Ralph Myers, a disturbed white man with a habit of grandiosity. Though Myers claims he and McMillian committed the murder together, Myers has never even met McMillian. Myers is connected to McMillian only through his girlfriend, Karen Kelley, a married white woman with whom McMillian was briefly involved. Thus, it is the interracial affair which damns McMillian’s reputation and makes him an easy scapegoat for a community out to avenge the murder of a daughter. So great is the impetus to try McMillian for the crime that Monroe County produces another false witness, Bill Hooks, to testify against McMillian. Further, even after Myers recants his testimony against McMillian, Monroeville’s police sheriff, Thomas Tate, goes on to frame charges against both him and McMillian. In a break from protocol, Tate places both Myers and McMillian on death row while they are still pre-trial. From this point, McMillian’s death sentence is inevitable.

Tired of shuttling between Georgia and Alabama, where McMillian is lodged, Stevenson moves to Alabama to open his own practice with colleague Eva Ansley, planting the seeds for the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Stevenson and Ansley’s initial appeals in Alabama for death row prisoners Michael Lindsey, Horace Dunkins, and Herbert Richardson fail to stay the executions, but this only strengthens their resolve for advocacy.

One of the most significant points Stevenson makes is that often incarcerations and death sentences are a symptom of society’s larger tendency to demonize and label offenders. For example, the sensationalism around the stereotype of “dangerous mothers” leads rural Alabama woman Marsha Colbey to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on the false charges of murdering her baby, who in fact was stillborn. Thus, creating an imaginary, demonic “other” and then purging society of this other seem to be the unfortunate drivers of jurisprudence. It is against such punitive ideas that Stevenson moves to secure justice for McMillian.

Though McMillian’s family and friends are eyewitnesses to his presence at a family “fish fry” during the time of Ronda’s murder, their accounts are not taken seriously. Stevenson’s attempts to call a retrial are thwarted at every turn. Stevenson and Avery often receive bomb threats. When a potential witness, Darnell Houston, wants to testify in favor of McMillian, he is threatened with perjury by law officials and thus forced away from the case. However, Stevenson presses on and manages to be granted Petition 32, which allows the EJI team access to police files on McMillian’s case and eventually win McMillian a brief three-day retrial. In a stroke of luck, by this time Myers is ready to tell the whole truth about McMillan’s innocence in court. A higher appeal process sees McMillian’s case shifted to a new trial, as well as fresh investigations by the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI). With the ABI agents submitting a report clearing McMillian, the county finally exonerates him.

However, the victory is bittersweet, with McMillian finding it difficult to reintegrate into a hostile larger community. Meanwhile, despite the EJI’s successes, the case files keep piling up in their office. Late in the memoir, Stevenson breaks down one night, frustrated by the enormity of his task. It takes an encounter with an elderly Black woman in a courthouse to remind him of the worth of his work—which is to uphold the principle of “just mercy.” Here, the complete meaning of the title is revealed, which is not “only mercy” but also an equitable mercy that transforms the receiver and the giver alike. The woman often visits trials to lend support to the accused because she is pained for the boys who were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her grandson. It is the just mercy of people like her which gives Stevenson hope.