Bryan Stevenson

And then I remember trying to say as insincerely as I possibly could.

I said, you know, well, I don't know.

Well, I love you.

And what I'd forgotten was how that little boy hugged me back.

And then he whispered flawlessly in my ear, he said, I love you too.

And I was thinking about that while my client was trying to get his words out.

And finally, my client got his words out and he said, I just want to thank you for fighting for me.

And the last thing that man said to me, he says, I want you to know that I love you for trying to save my life.

He hung up the phone, they pulled him away, they strapped him to a gurney, and they executed him.

That moment was the moment when I said, I just can't do this anymore.

It just seemed too much.

And I think it was because I realized with great intensity how broken he was.

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?