work through initiatives to deepen public understanding of mass incarceration as part of a long history of racial injustice in America.
The theme of hope and resilience recurs when Stevenson meets a woman outside the courthouse in Florida. She takes the trauma of her grandson’s murder and embraces an attitude of compassion, coming to the courthouse to help other people deal with the pain in their lives. Stevenson sees criminal reform as more possible when there are more people like this woman—people who catch the stones others cast in judgment.
Stevenson concludes his memoir by discussing Walter’s funeral. The occasion is an opportunity for Stevenson to touch on Walter and his community’s resilience in the face of injustice against poor people and people of color. Walter had remained hopeful and resilient despite the lack of mercy shown to him. To tie up the memoir, Stevenson brings in the motif of the inhumanity of the death penalty, and asks readers to focus on the question of whether the State has the right to kill.
The memoir concludes a bittersweet note of hope. Though vulnerable people continue to be mistreated by systemic oppression in the United States, there have been encouraging reforms that inspire Stevenson to carry on with his social justice work.
