On a brisk November evening, I walked into the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts with great anticipation to meet Stephen B. Bright. His newly released book, “The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts (2023) was being highlighted in a author forum interviewed by Pultzer Prize-Winner, James Forman Jr. Bright is a well-known lecturer, a respected professor, and a “successful attorney who have four times overturned capital cases at the US supreme court level”. That evening was all about placing myself amid the community to discover how I could better serve and/or protect it. 

I’d done enough research to know, gained enough life experience to share, and held a divine revelation as to what happens within the criminal justice system here in the U.S. It’s worth not to forget mentioning that as a woman of color from the deep south, I too have had its tentacles reach over and suck life out of me. But, for whatever reason, this evening pined hope.

As I listened, I realized that I wanted to respect Mr. Bright’s life work. So, I turned on my active listening skills and searched within. The more I listened, I gleaned that this man was also on a divine assignment! An assignment that not by any means is glamorous, but altogether divine. I listened at the sacrifice of this one man who used his education to advocate for those who’ve been charged of crimes they were innocent from. 

 It moved me to hear of how harmful wrong convictions are to the community. How that so often, many resources go into convicting black defendants who are poor. People who fill private prisons are majority poor people of color! Yet, the worst part is its aftermath. Wrongful convictions means that the “guilty” person is still at-large within the community. In which, the courts (for various reasons) do not go back to investigate nor attempt to find the guilty party.

Based on Bright’s experiences, it’s the “willfull persistence of corrupt prosecutors and incompetent judges fearing too much justice, that has ruined the criminal justice system”. We must ask, is it not the job of those in judicial authority to sort out the innocent from the guilty? Are the “guilty” getting fair, and reasonable sentences? Are juror decisions made by all white jurors? Bright poses the question, “Every person should have a right to a good lawyer, but who is going to pay for it?” 

If there are no ready solutions, one must lean into asking. When will the aggressive prosecutors stop perpetuating the agenda to further incriminate the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable population for their gain? When will our children stop being corralled through Education’s Zero Tolerance policy? And, then handed over into the “Criminal In-Justice System”? Bright reveals how too many counties and states refuse to take even one step in creating a righteous public defender system for the poor; even though it can be done.

What we need is a national accountability checks and balancing system! One where Conviction Integrity is at the core root of every conviction esp. for black bodies!

Join me in prayer and in solidarity. For change is upon us all.