Bryan Stevenson

And the question I had in my mind is, why do we want to kill all the broken people?

What is it about us that when we see brokenness in other people, we want to hurt them for it, kill them for it?

I represent the broken.

All of my clients have been broken by poverty, broken by trauma, broken by addiction, broken by illness, broken by disability, broken by despair.

And then I realized I work in a broken system because the people with power won't get proximate.

They don't have hope.

They're unwilling to be compassionate.

And I was sitting there just thinking about why do I do what I do?

And that was the moment when I had this realization that

I don't do what I do because I've been trained as a lawyer.

I don't do what I do because somebody has to do it.

I don't even do what I do because it's about human rights or justice.

That's part of it.

But what I realized that night that I'd never realized before is that I do what I do because I'm broken too.

I am not unflawed.

I am not unblemished.

I am not uncomplicated in the same ways that the people I represent are.

But I do believe in the power of redemption.

I do believe in grace.

I do believe in mercy.