DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE

A law professor examines four Supreme Court cases won by a trailblazing Kentucky-born lawyer dedicated to seeking just treatment for those condemned to death.

In this follow-up to Practical Equality, Tsai highlights the courtroom achievements of Stephen Bright, whose commitment to exposing the injustice undergirding the American capital punishment system has made him a leading light in the restorative justice movement. Bright’s work with the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights focused primarily on defending those most vulnerable to the “legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” within a larger system that saw mass incarceration as key to a well-ordered society. In his work as a capital defense attorney, Bright’s approach highlighted “the institutional pathologies in legal representation” caused by “the absence of adequate resources” for poor defendants. The four Supreme Court cases Bright argued—and won—were for individuals he showed had been placed on death row for reasons that, beyond faulty representation, pertained to race, class, and/or intellectual ability. Three of the cases spotlighted how prosecutors could rig juries to be not only unrepresentative, but also racist. In Snyder v. Louisiana, for example, Bright argued that an all-white jury, created by using peremptory strikes, condemned a Black defendant to death. The fourth case, McWilliams v. Dunn, called attention to the potential for judicial bias against people with intellectual disabilities, including Bright’s defendant, James McWilliams. At the same time, Bright made a successful case for the value of access to a mental health expert, which the judge presiding over McWilliams’ case refused. Thoughtful and well researched, this hopeful and inspiring book will appeal to those in the legal field seeking to end the legacy of mass incarceration, as well as to anyone with an interest in helping to fix America’s profoundly broken carceral system. Tsai’s book makes an excellent complement to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy.

Provocative, necessary reading.