True Story Of Racism and Redemption ‘Just Mercy’ Now Streaming Free

Herbert Richardson, played by Rob Morgan, being led to the electric chair. Photo by Warner Bros.

(REVIEW) In Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2019 film “Just Mercy,” based on a true story, the prayers of black people are silent. 

Herbert Richardson is a man on death row. He developed severe PTSD after serving in the Vietnam War and did not receive proper care or hospitalization for his condition. He killed a woman after placing a bomb on her front porch, a crime which he accepts full responsibility for and shows deep, genuine remorse over. 

As he sits in a holding cell before being taken to the electric chair, he asks his lawyer to pray with him. The camera shifts to the space outside of the cell, showing the two men behind a barred door and enforced window; and the prayer is unheard. 

The movie is based on the true experiences of civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative in 1989 to provide legal help to prisoners on death row. He wrote about these experiences in a novel with the same title, published in 2014. 

Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) is a black Harvard law school grad who moves to Alabama to start EJI and begins representing several death row prisoners. His primary client in the movie is Walter “Johnny D.” McMillan (Jamie Foxx), an African American, who was wrongly accused of murdering white 18-year-old Ronda Morrison. 

Warner Bros. made the movie free to rent across almost all digital platforms in the U.S. — including Apple TV, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu — for the month of June in light of recent police injustice and protests following George Floyd’s death. 

After Richardson’s death, Stevenson stands in the middle pew of a black church during worship. The choir and congregants are visibly lively, but he stands contemplative and defeated. The worship can’t be heard and is replaced with a somber, hushed track. If it weren’t for the movement of the mouths and bodies around him, there would be no worship at all. 

It must feel that these prayers appear silent to God, too — or are prevented from reaching heaven at all. Their silence is weighted and somber, and the pleas within their prayers go unanswered for so long. 

But Psalm 9:18 promises that “the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.” The prayers of these people will be answered with justice and grace, no matter how far that silence threatens to spread. 

“Just Mercy” is a movie about systemic racism and corruption within the justice system, but it’s also a movie about how those injustices aren’t things that necessarily remain permanent. As Stevenson says in the movie, “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” And to become more requires justice, mercy and “some measure of unmerited grace.”

On the day that Ronda Morrison was murdered, Johnny D. wasn’t anywhere near town; he was at a fish fry all day with his church and family. But he was arrested anyway and sent almost immediately to death row. He was convicted based on the testimony of Ralph Myers, who fabricated his witness after coercion and threats by police.

Johnny D.’s chance of a retrial hinges entirely on Myers’ willingness to admit that the testimony was faked, but the suffering he experienced at the hands of police has left him bitter and afraid. While on the witness stand at the retrial hearing, he’s focused on the piercing gaze of the sheriff rather than Johnny D., whom he is responsible for imprisoning. As soon as Stevenson blocks the sheriff from view and asks that Myers identify the man he once testified against, everything changes. 

The two men had likely never met before. They were both men who had suffered greatly at the hands of the justice system. To acknowledge that only took a moment for their eyes to meet — a moment for Myers to understand their shared humanity. He is emboldened to do the right thing, to bring justice where it was absent.

(And yet, despite Myers’ rescinded testimony, the retrial is not granted. This is only achieved after an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.)

The other obstructor of justice is District Attorney Tommy Chapman, who had nothing to do with the initial arrest of Johnny D. but insists on his guilt and tries to prevent Stevenson’s success with bringing relief to death row. He insists, again and again, that he’s just doing what he needs to do to keep his people safe. In doing so, he refuses to acknowledge the evidence proving Myers’ coercion and Johnny D.’s innocence, sacrificing justice and safety for his pride and perceived safety.  

Once the retrial has been granted and Stevenson has filed a motion to clear Johnny D. of all charges, he finally confronts Chapman to ask why he’s willing to ignore the evidence and why he’s only protecting the feelings of white, upper-class people. 

This confrontation opens Chapman’s eyes. At the hearing to dismiss all charges, he acknowledges the evidence and signs onto the motion — granting Johnny D. his deserved freedom. Chapman humbles himself, and in doing so helps bring about justice. 

Johnny D. was always innocent, and it was always the wrongs done to him by others that put him on death row. But the injustice isn’t something that Myers or Chapman (or anyone else in the justice system, for that matter) can’t recover from. Their redemption comes about through grace and humility; that redemption is something that helps bring justice and freedom to an innocent man.

When Stevenson first meets Richardson in prison, Richardson insists that he must deserve the death penalty for what he’s done. And there’s no question that he’s a guilty man. 

Stevenson tells him: “Whatever you did, your life is still meaningful.” Forgiveness and grace of this kind is rare because we are so often unworthy of it. And it is the kind of grace that is found primarily in Christ, who gives hope to the weary and grace to the unworthy. 

It is this kind of spirit and redemption that “Just Mercy” praises, whether in the form of the guilty, the wrongly accused or the wrongful accusers. 

And in the act of forgiveness, justice and mercy, prayers are heard and answered.  

“Just Mercy” is available to stream free on Apple TV, FandangoNow, Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, Redbox, the PlayStation Store, Vudu, Microsoft, and YouTube throughout the month of June.

Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.