The book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson evaluates the themes of justice, equality, and the issues within the criminal justice system. The book really dives into the fairness and the issues the individuals placed on death row, or facing life, deal with. This book truly shows how power dynamics, racial biases, and economic issues influence legal outcomes and follows Bryan in his quest to find fairness, equality, and justice in a corrupt system. Throughout this book, we follow a young black lawyer named Bryan Stevenson on his mission to help death row inmates. After law school, he moved to Alabama to start a death row non-profit called the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). He found this to not only help those on death row, but to help those who …show more content…
Despite his alibis and there was no physical evidence linking him to the case, he was convicted based off the testimony of Ralph Myers’s, who was currently imprisoned for robbery. He was on death row for 6 years before Bryan picked up the case. He met with many people who had believed Walter was innocent, and went over every piece of evidence which yet showed McMillian to be innocent. Many times throughout the course of searching for Walter's freedom, Bryan was warned, or threatened to stay away. It has gotten as far as bomb threats to his work.Ralph Myers’s would eventually come forward and admit his initial testimony was false and he had made everything up. So after many court hearings and failed trials, the case was taken to Alabama Supreme Court where Johnny was found innocent and his charges were dropped. Other cases Bryan had were just as traumatic as this one. Such as the case of a fourteen- year old boy named Charlie. He was sentenced to life without parole for killing his mother's abusive boyfriend. Despite Charlie being so young, he was tried as an adult and given life. Stevenson's fight for Charlie shows how we need to have a more compassionate approach to justice. This book
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
In the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a memoir where Bryan Stevenson guides us through his life as a lawyer for those who are death sentence. From 1983 when he was student at Harvard Law to 2013 where he lost a client he was defending for years , he takes us through several cases he has taken over the years and showed how they personally impacted him as not only as a lawyer , but a person as well.
In the excerpt reading from Locking Up Our Own, the author, James Forman Jr., spoke about the issue our society has faced recently with mass incarceration of African-American males. He also talks about his own past experience with the situation through being a public defender. He had previously worked under Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and decided that he wanted to defend low-income individuals who were charged with crimes in Washington, D.C. Forman detailed a few specific cases he had working with young, African-American males and retold his reactions to some of the convictions.
The novel, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson is an incredible read. In this book, Mr.
In Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, he uses methods of gothic language, partial language, biased facts and repetition to portray prisons in a negative light, allowing him to subtly persuade the reader, he often times does this through the negativity of prisons focusing on: prison guards, the structures themselves and the mistreatment of the prisoners. This method is a vital form in storytelling, but often times detracts from the overall message of Just Mercy and the injustices of the prison system.
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
Capital punishment and bias in sentencing is among many issue minorities faced for many years in the better part of the nineteen hundreds. Now it continues to spill into the twenty first century due to the erroneous issues our criminal justice system has caused many people to suffer. In the book Just Mercy authored by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson explains many cases of injustice. Stevenson goes into details of numerous cases of wrongfully accused people, thirteen and fourteen year olds being sentenced to death and sentences of life without parole for children. These issues Stevenson raises bring to question whether the death penalty is as viable as it should be. It brings to light the many issues our criminal justice system has today. There
Just Mercy touches on the idea of racial inequality and profiling the modern day american justice system by bringing us to a variety of cases that demonstrated this injustice. Bryan Stevenson also referenced an experience he personally had where he was being targeted by authorities for no good reason other than racial profiling. This theme of racial injustice and profiling connects Just Mercy to To Kill a Mockingbird. This idea is brought upon in To Kill a Mockingbird with Tom Robinson’s court case in which he is accused of committing rape. Many people judged Atticus Finch for defending Tom, not because of the allegations of committing rape, but rather the fact that he was defending a black man. Further proving the point that the contents in To Kill a Mockingbird can still be valuable today.
In Bryan Stevenson book Just Mercy, Stevenson exposed many things about the justice system. He explain to his audience that the justice system are treated minorities wrong. Bryan Stevenson influences on the readers’ thoughts about the justice system. He makes the readers question if we are being treated right. Stevenson does this by using logos effectively by providing the readers with the cases he dealt with. There are four cases that stuck out to readers are the Walter, Charlie, Horace, and Joe.
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
..."Justice Is Not Served with the Death Penalty." The Death Penalty. Ed. Jenny Cromie and Lynn M. Zott. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "The Road to Justice and Peace." blog.nj.com 2 Feb. 2009. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
In Harper Lee’s fictional novel To Kill A Mockingbird, an African American field hand is falsely accused of raping a white women. Set in the 1930’s in the small town of Monroeville Alabama, Addicus Finch an even handed white attorney tries to shed a light on the injustice of this innocent black man’s conviction. Atticus feels that the justice system should be color blind, and he defends Tom as an innocent man, not a man of color.
In the graphic novel Race to Incarcerate the mass incarceration of black men is refereed to as a new form of slavery. The system is set up to drag minority men into imprisonment. Once blacks are arrested they are more likely than white counterparts to be charged, convicted and serve harsher prison sentences. Sentences that go on their permanent record, that is if they are released. In numerous cases black defendants are unable to higher a lawyer, and given a Public defender, who tend to push plea deals onto clients. Plea deals can be pushed even if the person is truly innocent, as a way to end the case. And the very few cases that make it to trial with jury’s have a disproportionate number of all white jury’s and black defendants. Ultimately, these factors increase the likelihood of imprisonment for African Americans. But perhaps the most significant factor in the astonishing rates of blacks behind bars is the ongoing and longest war in American
According to statistics since the early 1970’s there has been a 500% increase in the number of people being incarcerated with an average total of 2.2 million people behind bars. The increase in rate of people being incarcerated has also brought about an increasingly disproportionate racial composition. The jails and prisons have a high rate of African Americans incarcerated with an average of 900,000 out of the 2.2 million incarcerateed being African American. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1 in 6 African American males has been incarcerated at some point in time as of the year 2001. In theory if this trend continues it is estimated that about 1 in 3 black males being born can be expected to spend time in prison and some point in his life. One in nine African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 are currently incarcerated. Although the rate of imprisonment for women is considerably lower than males African American women are incarc...
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