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Just Mercy's Stories of Unjust Ableism and Racialization

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Just Mercy's Stories of Unjust Ableism and Racialization Just Mercy’s only affected by the historic overcriminalization of Stories of black people, but also by systematic mistreatment of Unjust Ableism and people with disabilities. Racialization Prisons and jails are the nation’s de facto treatment centers for mental illness. This Leah Hunt phenomenon has been thoroughly analyzed in Alisa Rutgers University Roth’s book, Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness. She radically asserts, “In America, having a mental illness has become a Bryan Stevenson is a renowned civil rights crime,” (“Insane”). According to the Federal Bureau lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice of Prison Statistics, 64% of the nationwide jail Initiative, based in Alabama. Stevenson’s 2014 population suffers from mental illness (Cullors book, Just Mercy, recounts his early career as a 2). Furthermore, a supplementary report that the defense attorney for death row prisoners and his advocacy group, “‘Dignity and Power Now’” journey to making the Equal Justice Initiative the submitted to the United Nations Human Rights force it is today. He is passionate about fighting for Office states, “Black people with mental health people on death row and working against the tide of conditions, particularly Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar mass incarceration, which he defines as the system disorders and other psychoses are more likely to be by which the nation has disproportionately incarcerated than people of other races” (Cullors 2). incarcerated people of color and even profits from Despite these statistics, the United States’ criminal the criminalization of people. Mass incarceration justice system turns a blind eye to mental health in fractures and disempowers poor, working-class, and all steps of the judicial process. The desire to keep racially-marginalized communities nationwide by costs low contributes to jail and prison facilities’ holding them in punitive confinement, depriving lack of qualified mental health care professionals. them of potential workers in their economy, setting Overcrowded facilities often employ unlicensed additional roadblocks on the path to higher counselors and even then have too few to serve their education and employment, and overall inflicting population, resulting in prisons simultaneously trauma on individuals and communities. The cycle denying proper care and overprescribing continues as it disproportionally criminalizes people medications as a last-resort (Cullors 2). In the who cannot financially support themselves - be it stories of Dunkins, Garnett, and Sullivan, two major because of disability, economic depression, and/or sites of injustice appear initially: the exclusion of systemic racism - for not being able to conform to their disability from consideration in the discussion the societal mold of the “good citizen” who has a of sentencing and the mistreatment and abuse job, a place to live, and access to affordable because of their disability while incarcerated. healthcare. Both Trina Garnett and Horace Dunkins In Just Mercy, Stevenson tells the personal were sentenced to life in prison and the death stories of a multitude of people he has represented penalty, respectively, despite their documented throughout his career as a lawyer, including many intellectual disabilities (Stevenson 71). Garnett is black people living with mental disabilities, such as developmentally disabled and sustained childhood Horace Dunkins, Trina Garnett, and Joe Sullivan. trauma. She was sentenced to life without parole for He details their situations in which law enforcement accidentally lighting a fire that burned down a home played on racial fears and stereotypes of black and caused two fatalities. Dunkins was also criminality, while also not taking their disabilities intellectually impaired, as evidenced by IQ testing. into consideration when handling their cases. These During Dunkins’ time on death row, the Supreme three people find their identities at the intersection Court actually upheld the practice of capital of oppression because of both racism and ableism punishment for the mentally disabled in 1989 with (among others), that have deep roots in the United Penry v. Lynaugh (“Penry”). This ruling left little States criminal justice system. The stories of Horace hope for Dunkins’ case, and he was ultimately Dunkins, Trina Garnett, and Joe Sullivan tell of executed in a mishandled procedure that made people whose criminal justice outcomes are not national news for its atrocity. Due to improperly connected cables, the procedure took nineteen 1976 Supreme Court case Estelle v. Gamble (Press). minutes in total (Applebome). Not until 2002, Not only did the carceral system fail to help Garnett following Atkins v. Virginia, was the execution of maintain her baseline health, but its harsh intellectually disabled people outlawed (“Atkins”). environment compounded her illnesses. Dignity and The discrimination against such people in the Power Now writes, “While most offenses criminal justice system did not cease there. The committed by people with mental conditions tend to aforementioned report from Dignity and Power be nonviolent… their incarceration (instead of Now detailed that today people of color “report voluntary treatment) often exacerbates their receiving considerably harsher sentences than their conditions and results in higher rates of trauma, white counterparts and feel they are less likely to be criminality and recidivism” (Cullors 2). Garnett offered alternative treatment programs or “rehab” experienced trauma as a child, went untreated for instead of incarceration during sentencing” (Cullors years, was sentenced to prison without 3). Garnett would have been a valid candidate for a consideration of said trauma, continued to lack reduced sentence and/or an alternative treatment treatment in prison, and to top it off, experienced program; she showed signs of intellectual disability new trauma while under state custody. This cycle as a child and likely experienced post-traumatic only further cripples those who have had a difficult stress disorder from her lifetime of abuse, but her time thriving in this hyper-capitalist, overpoliced case fell through the cracks of the criminal justice society where one’s ability to obtain money dictates system. It was neglected because of her race, one’s health outcomes, freedoms, and overall gender, and class. Her lawyer failed to file the quality of life. This system criminalizes vulnerable paperwork necessary for her to be proclaimed people for being vulnerable under the system of incompetent to stand trial. No one fought against capitalism, and then punishes them by inflicting the decision to try the (at the time) fourteen-year- more harm, yielding them even less capable of old in adult court, and her lack of intent to kill could functioning in the “proper” way in society. not be taken into consideration for sentencing of the second-degree murder as per state law (Stevenson Stevenson also tells of his experience with 150). The mandatory sentence was life in prison his client Joe Sullivan, who was intellectually without the opportunity of parole. Through this impaired but nonetheless sentenced to life series of unjust events, a fourteen-year-old mentally imprisonment without parole when he was thirteen disabled girl from a broken home ended up years old. According to Stevenson, Sullivan read at sentenced to die in prison for an unintentional a first-grade level (Stevenson 258). After the boy crime. allegedly participated with older teens in the robbery and sexual assault of an older woman in her Garnett’s story of mistreatment continued home, the court reviewed his history of nonviolent, when she went to adult prison. There, a correctional misdemeanor-level juvenile incidents and decided officer raped and impregnated her, not only that he was a “‘serial’ or ‘violent recidivist’” who traumatizing the young woman with the initial had already thrown away his second and third sexual attack, but also with the stresses of chances (258). Like Garnett, Sullivan only found pregnancy and birth. Like most women in prison more trauma in prison. He was raped and sexually prior to widespread state policy changes in 2008, assaulted many times and he, too, developed Garnett was handcuffed to a bed while she gave multiple sclerosis from trauma in prison and was birth to a child that was subsequently taken away ultimately bound to a wheelchair. In this way, the (Stevenson 151). As can be expected, her mental criminal justice system was able to criminalize him health worsened further. Stevenson recounts that because of his mental disability and then through she became less functional: “Her body began to imprisonment render him physically disabled, only spasm and quiver uncontrollably, until she required making it infinitely more difficult for him to a cane and then a wheelchair. By the time she had conform to societal expectations of self-sufficiency. turned thirty, prison doctors diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, intellectual disability, and mental When Stevenson met Sullivan, he was an illness related to trauma” (151). Prisons are excited and gentle young man juxtaposed within the constitutionally obligated to provide those who are harsh and unforgiving environment of prison. He incarcerated with psychiatric care, as decided by the had served eighteen years and was reading at a third-grade level at age thirty-one. In awaiting Bryan Stevenson are testaments to the Stevenson’s arrival, Sullivan was wheeled into a disproportionate harm that the system of mass
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