Bryan Stevenson, who gave the powerhouse talk “We need to talk about an injustice” at TED2012, appeared on Moyers & Company this past weekend. Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice In the episode, titled “And Justice For Some,” Moyers takes a hard look at systematic biases in the American legal system. The occasion for this episode — the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to legal representation for defendants unable to pay for it. The decision highlighted the ideal that the judicial system should function the same regardless of the defendant’s bank account.

Bryan Stevenson, a public-interest lawyer who represents the young, poor and incarcerated, knows that this sadly just isn’t the case. As he says: “We still have a system that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”

Watch the episode >>

TED Talks often get 100 or more comments — usually a mixed bag of kudos, critiques and questions. Looking back on the year, we’d like to share a few comments that wowed us. These intelligent, observant contributions took the talks beyond their 18 minutes and into an ongoing conversation.

Every speaker appreciates a “Great job!” but here’s a beautifully worded example of how to go deeper. If a talk truly moved you, take some time to reflect on why. If you disagree with the critics, elaborate on why the speaker’s ideas are worth defending. With civility to spare, this comment provides a powerful counterpoint to a dissenter’s opinion.

Below, commenter Ziska Childs defends Bryan Stevenson’s “We need to talk about an injustice”:

“Yes, I was in the audience. Yes, this struck a primal chord. Yes, I do ask “Why this speech above all others?” Perhaps it is because I have seen black men and women step off the sidewalk to let me pass. Perhaps it is because I have seen old white women walk to the front of the line. Perhaps it is because I know in my heart of hearts that this is close to the core of what is a uniquely US cultural disconnect. Bryan spoke not about the privilege of wealth to a wealthy privileged audience but the privilege of Justice.

Justice. Justice is not vending machine forgiveness. Justice is not a punishment exponentially greater than the crime. Justice is not choosing to punish the criminal over healing the victim. (Ideally the punishment would heal the hurt.)

I choose to believe that someone who recognizes the systematic murder of 12 million human beings as immoral can also see the fingerweight on the scales of Justice against the African American as unconscionable.

I choose to believe that compassion is neither exclusive nor finite.

I choose to believe that learning from history is better than ignoring history.

What Mr. Stevenson asked for was ‘Justice’ with the scales set level from the start. I choose to believe that is good.”

Stevenson is Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, who represented two plaintiffs in a case before the United States Supreme Court. In Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, two young men were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, sentences that were mandated by law. Stevenson argued that laws mandating sentences of life without the possibility of parole for adolescents and children are unconstitutional.

Yesterday, the Court ruled those mandatory sentences unconstitutional. According to Stevenson, ”This is an important win for children. The Court took a significant step forward by recognizing the fundamental unfairness of mandatory death-in-prison sentences that don’t allow sentencers to consider the unique status of children and their potential for change.”

Justice Kagan, writing for the majority, said: “Given all that we have said in Roper, Graham, and this decision about children’s diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.”

This is not news to TEDGlobal speaker Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. A professor at University College London, she researches the adolescent brain, and has found that there are tremendous changes that take place during that stage of growth. Blakemore, who will be speaking at TEDGlobal tomorrow afternoon, was part of a group of neuroscientists who wrote to the Supreme Court two years ago to argue that recent research has shown unequivocally that the brain shows more development during adolescence than was previously assumed, and that the courts should take this development into account in trying juveniles.

According to Blakemore, these results are the result of new technologies, such as MRI, which allow us to look inside the brain. It’s not surprising that there is an instinct to treat adolescents as adults, she says: “Adolescents can look adult, but they don’t have an adult brain. There’s a paradox there, but we should allow for the development of their brain.”

She is quick to point out that current understanding doesn’t tell us when the brain becomes “adult.” In fact, “The whole concept of the brain becoming adult is kind of a red herring.” Nor do they speak to the concept of free will and culpability. But, she notes, ”Given the new neuroscience data, it just doesn’t make any sense to put minors in prison for the rest of their lives, given that their brains will naturally develop.”

Stevenson warns that this is not the end, and that prejudices still remain. “In applying their discretion in juvenile life-without-parole sentences, judges need to be mindful to avoid a disproportionate impact on children of color.”

Start with this talk from Richard Wilkinson, whose 2009 book The Spirit Level gathers decades of research to draw this conclusion: Societies with more income inequality suffer — in utterly predictable ways — more than societies that are more equal.

(And read the TED Blog’s in-depth Q&A with Wilkinson, in which he talks about the moment he realized economic inequality was a measureable problem.)

Next, watch Van Jones’ powerful talk on a specific outcome of economic injustice: If you’re poor, your neighborhood gets trashed.

For a followup, watch Majora Carter’s classic TEDTalk “Greening the Ghetto” — which shows the effects of income inequality on her home in the South Bronx, and offers triple-bottom-line solutions for raising incomes and reducing environmental damage.

And do not miss Bryan Stevenson’s TEDTalk about economic injustice and its consequences — with a bold call for everyone to look honestly at the problem: “We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.”

Find more talks on inequality >>

Photo: Duncan Davidson

Bryan Stevenson’s talk inspired one of the longest and loudest standing ovations in TED’s history. And it provoked a blizzard of requests from audience members that we find a way to support the work of his nonprofit organization, the Equal Justice Initiative.

When I asked Bryan about funding needs, this is what he said: “We are trying to raise $1.5 million for a campaign that ends excessive sentencing of children and stops the practice of putting kids in adult jails and prisons, where they are 10 times more likely than other incarcerated people to be the victims of sexual assault and violence. We just started this effort, and support from the TED community could be huge. I’ll be arguing a case in the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue next month.”

So the next day, I invited members of the audience to contribute. In just a few minutes 6 people pledged $100,000 each, 18 pledged $10,000 and more than 100 pledged $1,000. With subsequent pledges received by text and email, and a $100,000 contribution from TED itself, I was able to write to Bryan confirming that TED will be writing his organization a check for $1.12m.

But beyond that, it’s clear that many people who saw this talk want ongoing involvement on this issue. Bryan’s organization can be contacted directly here. And TED is committed to making this issue a core part of its TED Prize initiative on The City 2.0. The thinking here is that the future of cities and massive incarceration levels are inextricably linked. If huge numbers of families are missing their fathers, it’s hard to imagine how inner-city renewal takes place. The City 2.0 initiative is all about empowering citizens in every city to work together to shape their city’s future. So we plan to work with Bryan to build a system that will allow people to take action locally on this issue. If you have thoughts on how this could be done, or wish to offer help, please write to tedprize@ted.com.

It’s truly thrilling to see what happens when someone comes to TED and induces a whole new view of the world in our audience — and does so in such a powerful and inspiring way. I suspect the response to this talk will be equally massive online. If you haven’t yet seen it, you really must. It’s here.

– Chris Anderson

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Bryan Stevenson spends most of his time in jails and prisons and on death row. He’s a lawyer, and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.

So he’s found it very energizing at TED, and wanted to start by pointing out that there is a distinct identity here. Things said here have a power that maybe they don’t elsewhere.

The point, he says, is that, “Identity is important.”

Identity in his life

He illustrates this with a story. He grew up in a matriachal house, where the undisputed matriarch was his grandmother: “She was the end of every argument in the family.” The daughter of people who were enslaved, she was tough but loving. She would often squeeze him so tight he could barely breathe.

When he was 8 or 9, he went into the living room, and his grandmother was staring at him. After 15 or 20 minutes, she took him aside and said, “We’re going to have a talk.” She said, “I want you to know I’ve been watching you. I think you’re special. I think you can do anything you want to do. Just promise me 3 things. 1) Love your mom. 2) Always do the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing. 3) Never drink alcohol.”

Later, when he was 14 or 15, his siblings offered him a beer, which made him uncomfortable, and he refused. His brother stared at him and said, “I hope you’re not still hung up on that conversation. Mama tells everyone they’re special.”

The point though, is this: He is 52, and he has never had a drop of alcohol. He says that, not because he thinks it is virtuous, but because there is an extraordinary power in identity. “We can say things to the world around us that they don’t yet believe, and get them to do things that they don’t think they can do.”

The criminal justice system

Stevenson works in the criminal justice system, and ours here in the United States is in a terrible state. In 1972, there were 300,000 people incarcerated. Today, there are 2.3 million. That’s the highest rate in the world. Mass incarceration is at an extraordinary level: 50-60% of young men of color are in jail, prison, or on parole. And that is fundamentally changing how we live.

Our justice system is distorted around race and also around poverty. It’s a system that “treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.” It feels like a problem that we should all want to solve, but the politics have made us feel that these are not our problems. We are extremely uncomfortable talking about race and poverty. For example, Alabama permanently disenfranchises convicted felons. As a result, 34% of African American men in Alabama have permanently lost the right to vote.

And yet, there is a stunning silence.

The United States is the only country that will sentence 13-year-old children to life imprisonment, to die in prison. And yet we largely don’t talk about it. The death penalty is, of course, a fantastically important issue, but the way we frame the question is important. One way of asking is, “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they’ve committed?” But another way is, “Do we deserve to kill?” For every nine people on death row executed, there is one found to be innocent and released. That is a statistic that would never be allowed in any other industry: Imagine if one out of every nine planes crashed?

We live in a country that embraced slavery, where after reconstruction and through Jim Crow a huge part of the population was subject to terrorism, to constant threats of being lynched and fire-bombed. But we don’t like to talk about it: “We don’t understand what it is to have done what we’ve done.” In South Africa, after apartheid ended, there was an extended process of truth and reconciliation, but here in America, neither at the end of slavery nor after the passage of the Civil Rights Act: nothing.

Stevenson gave a lecture in Germany and someone said to him, “We can never have the death penalty in Germany…. There is no way, with our history, we could engage in the systematic execution of human beings. It would be unconscionable.” Imagine if in Germany today there was a death row, and that Jewish people were systematically more likely to be convicted. And yet here in this country, in the states of the Old South, a defendant is 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white, and 22 times more likely if the defendant is black.

Our future identity

Our whole identity is at risk. “If we don’t care about these things, then the positive things we believe are implicated too. Our hopeful, forward-looking realities are always shadowed by suffering, abuse, degradation, marginalization. Don’t always just be attentive to the bright and dazzling things but also to the dark and depressing things.”

We need to integrate the light and the dark. TED’s communities have to be engaged in this, he says: “There is no disconnect around technology and design that will allow us to be fully human until we also pay attention to suffering.”

This identity is a much more challenging identity.

Rosa Parks onced asked him to describe his work with the Equal Justice Initiative, which he did. She said, “Oh, that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired.” And then, “That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.” The TED community, Stevenson exhorts, needs to be more courageous. Because who we are, and the extent to which we are human, depends on how human everyone around us is. “At the base is a basic human dignity that needs to be respected.”

Stevenson believes our country, along with others, has a fundamental problem with humanity: “In many parts of this country, the opposite of poverty is not wealth. In too many places the opposite of poverty is justice. We will ultimately not be judged by our technology and design, we will judge the character of our society by how they treat the poor. That is when we’ll understand truly profound things about who we are.”

Anger, and hope for the futre

In the middle of a case where a judge ruled that a 14-year-old was fit to stand trial as an adult, Stevenson wondered, “How can a judge turn a child into an adult? The judge must have magic powers.” So, late at night and very tired, he worked on a motion to ask that his 14-year-old poor black male client be tried as a wealthy privileged 70-year-old white male. He wrote a searing critique and went to bed. Woke up and realized: He’d hit Send.

Months later, he went to court, wondering what the judge would say. On the way there he met a janitor, who found out he was a lawyer. The janitor hugged him and said he was proud of him. Then Stevenson went into court, and the judge was furious. Inside the court, people were angry. “Angry that we were talking about race, and poverty, and inequality.”

The janitor had come in and sat behind him, and at recess a deputy demanded to know what a janitor was doing there. The janitor replied, “I came into this courtroom to tell this young man, ‘Keep your eyes on the prize, and hold on.’”

Today, Stevenson wants to tell us, “All of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone,” and we can not be fully evolved human beings until we care about justice for all and are truly willing to confront our difficult past.

But most of all, “I’ve come to tell you to keep your eyes on the prize, and hold on!”

TED is known as a place where standing ovations happen. But the response of the audience was beyond overwhelming. To a one they stood, and refused to sit down. An ovation that strong has simply never happend at TED before.

(And read what happened next.)