Quite frankly, this was the most devastating book I’ve ever read in my life & I cried my eyes out every time I listened to it. Walter will live in my heart forever. The world would maybe be a better place if more people read books like this; I don’t understand how you could read this and not come away changed, feeling something, and desiring/advocating for change. 

I feel so many people don’t understand how huge of a problem the prison justice system is, and how disproportionately is affects black and brown people. Some of it is due to ignorance, and some due to not believing it could possibly be as bad as people say, or outright hatred etc., but listening to these accounts of the absolutely heinous ways these people were utterly failed and abused by the governments and systems that are supposed to protect them is so deeply incomprehensible. 

Walters case is so gut wrenching and heartbreaking and there’s hundreds of thousands of people just like him in the exact same situation who are wrongfully committed, put into prisons where they face unspeakable and vile levels of abuse, and develop deep trauma and pain from this loss of life and robbery of life if you will that completely changes them. Many of whom end up dying on death row.

Marsha’s case also absolutely broke me. This woman suffered the trauma of giving birth to a stillborn baby in a home birth after being unable to afford pre natal care, and was accused of killing her baby and without a fair trial immediately placed on death row????? Un-fuckingbelievable.

I knew that this was a problem, but reading something like this where there are so many countless experiences from Walter or Marsha, to mentally ill children tried as adults for crimes they couldn’t even fully comprehend and placed on death row, disabled children tried as adults and placed on death row where they were repeatedly raped and assaulted in prison etc….. it’s so different reading about it so viscerally. I’m at a complete loss for words for the utter horror and thinking of all of the countless other people in similar situations like this where this is happening to them & I don’t understand how humans have batted an eye to it for so long and let this happen. We have created a system that perpetuates legal eugenics, and legal slavery & this is not some “oh it was way in the past” situation, these cases are from the 2010’s.

I really and truly wish this book was a required reading for humanity.