Do Justice, Love Mercy
Dear Friends,
Each year at Texas Defender Service, we host students for their social work field placement. Field placement is a core component of the curriculum in graduate schools of social work. It gives students first-hand, real-world experience applying their classroom skills in the field. Our mitigation specialists train these students in the basics of conducting comprehensive mitigation investigations. Working with our team, the students help uncover our clients’ life stories, which include histories of complex childhood trauma, poverty, mental illness, and intellectual disability.
Many of our interns go on to become mitigation specialists. Others enter different fields, but remain influenced by their work on the frontlines of the criminal-legal system.
We are grateful that one of our interns this year has shared some of her thoughtful reflections on meeting with one of TDS’s clients. Kirsten Van Heijningen is a student at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin; please check out her moving account below! We are grateful for Kirsten’s work and the contributions of all of the fabulous interns who go through our program.
With gratitude,
Burke Butler
Executive Director
Texas Defender Service
Do Justice, Love Mercy
By Kirsten Van Heijningen
Walking into the visitation area of Texas death row for the first time, I was struck by the sterility of the environment—the harsh lighting, the odd murals on the walls, the weight of countless unspoken stories. No amount of classroom theory or case readings could have prepared me for the human reality behind these doors. My heart pounded as I was swept over to meet the client, unsure of what to expect, trying to steady my thoughts and remember my purpose as a mitigation intern: to listen, to understand, and to bear witness.
I have worked in a jail setting before. Still, I was unprepared for how grim it felt to speak with him, separated by thick glass and speaking through a phone connected to the wall. As we spoke, I was immediately taken aback not by what he said, but by how he said it with dignity, with thoughtfulness, and with a calm that belied the chaos of his environment. He spoke of childhood memories, favorite foods, and his dreams for the future. These were words of a person who had lived, who had loved, and who had been shaped by a complex web of circumstances. I felt close to tears as it became clear to me in that moment that he refused to let his humanity be erased by his sentence.
We talked about books and faith, about the loneliness of confinement, and about the small rituals that keep him grounded. I was moved by his ability to maintain a sense of inner peace and purpose. In a place designed to strip away hope, he had somehow cultivated meaning. His endurance and his refusal to be wholly defined by his circumstances left me in awe of the human condition and the quiet, often unseen strength people can summon in the face of unimaginable hardship.
As I left the unit and walked back into the blinding Texas sun, I felt the heaviness of the experience settle in my chest. I understood more clearly than ever why mitigation work matters, not because it excuses harm, but because it demands that we see the full picture of a person’s life before passing judgment. In this line of work, we walk a narrow road between justice and mercy, and our clients are not defined by the worst moment of their lives. They are whole human beings, and in that truth, there is both pain and possibility.
