♪ from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." criminal justice is increasingly the focus of national attention. the issue has attracted rare bipartisan support from leaders on both sides of the aisle calling for reform. president obama spoke at the naacp's convention last month. into manyobama: cases, our criminal justice system ins of being a pop line -- pipeline from underfunded and that inadequate schools to overcrowded jails. [laughter]

[applause] president obama: what has changed is that in recent years ' eyes have been opened to the street. partly because of cameras. -- this truth. partly because of cameras. partly because of tragedy. partly because the statistics cannot be ignored. we can't close our eyes anymore. and the good news -- and this is truly good news, is that people of all political persuasions are starting to think we need to do something about this. charlie: bryan stevenson is a public-interest attorney and the founder and executive of a

nonprofit organization that represents prisoners whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. he has won relief from death row for wrongly convicted prisoners and secured life sentences for parole for juveniles. his efforts have been recognized by numerous awards, including the macarthur genius grant and 21 honorary degrees. archbishop desmond tutu has called him america's young nelson mandela. his memoir, "just mercy," was named among the 100 most notable books of 2014 by the new york times book review. it is now out in paperback. i am pleased to have brian -- brian stevenson -- bryan

stephenson at this table for the first time. welcome. it's great to see you. tell me what it is you think is the most important question for this country as it considers race. bryan: race and justice, how are we going to recover from our legacy of racial inequality? this history of racial injustice that has infected all of us, that has compromised all of our abilities to see one another fairly. i think that is the question we have never taken on. we have never really tried to to confront the legacy of slavery. i think we need to talk about slavery. people look at me hard when i say that. i don't think we have ever dealt with that legacy. slavery was something that was really horrific in this country. -- the evil of't american slavery was not involuntary servitude or forced labor -- the great evil of american slavery was the narrative of racial difference we created, the legitimated the ideology of white supremacy. and that consciousness, that narrative was never addressed by the 13th amendment.

that's why argue that slavery did not and in 1965 -- it evolved. charlie: and it exists in our minds, because when we think about questions of race and color -- brian: yes. i think there is a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to black and brown people. we have never really free ourselves from it. it has been sustained and reinforced. we lynched people in the first half of the 20th century because of that perception of dangerousness and guilt. we segregated ourselves, and we still do. now on the streets, when people see young men of color, there is this perception that they are guilty. you see it all the time. we are not going to make progress until we free ourselves. i think we need truth and reconciliation in america. we have never had that. charlie: this is exactly understanding by understanding

reaching back to slavery and its implications. i bryan: the fact my friend was gunned down can not be treated -- mistaken for the fact he was mistaken for another black person that was a suspected criminal. they are black and certain presumptions were made about that. it doesn't matter at the end of the day who the actual agent is. it is a broad systemic thing. charlie: you believe this is the forward projection of history from slavery. bryan: very much so. unless there is a serious reckoning with this, we are going to keep going over and over again on the same thing. i don't mean to harp on this, race, thinkstion of it is one of those sort of

distractions. i think we did damage by creating a culture that of white this myth supremacy. to faster through this era of terrorism, through lynching. we have black people in los angeles and cleveland and new york and boston and minneapolis, and those people didn't go to those communities because they were immigrants looking for you opportunities. they were refugees from terror. they fled the deep south. if you know anything about -- refugeemittee's communities, you have to deal with the trauma these refugees bring with them. and we haven't been i don't -- we haven't. i don't think we have been talking about the civil rights movement the right way. we should reflect on the damage that was done. i hear people talk about this, and it sounds like a three-day carnival. on day one rose parks didn't change seats on a bus, on day two melissa king marched on

-- dr. martin luther king marched on washington, and on day three we changed the law. we had people come to someone, alabama this year to celebrate anniversary of the march from selma to montgomery. many of these were representatives who went back to and refused to vote for a reinforcement of the voting right because they do not see that connection. we humiliated black people on a daily basis. we burdened and battered and beat them. we told black people they weren't smart enough to go to school and worked good enough to vote. charlie: did we do the same thing to women? we did. it made it difficult for many men to see women as capable people. we have been pushing against that narrative. that narrative has shifted somewhat by allowing women to present themselves in these ways. we need to do the same thing in regards to race.

we haven't done it, because i think we congratulate ourselves too quickly. we ended racial terror when we did. we said we ended racial segregation what we did, and we are now seeing manifestations of that same thinking in the era of mass incarceration. i think we have to repair all the damage that this legacy has done. i'm not focused on money. that is not the kind of reparation that will ultimately get us to a better place. there are generations that are white that were taught quickly -- directly or indirectly that they're better than other people because they are white. i want to help the community free itself from that life. -- -- from that lie. but you can't be ignorant about it. the recreational work i would like to see, i would like us to mark the spaces where the slave trade was made evident. we ought to be marking every lynching that took place in this country. charlie: how? bryan: with monuments and

memorials, and force this country to engage in the sober reflection we need to engage in so that no one can be proud of a confederate heritage that actually defended and sustained slavery, so that no one is confused about the fact that it wasn't the good old days in the beginning of the 20th century, so no one can be indifferent to the victimization of black people, because we have thought about what that the demise -- what that victimization represents. in south africa, there was a recognition you couldn't recover from without truth and reconciliation. in rwanda there is a recognition there will not be peace. you go to germany and you can't go 100 meters in berlin without seeing markers and stones placed in front of homes where jewish families were abducted. germans want you to go to the camps and reflect soberly on the history of the holocaust. they have made more progress in 30 or 40 years to deal with the legacy of the holocaust and we have done in 160 years since the end of slavery.

they have done it because they have not been afraid to tell the truth of what they did. charlie: you obviously know that in germany and other places in europe, there is a kind of nazi sympathy. bryan: there are always people that will hang on to this narrative, because it is the only way they can feel what they want to feel. charlie: even though it is a collectors thing, the big thing about nazi uniforms and all that, should we feel the same way in your judgment about anything having to do with the comparison -- with the confederacy? bryan: i do. in my state of alabama, confederate memorial day is a state holiday. we don't even have martin luther king day. it is martin luther king day/robert e lee day. it's not even that we are neutral or silent about those

things, we are celebrating those things. and you cannot celebrate those things and move forward with reconciliation. charlie: by saying that, you suggest the confederacy was only about protecting slavery. bryan: primarily. charlie: so anybody who fought on the side of the confederates supporting slavery. bryan: no question. i don't think there is any doubt that if the south had won the war, slavery would have continued. he could make all these arguments, and we try to do it because we recognized slavery is bad. look, there were white people in the south in the 19th century who were against slavery, and nobody knows their names. there were white people against lynching, against segregation. we don't know their names and we we should know their names and we should honor them. we should name schools and

streets out of -- after them. if you want to have a state holiday, have it after them. but to engage in this false narrative, it demonizes those victims by not recognizing them. it would be insulting if germany were still execute people in gas chambers. it is not tolerable. charlie: slavery is equivalent to the holocaust. bryan it is a human rights oppression that crushed millions of lives in devastated the aspirations of a race of people and was distracted to our moral conscious miss -- consciousness. it has left us not as morally evolved as we need to be. it has made us ponderable to tolerating lynching and tolerating segregation. tolerating aing -- criminal justice system where we now predict one in three black male babies is going to go to that some questionable -- go to

prison. that's unconscionable. charlie: barack obama, when he had assumed office, had gone in front of congress and said what you have said at this table today. should he have done that, and would that have begun a national or would it have presented conversations about anything else? bryan: i think it would have done the latter. there aren't any shortcuts on this. i don't think we can elect a president and make the president responsible for facilitating this conversation. charlie: why can't we look to the biggest pulpit in the country as a catalyst of the conversation? bryan: it absolutely can and should be a catalyst. but i don't think we can expect these problems to be solved at the top and kind of be thrown

down. these need to begin in communities. charlie: from the bottom-up rather than the top-down? bryan: they do. that doesn't mean i don't have expectations for the president or our elected leaders. there are things we can and should be doing. the challenge this president had is because of this perception that he is black and the racial difference narrative is so intense, we have to worry he is only could be the president for the black people. so he had to engage in posturing that made it harder for him to talk about race issues than it would have been were he white. charlie: he had to engage in a posturing? bryan: i think there was this fear in many parts of the country that somehow if we elect a black resident, he is going to prioritize the needs of black people in ways that the rest of us should be afraid. it is that kind of thinking that is rooted in this very narrative. charlie: none of that was set in the campaign. bryan: it's never said. charlie: fair enough. nobody said that in 2008, that he will prioritize -- bryan: no, but you saw it in the

way that which when he reacted to something with a racial component, there was this disproportionate hysteria. i'm not suggesting that doesn't mean you can't do things, because you can and you should, but it does mean we have to deal with this problem in a much broader way. bryan: would that it -- charlie: would that include bringing skip gates to the white house for a beer? bryan: it would. there was this hypersensitivity to any act or gesture that was responsive to the problems of racial violence. we talked about the outrage of trayvon martin. i think that speaks to the immaturity of our country's capacity to talk honestly about race. you say race in most parts of this country and people get nervous. you say racial justice, they start looking for the exit. why? what are we afraid of? i think if we actually understood the history more clearly and understood there is liberation on the other side of this issue, we can actually get to a place where we all feel liberation.

all of us. we are all burdened by this history. we are. we keep making mistakes, white people say things and create tension with black people, black people are put in positions when we don't feel comfortable. we can run, but we can't hide. charlie: who is deserving of any of the responsibility? bryan: we all have responsibility. we have all been affected by the way these narratives have evolved. part of the reason why i think it is time for us to move forward is that we continue to see these manifestations -- police officers shooting unarmed like it's come a -- black kids, declining opportunities for people of color. these are all manifestations of this problem. we have a generation of children being born into violent communities, households, and

neighborhoods, and schools. their suffering from trauma by the time they are four or five years of age. nobody will organize the kind of massive intervention we need to have the goods they don't value -- because they don't value those children come a largely because they are black and poor. ♪

♪ the lingering pervasive

impact of slavery, in terms of how we see each other beyond color, in your suggestion we need a dialogue. if you were in charge of the dialogue, where would you take it and how would you engage it? bryan: bryan: i would begin by getting everyone in this country to be more attentive to how this narrative of racial difference has been created. why we feel this way. why it is we are so indifferent to the plight of native people who we massacred? charlie: american indians? bryan: yes. the indigenous population in this country. we haven't understood the ways in which many of our current policies replicate this idea that we could come in and claim something and displace other people without implicating our own moral compass. we had asians on the west coast not that long ago in concentration camps because we feared people. because of their ancestry, their ethnicity. we allowed that policy to allow

something brutal and cruel. if we are not careful in our hysteria around terrorism, we will do the same thing. charlie: hysteria will cause us to do what? bryan: misguided, inhumane things. the essential ingredients to oppression are fear and anger. if you want to understand oppression, want to understand genocide, want to understand the holocaust, there is always a narrative of fear and anger behind it. charlie: and the anger could be resentment or a whole range of things. bryan: it could be a whole range of things. we preach it and make people afraid. it's this fear and anger. that is what allowed the south to violently overtake the -- charlie: that's what politicians have used. bryan: that is what they used to put 2.3 million people in jail and 7 million people on the roster of folks of criminal arrests.

6 million people on probation and parole. charlie: have you done enough? bryan: i don't think any of us have. there is tremendous suffering in this country. there has never been a time in america where there are more innocent people in jails and prisons than there are right now. charlie: there has been a time in which there have been more innocent people in jails than 2016 -- 15. charlie: that is correct. -- bryan: that is correct. are those who argue that it is not about race, it is about economics. it is poverty, lack of opportunity, those things. bryan: those are very powerful forces. you cannot deny poverty is the element that aggravates all of these issues. we have a criminal justice

system. i make this point overtime -- all the time -- it treats you better if you are rich than if you are poor. there no question that poverty is a big part of it, but we are kidding ourselves if we think race is not also an issue. if we think our consciousness about race is simply irrelevant in dealing with these social problems. it is not honest to say about -- say it is all about poverty and not about race. i want to deal with poverty, i really do. i want to create reforms that deal with structural, generational poverty, but it doesn't mean i'm going to be silent about race. in my view, that is a more honest way of engaging with our history. charlie: why are you in law rather than politics? bryan: i believe in rights. i believe you have to protect the people who will never have power or be the political majority. i grew up in a region where, if

it was left to the political process, there would still be segregation. you would never get a majority of the people in alabama to end segregation. it took the court. it took this notion of a rule of law. it took the right framework to create all my opportunities, my ability to go to school, my ability to practice law. because of that, i believe we need to have people in that space protecting the rights of people who are disfavored. the minorities by the excluded, the marginalized, the people who will never have enough votes to achieve their basic protection s through the political process. charlie: so you have never been tempted by the political process, because you believe you can change law but not politics. bryan: that is true. when you see this play out you -- when you see this play out, you change the culture, and it becomes possible to imagine a political system that could be responsive to people who historically have been

excluded, marginalized, minimalist. i think we have made progress in the space -- we have an african-american president -- but we are a long way away from expecting people to do the right things to protect the most vulnerable through the political process. charlie: has alabama changed? bryan: i think every place has changed, but no place has changed enough. charlie: including massachusetts and new york? bryan: absolutely. on the streets of new york and the streets of massachusetts, you still see a presumption is is -- aa perception presumption of danger and guilt assigned to people of color. i was in a courtroom in the midwest getting ready to do a hearing a couple of years ago. i had my suit on, my shirt on, my tie on, and the church walked -- the judge walked in and he saw me sitting there. he said, hey, you get back there in the hallway, weight until you lawyer gets here, i don't want any defendants in the courtroom. charlie: unbelievable. bryan: i stood up and said, my name is brian stephenson, i am

the lawyer. the judge started laughing, the prosecutor started laughing, i made myself laugh. i didn't want to disadvantage my client. my client came in, a young white kid. we did the hearing, and later of his thinking, what is it when i judge sees a middle-aged black man in a suit and tie and it didn't even occur to him that he was a lawyer. what that is is the way this history in america has shaped us. that is true all across the country. charlie: let's assume we do everything better. how long the you think it will take to get it out of our dna? bryan: we are at a disadvantage because we have let a lot of valuable time go by. i think it can come sooner than most people expect. truly, our dna, or basic human instincts, are really not programmed with this kind of division, this kind of otherness, this kind of tension, this kind of racial thinking. that is something we have had to learn. i think if we push people to

free themselves from it, we will see some amazing angst. -- amazing things. we have already seen amazing things, but not enough. -- iie: is there a place know you have suggested south africa because of truth and where yoution -- think that a country has faced up to its responsibilities in a way that it cleanse itself -- cleansed itself of the applications and consequences -- implications and consequences? if you think about how horrific the holocaust was an was, itng the nazi era is alarming that we have this respect for germany that we

would not have expected to have so soon after world war ii. charlie: at the same time, the news in the past week has been japan, and the prime minister in apologizing or all of the atrocities of the japanese government. not just against american soldiers, but against the chinese population. so here is a prime minister who could not say "i'm sorry" because of the politics. bryan: that is because nationalism and our national identities are too much shaped around never saying "i'm sorry." we have a songbook that is big and beautiful when it comes to success and pride and accomplishment, but we don't have a pretty good song for when it comes to how we apologize. charlie: apologizing suggests weakness or a lack of respect to some. bryan: but you and i know that

if we are going to have a healthy relationship -- i don't know any healthy couples that never say i'm sorry to each other. i don't think you can be a long-term, healthy, loving couple unless you learn to say "i'm sorry." you can't have good friendships either. it is our ability to apologize. when the go out of bounds, it makes us human, but it also makes us redeemed. that is how we get to mercy. that is how we get to compassion. that's how we get to greatness. if we don't practice that as a nation, we will fail to be the great society we claim to be. learning to make peace with these difficult things we have done to people of color is something we are going to have to do if we want to be great. it goes to the heart of relationships -- marriage, relationships between nationalities. bryan: absolutely. to say i'me capacity

sorry, and saying it without the fear that you will be acted against because you do it -- taken advantage of, ostracized. bryan: absolutely. bryan: because i represent people on death row, i have learned something about it. i believe for every human being, if someone tells a lie, they are not just a liar. if they take something, they are not just a thief. charlie: each of us is better than the worst thing we have done. bryan: if you kill somebody you are not just a killer. a nation that enslaved, isn't just a slaving nation. and a nation that lynched isn't

just a lynching nation, a nation that -- but we have to own up to the things we have done. and i think there is a freedom on the other side of that and we can't be afraid to acknowledge the things. it is like every relationship. when the church makes mistakes and puts children at risk, they have to apologize. when the military doesn't treat women appropriately, they need to apologize. charlie: and institutions allow -- -- discrimation of any kind, gender, race, they have to apologize. bryan: when you are trying to to create a brand in business, you make mistakes and there is accountability. our mistake shouldn't put that faulty part in that car. we're sorry. there is a conscience, you cannot be respected without that. charlie: who pushes back against what you say? bryan: not direct, but kind of indirect. this habit of just never doing uncomfortable things that we have all inherited. trying to own up to our history of slavery, that is uncomfortable. nobody is going to take that on or exercise leadership. dealing with the fact that we

have marginalized people unfairly that is hard. i got a man off of death row who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. 30 years. solitary confinement, locked down 23 years a day, witnessed 53 execution. complained about flesh burning. we got him released in april of 2015 and not a single person in the prosecutor's office said i'm sorry. they are silent. charlie: how many supported his release? bryan: when we were working on the case, very few. charlie: didn't want to acknowledge their own mistakes. prosecutorial misconduct. bryan: you have prosecutors and some judges possibly executing a innocent person rather than acknowledging that the system failed.

that speaks to the larger problem and dealing with that honestly.

charlie: how do

we explain you? here is this guy that bill bradley did a profile of. "vanity fair" did a profile of. that speaks to your values. what made you the way you are? bryan: my grand mother was the daughter of people who were enslaved and my grandmother had this wisdom that was profound and impactful. my grandmother would squeeze me so tightly that i could barely she would see me one hour later and say, do you feel me hugging you? if i said no, she would be on me again. and she talked about her father who learned to read as a slave, and how brave that was, and risky, and dangerous that was, and how necessary it was for him to be free. and didn't have formal schooling. and she told me you have to fight, fight, fight, but fight with integrity and heart and mind. it made a huge impact.

i have been shaped a lot of people. charlie: but you know a lot of lawyers. brian: i did not. i didn't meet a lawyer until i went to harvard law school and immediately decided i didn't want to be one. charlie: why was that? bryan: i wanted to deal with racial inequality and nobody was talking about that. i found a community of lawyers who were doing that and energized me and afffirmed me. but being around people like my grandmother, in the community where i grew up. a poor segregated black community and people were hardworking and wanted things to get better, but they understood the power of taking care of the people you love. say, i have really been moved by this community of people who are incarcerated and the people i serve, the poor people, the poor people we are trying to educate in the deep south and hard for me to see people struggling with these burdens if we engage in a different way. that's what motivates me.

charlie: was there a movement, if your grandmother's hug was a moment, was there a moment in which you said, i can't take the easy way out? bryan: when i was in law school, i was trying to persuade myself to accept a career as a lawyer. i knew it would not be fully affirming. and i had the opportunity to work with the human rights in atlanta, georgia and they provided legal services to people on death row and sent me down to meet a man on the row , he had not been met yet, and they said, tell him he has a year and doesn't have to worry about being executed in the next year. i was so nervous and that i thought i would be a disappointment to him. when i met him and he told me i -- he hugged me and told me i was the first person he had met. who was not a death row risen or or do throw guard. -- death row prisoner or death

row guard. he was excited because he was going to see his wife and children. we fell into this conversation and kept talking and talking and the guards were angry because i had spent much time with him and they were very rough with him and pushing him out of the room, he looked at me and said don't you worry about this and he said just come back. he closed his eyes and threw his head back and starting -- started singing. and then he said, lord, plant my feet on higher ground. hearing that man sing and hearing him being pushed down the hall and you could hear him singing, i knew i wanted to help condemned people get to higher ground. my journey to higher ground was tied to his journey. if he doesn't get there, i'm not going to get there. that wasn't overwhelming or -- that consciousness for me wasn't overwhelming or burdensome or scary, it was liberating. it was energizing. charlie: you knew what you had to do. bryan: i did.

charlie: that is wonderful. in a human being's life, to know what you have to do. everything just else clears the way. i know where i have to go and i know where i have to do. and if i don't do that, i won't believe that my life didn't matter as much as it might. bryan: i think that is right. the way you maximize that opportunity is by positioning yourselves in places where there is difficulty. when you get approximate to the things you care about. when you don't do what is convenient and comfortable all the time, you have those moments. i don't think they happen quite as readily when we are surrounded by comfort and convenience. i think they happen, force ourselves to do inconvenient things. charlie: what does solitary confinement and death row do to the humanity? bryan: solitary confinement is

horrific because it is an assault on all of your senses and it's hard to hold on to your dignity when you are locket down -- locked down like that. a man i represented who just got released from death row -- charlie: what does he say this bryan: remarkable sense of humor, smart, committed, but he has been traumatized and hurt by what we did to him for 0 years -- for 30 years and it will take a long time to recover from that and he won't fully recover ever. no one does. i have a client in florida who was 13 years of age when sentenced to sentenced to life without parole and he was so small. either put him in general population where he will be sexually assaulted and put him in solitary confinement. but they did not alter the rules for the 13-year-old boy which is you have to go six months without speaking loudly or talking back or doing anything wrong or we will not let you

out. for a 13-year-old boy isolated from human beings, no touch, no opportunities to get outside your cell, that was torture. he could never go six months without cutting himself or getting mad. charlie: so he could never get out. bryan: he spent 18 years in solitary confinement. charlie: what did it do to him? bryan: it was horrific. it broke him. it undermined his ability to be a good decisionmaker. we are working with him and he is making slow progress, but that is something that shouldn't ever have happened. you can't be in that experience without experiencing all of the trauma and the disability that comes with a traumatic experience. it is tragic. the combat veterans coming back, you could make the argument that we had to fight the war, i don't believe that. but you could make that argument.

we don't have to isolate people in this way where we make them less human and torture them or traumatize them. that is gratuitous. charlie: that's a hard question in terms of asking if you knew that bit of information could somehow save a larger group of people. bryan: in the american prison system, there is no debate. we are not gaining anything. that's right, absolutely right. this is a completely misguided policy that we tolerate because we haven't really -- we talk about victims' rights and i'm sensitive. to the victimization of people who are the victims of violent crime. we have horrific crimes, my grandfather was murdered when i was 16. too many people who have been assaulted, too many who have been robbed and burgled. i don't want to be indifferent to that. that consciousness of victimization is important but we have limited it. we aren't mature in how we think about helping recover from being victimized and because of that we end up victimizing other people. charlie: how do we recover?

from being victimized? thinking yourself as a victim isn't healthy either. but wethat is right, commit ourselves for getting people healthy to recover. we don't say, if you victimize me, i get to victimize you. that is not a healthy strategy for getting to a healthier place. charlie: that's the same thing about torture. if we torture, they will torture. bryan: absolutely. the other thing we do not say is because you victimize that person we get to victimize that person. that creates another kind of victimization. what is interesting about the deathpenalty and race, penalty is racially biased. not in the race of the offender but in the race of the victim. you are 22 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black.

charlie: 22. bryan: 11 times more likely and went to the united states supreme court, 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than black. 22 times more likely if the defendant is black and the victim is white. and that was subjected to all kinds of multivariate analyses. race was the determining factor. white cases -- white victims cases typically did and black cases did not. 65% of all murder victims are black, but 80% of the people on death row are there for victims who are right. that consciousness of whose lives matter has shaped our ability to do justice and we don't think the lives of people who are respite matter. -- who are arrested matter. we don't think the lives of young black and brown boys matter.

we don't think the lives of women who have used drugs matter. our consciousness of how to protect and serve them is gone. saying noou are matter what you have done, your life matters. bryan: absolutely. a just society, that has to be true for everyone. germans didn't think jewish lives mattered. in rwanda, you had the notion that some lives don't matter and that leads to horror, to genocide, to oppression and inequality. charlie: and it happened in the balkans, too. of creatingve a way a narrative and saying their

suffering doesn't matter. you will see all the problems. charlie: interesting in bill gates has said a number of times and especially in conjunction with his wife melinda gates. the initial beginning that sort of caused them to make the the commitment of resources they made was the notion that all lives matter, equally. and they were doing it not on the context of race or economic circumstances, even though they contributed, they were doing it in the con tech of global -- context of global health. we have to wake up that all lives have equal value. bryan: that is why i'm trying to make that argument. when you get to that place, it's a better place to be and -- then when you are constantly trying to defend and justify why those people deserve that, why these people can't be for the other things. charlie: if all the victims' families, people who suffered enormous pain and loss, you can make the easy examples, someone

who, in their home were brutally raped, tortured and killed and you say all those people that do that, their lives have value, that's what you are saying. and until we get there, we can't deal with these issues. bryan: all lives matter. when my grandfather was murdered, the question we were asking, why? what would make it possible for these young kids to do this act of violence. charlie: what did they do? bryan: broke into my grandfather's home in south philadelphia and tried to steal a tv, he tried to stop them and they stabbed him to death. what can we do to stop that happening. there were all kinds of things

shaping choices and behaviors. 12 and 13-year-olds don't expect to be 21. i don't want to victimize other human beings, but i care about their futures. all lives matter. i think our capacity to take care of people who have been injured, assaulted, who have been victimized, is going to be enhanced. when we have a deeper appreciation. charlie: there's a difference in all lives matter, that all lives have equal value. is there a difference in that? bryan: i don't think so. when it comes to whether we treat you with respect, whether we care about your opportunities, whether we give you equal access to the things that are basic, all lives have equal value. somebody who can generate a lot of attention or generate a lot of money, people have enormous musical talent. there are going to be these characteristics, but when it

comes to your basic obligation to treat people with respect and dignity and recognize their humanity, all lives have equal value. charlie: in the end when you analyze every possible reason for taking another's life and you reject all of them, is it primarily because the system makes mistakes? bryan: uh-huh. charlie: or because no society has the right to take somebody's life because they are at their best, better than the worst thing they did, so therefore, no matter how atrocious, hitler, you wouldn't take his life, even though the state took a lot of nazi lives after the war. bryan: for me, it's both of them. i start with the first point. i don't need to persuade people

of that second point. it is what i believe. i do not think we advance our society or advance our commitment to the rule of law to show that killing is wrong and don't think we need to rape people to show that rape is wrong. i don't think we should torture to show that torture is wrong. we compromise our own dignity. we can people in a way that people in a way that doesn't implicate us in a way that raping people would. and we allow that to happen. charlie: you know a lot of people on death row. bryan: yeah. charlie: if none of them, you're saying, all the people you have known on death row, whether they were there because they did an act or not, committed a crime or not, and maybe there is a difference between the two, if any of them had known they would likely to be executed, would they have committed the crime

still? there is no deterrence? bryan: no. we have too many people in our society, poor kids, poor people in the margins, people in really horrific states that expect to die. they don't expect to live a long life, they are preoccupied of when their end is going to come. it is not a fear of death that is going to change this behavior. what will change this behavior is some hope, some possibility that things can get better. charlie: some life experience gives value. bryan: some life experience gives value. on the death penalty question, i don't have to make that moral argument. it is not whether people deserve to die for the crimes they committed, but do we have the -- do we serve to kill. if you have a system that is undermined by all of this bias and bigotry because of your poverty or wealth, that makes as

many mistakes as we have made. charlie: should we apologize to the nazi leaders we killed? bryan: i don't think you don't have to apologize. apologize to the other people that you have failed by not creating a just system, a system that actually responds to the injuries that are still alive. i think it would be misguided to think about apology in that space when we have so many living victims of inquality. charlie: do you have people that love you totally, who that say you have a bigger soul, a bigger heart, a bigger comprehension than i do? bryan: no. charlie: you are a special person. i cannot go that far with you. there are exceptions to my compassion? there are exceptions to my -- bryan: what amazes me, i have

people who don't even know me that well, and who don't claim to love me, but who feel exactly as i do about this need to get to a better place, this need to affirm our humanity and affirm. charlie: other than what you are doing exactly at this moment and other than doing what you are doing in a courtroom and other than doing what you are doing in lobbying congress and make sure we adhere to these values, owner that, what else is necessary to accelerate change? bryan: i think we need to change the landscape and we have a new project we are interested in the visual landscape and visual history and we are putting up these markers. i think there is something important.

i think because that's how you cope with collective trauma. that's how you manage it to create spaces. charlie: i believe in part the idea that you have to have, you have to clearly show this is where our values are. you can see it here and see it here. and this is what we do and at the same time, we have to reward moral courage. bryan: absolutely. i think there is something important. i go to the vietnam war memorial in d.c. and it is powerful and makes you understand something about yourself that you will not understand until you are in that space and we need to do more of that and create pathways for people to get out of this racial indifference and animosity and into a little more helpful.

charlie: what promises have you made to yourself and your grandmother and what promises have you made to a larger community? bryan: i'm going to keep fighting. that's the promise i made to the community. i think justice is a constant struggling. if i am about justice, i have to keep struggling. it is not a burden but a privilege. i feel it's a privilege doing what i do. charlie: thanks for coming. this paperback called "just mercy" and incorpts the values. a story of justice and redemption. ever bit as moving "to kill a mockingbird" and salvation that fighting for the vulnerable. brian stephenson's life is about

that. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

♪ announcer: "brilliant ideas," powered by hyundai motor. narrator: the contemporary art world is vibrant and booming as never before. it's a 21st century phenomenon, a global industry in its own right. "brilliant ideas" looks at the artists at the heart of this, artists with a unique power to astonish, challenge, and shock. to push boundaries, ask new questions, and see the world afresh. in this program, bharti kher. ♪