Just Mercy, a memoir by Bryan Stevenson, is a powerful expose of the flaws in the American justice system. Stevenson creates a tapestry of stories via his own story that emphasizes the structural injustices that support racial injustice. This essay will examine how Stevenson organizes ideas and events in Just Mercy to support his thesis on structural injustices in the legal system, and will show how his use of narrative structure emphasizes the need for reform. The story of Stevenson starts with his own experiences as a young attorney trying to liberate Walter McMillian, a man on death row who had been wrongfully condemned. Stevenson deftly interweaves vignettes from other cases into his account of Walter's case to highlight the systemic problems …show more content…
Stevenson, for instance, contrasts Walter's trial and subsequent conviction on death row with the later discovery of fresh evidence demonstrating his innocence. This story is a potent critique of the legal system that highlights the terrible effects of structural inequality. In addition to his use of chronological storytelling, Stevenson also uses purposeful pauses and omissions to draw attention to the importance of particular incidents. To help the reader concentrate on the experiences of the people he is attempting to assist, Stevenson, for example, gives a brief and subdued description of his own experiences as a lawyer. This omission draws attention to Stevenson's modest strength and commitment as a lawyer, drawing a contrast between his humble demeanor and the lofty stories that individuals in positions of authority frequently tell. Furthermore, Stevenson's use of repetition and refrain is another effective organizational structure. He repeatedly returns to themes such as racial bias, poverty, and lack of access to quality legal representation, driving home the idea that these issues are not isolated incidents but rather systemic
The purpose of this essay is to compare three very similar cases, the Scottsboro Trials, Brown v. Mississippi, and the fictional trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; and to prove why the defendant of the third trial never had a chance. Each took place in the rural South in the 1920’s and 30’s and involved the unfair conviction of young black males by all-white juries pressured by the threat of mob violence. Each lacked the evidence sufficient for conviction, most especially for the death penalty. Last, heroes emerged from each trial and made small but solid steps towards equal justice for all.
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
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.
Bryan Stevenson gives a talk about social inequality as it relates to poverty and race. He is a lawyer, as well as the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that works to fight inequalities in the criminal justice system. He has represented many clients, which he refers to as victims, facing life sentences or are awaiting their death sentence. He has represented many large cases and met many large figureheads of civil rights, such as Rosa Parks.
As a poor black man, Stevenson encountered his share of mistreatment. Even once he became educated and was a practicing lawyer, the police were still preoccupied with the color of his skin. In Just Mercy, Stevenson recounts an incident that he had one
There were many innocent people that were punished for crimes they did not commit because they could not afford adequate counsel. Being poor and black can become a life or death situation. I believe that both books makes very valid points when it comes to mass incarceration and racial biases. The injustices have become so engrained in the system that many are blind to what is actually going on. More and more black men are becoming incarcerated and this is not because more blacks commit crime, so why then are so many being institutionalized? I believe it is to try to regain that power that was lost from the abolishment of slavery. The New Jim Crow highlighted the creation of the new racial caste system by revealing that the conception of this permanent segregation was implanted well before the Civil Rights Movement ended (Stevenson, 2014). While Just Mercy pinpoints the aftermath of a preconceived idea. It showed that America operated off of fear and anger, rather than truth and
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
Henry Louis Gates once said: “I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.” Indeed in this day and age, comments like these are not generally uncommon, especially with race relations becoming a nationwide priority after recent cases like Ferguson. But how much truth is there really behind these sweeping generalizations? By investigating this question further through the lense of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, it becomes apparent how unjust America’s justice system really is through the illumination of biased racial representation and the prosecution of juveniles in adult criminal court.
The African American man by the name of Tom Robinson finds himself in a case against, Mayella Ewell, who identifies as a Caucasian woman, from the perspective of a skilled lawyer appointed to the case, Atticus, finds the case biased from the start. During the Great Depression, any court session that contained a person of color against a Caucasian would always contain the “white” individual winning the case. The cause of the biased outcome comes from when the lawyer of the African American does not give the effort to defend or the jury goes against the person of color simply because they are colored, this shows the effect of racism on anyone’s identity in the courtroom during the great depression. Biased racism limits the arguments a lawyer can appeal to the jury about defending the defendant to win the case, but can simultaneously limit the amount of voice the jury hears from both sides.
Just Mercy documents the incredible and heart wrenching experiences of Equal Justice Initiative founder and attorney extraordinaire, Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson’s niche is a unique and unexpected focus for a lawyer. He works with people that society often wrongfully characterizes as “criminals” that are usually either on death row or condemned to life in prison. Before seeing a segment of Opera’s interview with Stevenson, and reading this book, I couldn’t understand what typically motivates a lawyer to want to protect the rights of criminals and the un-just. In fact, one of Stevenson’s early mentors, Steve Bright, explained the, “‘opportunity’ isn’t necessarily the first word people think of when they think about doing work with us [Southern Prisoners Defense Committee],” because, “they live[ed] kind of simply, and the hours are pretty insane,” (Stevenson 2014, 6). However, a young Stevenson was undeterred by this claim, and went on to work some incredible cases, and exonerate many innocent and suffering individuals.
Bryan Stevenson has the same focus in the nonfiction memoir Just Mercy. He uses the pages of his memoir to tell the story of an innocent black man, in Monroeville Alabama who is falsely convicted of killing an 18-year-old, white, female, college student. In this story the year is 1980, but the racial divide still runs deep.
In the book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, shame and repentance are necessary for rectifying the wrong done to people whether that wrong occurs intentionally or not within our neighborhood communities, and church communities and our families. With regards to Stevenson’s remarks about this theme I agree with him and identify with the moral consequences and Christian applications of the philosophy. Personal experience varies according to environment, morality, and behavioral choices and plays a crucial role in an individual’s interpretation of Stevenson’s premise. Everyone opinions may differ from mine, even if they agree with the statement. I’m intertest here in the many ways that individuals and communities alike interpret
... the Criminal Justice system. The author offers the reader a front row seat to the unfairness and unreliability of the CJ system. Grisham is not a fair writer himself and is biased in his writing throughout the entire novel. It is evident to the reader by the end of the novel that the prosecution in the case went to every extreme possible to put Fritz and Williamson in prison for a crime they did not commit. From the reader’s perspective, we knew from the beginning that Fritz and Williamson, no matter how much negative behavior they engaged in, were not the criminals and that there was a high likelihood of Gore being the offender. Nevertheless, Grisham takes us on a wild, nail-biting edge-of-your-seat ride through the Criminal Justice system in this book that leads us through an unfair trial and a slew of biased opinions, lies and deceptions and unjust procedures.