The Justice Project

Four months earlier, Matt had been snowboarding. Hurtling along at ever-increasing speed, he had jammed the edge of his board into a snow-covered rock. “You’ll have reduced mobility” was the way [his surgeon] put it (p. 2), but in Matt’s mind, he is now a cripple, someone who will limp forever. And yes, he knows that the outcome could have been much worse, but . . . he’s a star football player who has been offered a major football scholarship to the University of Southern California, and this accident has completely devastated those plans.

Understandably, Matt is waging a constant battle with the plethora of emotions that result from a catastrophic life change: anger, regret (a million “if only’s” about that day on the slopes), and envy at being thrown very limited choices on a half-empty plate at “life’s all-you-can-eat banquet” (p. 5). To add to the misery, his long-time girlfriend, Emma, has unexpectedly received a late acceptance to a top-notch drama program at a small college near Los Angeles. Knowing that they couldn’t survive a long-distance romance, they had broken up in January after Matt received his scholarship offer. But Emma renews the relationship during Matt’s hospitalization, and, despite her support for him, he rejects her, and she realizes that this time the relationship is really over. So, with high school graduation in sight, Matt decides to move to Florida to live with his mom who moved there after the end of her marriage with Matt’s dad.

Ironically, as Matt sits in his law class, looking out the window and watching former teammates washing vehicles in the school’s “Carwash for Cancer”, totally tuned out and ruminating on his belief that life, as he knew it, is over, discussion in his Law Class focuses on a very real end to life: the death penalty. And, to his surprise, he comes up with a witty response that actually bests Sonya Livingston, his graduating class’s valedictorian, a star student on her way to Harvard. To Matt, she is also “a royal pain in the ass” (p. 6), the animosity stemming from Sonya’s organizing a petition demanding funding for girls’ athletics to be equal to that being spent on boys’. Forest Hills is a football-crazed high school, and the petition didn’t receive many signatures. Furthermore, Sonya upped the ante in an interview with the school newspaper, calling “him and his teammates a bunch of Neanderthals who have to take their shoes and socks off in order to count past ten. Matt had responded by getting the entire football team to come to school barefoot on the day of the [funding] vote.” (p. 7) Clearly, this is a case of “Sonya the brainiac” vs. “Matt, the jock”.

As Matt walks into his next day’s law class, thinking about his upcoming summer job at a local golf club, Matt notices a visitor talking to Mr. Darrow, the law teacher. The visitor is Jesse Donovan, founder of a non-profit organization called the Justice Project, an organization dedicated to the defense of the wrongly convicted. In the American judicial system, an accused person doesn’t have to prove innocence – rather, the prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Although that should prevent the innocent from being sent to jail, wrongful convictions happen, and Jesse Donovan is proof that they do. He tells his story: a 19-year-old, living in Philadelphia, he went to a party at a friend’s apartment, and the next day two men are found stabbed to death in the laneway behind the building. On the basis of statements offered by two women who told police that Donovan was seen threatening the men with a knife, he was arrested and charged with murder. Physical evidence pointed to his guilt and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. But, 22 years later, thanks to the diligence of a woman who knew Jesse from high school and had heard of his case, a new lawyer took on his case, a re-trial was held, and Jesse Donovan emerged a free man.

With freedom came a sense of purpose, and Donovan founded the Justice Project so that what happened to him would not happen to others. Additionally, the Justice Project lobbies against the death penalty “solely because of the possibility that an innocent person could be executed.” (p. 19) Donovan’s story is engaging, and the class ends with thunderous applause. He’s inspiring. Leaving the school, Jesse encounters Matt, offers him a lift home, and although conversation is sparse, the two men bond – both have had a life dream stolen from them. Jesse stops by the Justice Project’s office for a moment, and once inside, learns that the Project has lost one of its interns to a job at a local auto plant. Once again, life takes an unexpected turn for Matt: he’s offered a job with the project, and even though it pays far less than what he’d earn at the golf club, he takes it. He won’t have to talk about “his glory days all summer at the golf club.” (p. 25)

The job offer was his first surprise; the next is finding that Sonya Livingstone is the other intern with whom he will be working. Their major task is reading through and assessing prisoners’ applications for assistance from the Justice Project; a second project is collecting donations for a fund-raiser to support this chronically under-funded enterprise. Sonya is bright, energetic, and a hard worker; Matt is no fool, but by his own admission, he had coasted through high school, doing well enough only to ensure he would have grades good enough for university admission. Clearly, each has met a worthy opponent. However, they have to work together, and work together, they do. Their first joint venture is a trip to Pembroke Valley State Prison to meet Bill Matheson, a Justice Project client who has been in prison for 37 years. Accused of having killed his wife, Bill could have been paroled long ago, but, unless he admits to the crime, he stays in jail. Matt is incredulous at Bill’s apparent obstinacy while Sonya admires his strength. Time and again, Bill has stated ”They can have my body, but they can’t have my soul.” (p. 32)

The prison visit is certainly an experience for both Sonya and Matt. They meet Bill, and while there, Sonya asks about another potential case, that of Ray Richardson who is serving a life sentence for the alleged murder of his parents because pleading guilty was the only way to avoid execution. Bill knows Ray and, more importantly, believes fervently that he is innocent. But, without the money to hire an investigator to pursue new evidence, Ray continues to languish in prison. Sonya has a keen sense of justice and decides that she and Matt will investigate: “the worst that can happen is that we don’t come up with anything. . . . We’ll do it on our own time.” (p. 44)

Sometimes, the most successful partnerships start out with a bit of conflict. Sonya seems to have it all: brains, good looks, a somewhat privileged background (dad went to Harvard as will she), and a strong will to do the right thing. Matt seems to be on a bit of a losing streak right now: he’s injured, his football career has gone down in flames, his girlfriend is heading to the other side of the country, his mother is going to Saudi Arabia with her husband (ending Matt’s plan to move to Florida and live with her), and after graduation, all his football buddies will go their own way. “Matt felt like he was on a raft in the middle of the ocean, drifting aimlessly with no land in sight.” (p. 61) These two are a study in contrasts, but in the course of 241 pages, they achieve their goal. Not only does Bill Matheson finally leave prison, but Ray Richardson is exonerated and granted financial compensation for the 21 years he spent in jail.

The freeing of these two men is a complex process, and it becomes clear, as the story continues, that pursuing a cold case can be dangerous. In the course of their investigation, Sonya and Matt face some terrible truths about the ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) people who live in and maintain positions of power in their small town of Snowden, and the injustice of socio-economic power dynamics makes it clear why the scales of justice aren’t always even.

As they work together, Sonya and Matt develop a genuine and respectful friendship. It’s not a romance: Sonya is gay and Matt begins a new and tentative relationship with a young woman who makes him forget about Emma. In the course of his work on the Ray Richardson case, Matt learns that there’s more to himself than being a star athlete; yes, he’ll always walk with a limp, but, at the end, he’s learned that “Winning the championship was special, but this is even better.” (p. 241) He grows and matures and learns that yes, there really can be worse things than a physical injury.

While the story is about the pursuit of justice for those who have been unjustly incarcerated, The Justice Project offers much more. Sonya is a strong female character who doesn’t exactly fit in with Forest Hills High School’s sports culture; as a young gay woman deciding when to come out to her parents, she could feel marginalized were it not for her inner strength. Being gay is only one aspect of her sense of self, and that was something that I really liked about this book, a reminder to teen readers that sexual identity is only one aspect of anyone’s identity. As for Matt, yes, he’s part of “football culture” (and Betcherman does an excellent job of showing us the inner workings of that world: the nicknames, the insider jokes, and yes, the camaraderie that comes with a team that believes that with “Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.”), but he grows above and beyond that. He moves past self-pity into an understanding that life has handed him an unexpected opportunity. Dealing with an injury will never be easy, but life is not over for him.

The Justice Project is a book that will work for both male and female readers, and, although the suggested audience level is 12+, I think that 14+ is more likely. Yes, there’s profanity (although nothing out of the ordinary to be heard in any high school hallway), and yes, the teens in this book are both sexually active, but both the language and behaviour are contextually appropriate for the story. At the conclusion of the story, the “Author’s Note” provides readers with “true-crime” inspirations for both Jesse Donovan’s and Bill Matheson’s wrongful convictions. While the Justice Project is a fictional organization, there are numerous such organizations undertaking similar advocacy work, and this book will find an audience with teens who are interested in this important social justice issue. The Justice Project is a gripping, multi-dimensional work, deserving of a place in senior high school library fiction collections.