Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer who graduated from Harvard law school, which is one of the best school in this major if not the best in the world. He is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). He was born in November 14, 1959, in Milton, Delaware. According to equal justice initiative website, Bryan is interested in children in adult prison, death penalty, prisons, sentencing reform, race and poverty. He has a book, Just Mercy, that is talking about justice in the United state of America. Bryan got famous because pro pone work and has a lot of stories. In one of his most famous cases, He helped innocent a man on death row Walter McMillian. He was found guilty of killing 18-year-old Ronda Morrison, who was found under a clothing rack
at a dry cleaner in Monroeville, Ala., in 1986. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, while six witnesses, who were black, testified that he was at a church at the time of the crime. McMillian was found guilty and held on death row for six years. Bryan has an organization that called the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). EJI is private, nonprofit organization that provides legal help to people who cannot afford lawyers. According to their website they say about who they work with “We litigate on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment”. Bryan to some people is hero because the work he did to the people who need to be helped. He does not take these cases to rich, but he just want to help people.
The non-fiction text I decided to read that led me to my topic of Capital Punishment is titled, Just Mercy by attorney-at-law Bryan Stevenson, and it provides stories of a lawyer who wanted to bring justice to the court system by helping men, women and children, sentenced to death row by helping them obtain their freedom. The book first begins with a back story of the Mr. Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson is a graduate from the law soon of Harvard. His interest in Death Row cases grew when the law office he was interning for sent him to talk to a man, Walter McMillian, who was sentenced to death row after wrongfully being accused of a murder he did not commit and was framed for. Mr. Bryan helped him, and Walter was eventually released about six years in death row. In the book, Mr. Stevenson goes through many cases that he has taken upon, some failures and some great success. The people Bryan helped were mostly minorities who faced racial bias at the time of their trial. He represented not only men, but also children. There’s stories about how a woman whose baby was born dead was sentenced to prison
Bryan Stevenson first got into death penalty cases to gain experience for school. The kids at Harvard advanced degrees and obtained great amount of experience. Therefore, Bryan felt pressure to catch up, but he wanted to “something with the poor, America’s history of racial inequality, and the struggle to be equitable and
Stevenson discusses his journey as an attorney for the condemned on death row. He speaks of
Stevenson wants the reader to feel enraged on behalf of the people about whom he wrote. Using that anger, he wants the readers to be motivated to change the outcome so similar bad situations are less likely to happen again. For example, Stevenson writes about Charlie, a 14-year-old boy who was sentenced as an adult and taken to the adult county jail (120). There, Charlie was sexually abused and raped by multiple people in three days (123, 124). Stevenson tells this story knowing that people will get angry on behalf of Charlie. Since Charlie was a child people become more upset because in society children are precious and should not have their innocence taken from them. Stevenson wants the anger to motivate people to make changes to the system so there will be no more
African-Americans have significantly contributed to the criminal justice field in the United States through presenting law cases in the Supreme Court and championing for civil rights. One of the African-American names mentioned among those that have had a significant contribution to this field is Thurgood “Thoroughgood” Marshall, who became the first African-American justice to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the pioneer of civil rights. With regard to Thurgood Marshall, the purpose of this paper is to explore his contributions to civil rights in the field of criminal justice. To do so, this paper will examine Marshall’s childhood and family background, education, his
Of the people whose names are mentioned in history, some men like Thomas Edison are praised for their genius minds, while others such as Adolf Hitler are criticized for leaving a depressing legacy behind. While it is relative easy to notice the type of legacies these two men left, legacies of other men are often vague and they seem to be imbedded in gray shadows. This is how many people view the life of Malcolm X. Malcolm X during his lifetime had influenced many African Americans to step up for their rights against the injustices by the American government. One on hand, he has been criticized for his hard stances that resemble extremism, while on the other hand he has been praised him for his effort in raising the status for African Americans. The extremes in viewing his life from the modern day perspective have often come from reading his climatic speech The Ballot or the Bullet that he gave in many cities across America in 1964. When he was with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X favored Blacks to be separated from the Whites, and during this time he strongly opposed White Supremacy. This also seems quite prevalent in his speech The Ballot or the Bullet. However, one events during the last year of his life reveal that he wanted the Blacks and the Whites to coexist as peaceful Americans.
Atticus often says, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." This quote signifies the moral of, ‘not to judge a book by its cover.’ This moral commonly occurs in Just Mercy as well with all of Bryan’s personal experiences with incarcerated peoples. The people Bryan comes across are often wrongly convicted and judged due to the racial injustice and corruption in the american judicial system which ties in with the moral themes present in To Kill a
He believes that a society is evaluated by how they treat the poor, the people truly in need of help. He believes that many places in the world treat those in need very unfairly. “The opposite of poverty is not wealth… in too many places, the opposite of poverty, is justice.” Stevenson only makes this a very brief point, he again does not elaborate very much. This is one of the many times he has bounced around from topic to topic, making several points with more room for interpretation rather than
Humanity instructs us that we must behave with tolerance and respect towards all. Just Mercy exemplifies how that is not the case for many Americans. Critical Race Theory is a theory which focuses on the experiences of people who are minorities. It argues that people who are minorities in the United States are oppressed and, because of the state of being oppressed, creates fundamental disadvantages (Lecture 4.7). A study conducted for the case McCleskey v. Kemp revealed that when a black defendant killed a white victim, it increased the likelihood the black defendant would receive the death penalty (Stevenson, 2014). Looking at this fact through the lens of a critical race theorist, it illustrates how unconscious racism is ignored by our legal system. The actuality that, statistically, people of color have a higher chance of getting sentenced to death than white people is a blatant example of inequality. In Chapter 8, Stevenson discusses the case of multiple juveniles who were incarcerated and sentenced to death in prison. These juveniles who were sent to adult prisons, where juveniles are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, show an innate inequality towards minors (Stevenson, 2014). Ian Manuel, George Stinney, and Antonio Nunez were all only fourteen-years-old when they were condemned to die in prison. Although they did commit crimes, the purpose of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate young offenders. Trying juveniles in adult court represents a prejudice against age, which Stevenson sought to fight by working on appeals for Manuel and Nunez (Stevenson, 2014). His humanity shines through once again, as he combats the justice system to give the adolescents another chance at life, rather than having them die in prison. The way prisoners with mental and/or physical disabilities are treated while incarcerated is also extremely
Mack Charles Parker of Lumberton, Mississippi was born in 1936 to Liza Parker as the oldest sibling. After two years of deployment and the death of his father, he returned home to take responsibility of supporting his mother and siblings. On February 24, 1959, Parker was arrested for allegedly raping a young, pregnant, white woman, June Walters, the night before. Parker and a group of friends were out drinking and saw a broken down car on the side of the road. Parker stopped and got out of his vehicle to possibly steal the tires on the car. But after seeing Walters in the car, he turned around and left. Jimmy Walters, Junes husband, had gone to get a tow truck and left June and their daughter in the car to wait. The police suggested Parker broke into the car where he forced June and her daughter into his car and he drove to an isolated spot and raped June. Walters knew a black man had raped her but the only characteristic about Parker that matched her description was his race.
In Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy, it talks about the United States’ broken system of justice. In it, it captures an event where a 14-year-old South Central resident, Antonio, received imprisonment until death for a crime where no one was physically injured. The court ruled Antonio was a danger to society who will not be able to rehabilitate, sentencing him the be imprisoned until death, dismissing the lack of significant criminal history and his difficult background living in a lower socioeconomic area. This an example of the super predator theory in use at court. The theory states that young children who commit serious crimes are to be sentenced for life since they’re unable to become sane. Prison is not a place designed for rehabilitation,
Judge W. James O’Neill is a primary example of a just man in the 21st century. Though he was not the perfect man, O’Neill spent his days trying to make the world a better place for individuals from all walks of life, “He had friends...of all shapes and sizes… rich, poor, black, white, democrat, republican, lawyer, defendant, you name it” (Michael O’Neill). He continuously acted out of the goodness of his heart without seeking personal glory. Because of his just actions during life, his legacy of justice and kindness will continue to live on long after his
John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice holds that a rational, mutually disinterested individual in the Original Position and given the task of establishing societal rules to maximise their own happiness throughout life, is liable to choose as their principles of justice a) guaranteed fundamental liberties and b) the nullification of social and economic disparities by universal equality of opportunities, which are to be of greatest benefit to the least advantaged members of society , . Rawls’ system of societal creation has both strengths and weaknesses, but is ultimately sound.
Distributive Property or distributive justice is the economic framework of a society that asserts the rightful allocations of property among its citizens. Due to the limited amount of resources that is provided in a society, the question of proper distribution often occurs. The ideal answer is that public assets should be reasonably dispersed so that every individual receives what constitutes as a “justified share”; here is where the conflict arises. The notion of just distribution, however, is generally disagreed upon as is the case with Robert Nozick and John Rawls. These men have different takes on how property should be justly distributed. Nozick claims that any sort of patterned distribution of wealth is inequitable and that this ultimately reduces individual liberty. Rawls on the other hand, prioritizes equality over a diverse group where the distribution of assets among a community should be in the favor of the least advantaged. The immediate difference between the two is that both men have separate ideas on the legitimacy of governmental redistribution of resources; however I intend to defend Nozick’s theory by pointing out significant weaknesses in Rawls’s proposition.
Discrimination is all over the world and it's is a very serious problem in society. We judge each other daily because of their gender, ethnicity, religion, age, and the way a person behaves. Discrimination is the “unequal treatment provided to one or more parties based on a mutual accord or some other logical or illogical reason” (merriam-webster). In the modern world of the United State of America the topic of discrimination in the Justice system is debatable because there is considerable evidence confirming both individual and systemic biases. The United States has an extended history of discrimination in several aspects of life, including employment, public accommodations and education. Nowadays there are extremely biased individuals and