Just Mercy

Lee's novel critiques Southern racism by suggesting that it corrupts White people's humanity. Tom is an easy scapegoat for the White Ewell family that accuses him of rape. Mr. Ewell is worried that the community will learn his unmarried daughter, Mayella, has made sexual advances toward Tom. To deflect from the taboo of her interracial sexual desire (and to cover up the fact that he, and not Tom, is the one who beat Mayella), Ewell pushes for charges to be brought against Tom in the court of law. A White lynch mob murders Tom before Atticus can appeal his wrongful conviction. The novel focuses on the profound effect this case has on Atticus, his children, and other White people who are shocked by the all-consuming force of anti-Black rage the case excites in the community. While these White characters are right to be horrified, readers have rightfully criticized the novel for the way it reduces Tom to a dead symbol of White guilt.

Stevenson organizes the book around Walter McMillian's case in part because this case has defined his career, but also because of its particular parallels with Tom Robinson's case. Walter is from Monroeville, Harper Lee's real-life hometown that she fictionalized in To Kill a Mockingbird. Walter and Tom are both readily and wrongfully accused of violent crimes against White women. Stevenson arrives in Monroeville and finds that the White community there is especially proud of their connection to Lee's novel. Stevenson gets "outraged" by flyers at the District Attorney's office for the "next [stage] production" of To Kill a Mockingbird, indicating that Monroeville celebrates Lee's novel by playing its plot out repeatedly onstage. Stevenson is alarmed that the locals don't notice they are rehearsing and watching a Black man's lynching, over and over. Stevenson wants to stop modern-day Monroeville from inflicting the same fate on Walter.

In the end, Stevenson manages to win Walter's appeal in an appeals process that is every bit as dramatic and suspenseful as the courtroom drama that unfolds in Lee's novel. Even though he changes the end of the story, Stevenson is ambivalent about his "win." Walter struggles to rebuild his life after his release from prison. His doctors later trace his cognitive decline directly to the trauma he experienced on death row. His dementia convinces him at times that he is back on death row all over again. Whereas Lee critiques Southern racism for the way it corrupts White people's humanity, Stevenson makes a critique on a different basis. By telling Walter's whole story, he insists that Black men's trauma is reason enough to reform a racist justice system.