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Brief Summary Of The Book 'Just Mercy' By Bryan Stevenson

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Paola Moreno Ms. Stack ELA 10 Eth Stu May 14, 2024 Just Mercy Final Essay The book Just Mercy is an autobiography written by Bryan Stevenson. Just Mercy is about a young lawyer who helps people in need or wrongly convicted. After reading this book, there were some problems in the judicial system that stood out to me. Some of the examples of unfair treatment described in Just Mercy are juveniles charged as adults, trauma not acknowledged, and also mental health/disabilities being ignored. Because of this, there were consequences. This treatment was unfair because it was cruel and unequal within the justice system. One of the unfair treatments in the judicial system was juveniles getting charged as adults. Juveniles would get life in prison even for homicides. Evan …show more content…

This explains how juveniles are not safe being sent to adult prisons and getting life in prison. This treatment caused trauma and confusion to the juveniles. Another reason prisoners are treated unfairly by our judicial system is that trauma is either neglected or taken advantage of. For instance, in Just Mercy we are told about a girl named Trina Garnett who was abused her whole life and traumatized about it. She was sentenced to life in prison for something she didn't mean to do and was once again abused there by an officer. For instance, Stevenson discusses “Not long after she arrived at Muncy, a male correctional officer pulled her into a secluded area and raped her. The crime was discovered.the correctional officer was fired but not criminally prosecuted.”(127). In other words, Trina was taken advantage of and was afraid to speak up because she was traumatized. This treatment causes Trina multiplesclerosis, intellectual disability, and mental illness related to trauma. Lastly, mental health and disabilities are another problem in the judicial system. Poor people suffering from serious mental health

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Bryan Stevenson wrote the book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, in his novel he discusses multiple cases that influenced him into creating what we now know as The Equal Justice Initiative it is a group that has helped create a void in unfair sentencing. Bryan was born in Delaware in 1959, he grew up in a poor neighborhood where he witnessed a division in both social and economic class. The division of classes lead to the start of Stevenson’s journey to inform and make members of the community aware of injustices in our country. There are multiple career paths that he could have chosen that benefited his desire to bring about awareness.

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Dyaan Sharafat Meltreger English I 16 April 2024 Reforging Justice Through “Just Mercy”, the idea of justice has been the main focus of the government's way of intending to solve misbehavior and bring back balance in the community. However, the concern of what justice requires specifically for those who have committed crimes, stays complicated as well as even. In Bryan Stevenson's story, "Just Mercy," we look into this by analyzing our criminal justice system and its effectiveness in providing justice and equality to those impacted by it. Stevenson's point of view convinces us to face the system's injustices and think about the reformation of the faulty justice system, which requires the development of a much fairer system.

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Mary Kwentus Mr. Singleterry ENGL 2250 22 May 2023 Social Unjustness In Bryan Stevenson’s novel Just Mercy Stevenson gives his first-person accounts of the social justice system in America and marginalized Americans who are unfairly punished. The novel retells the cases of Stevenson. Stevenson fights to end the justice system’s unjustness and racial discrimination. The novel follows Stevenson as he and his company the Equal Justice Initiative work to help prisoners on death row and give them the legal representation they deserve.

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Just mercy is a book of human experiences, and one of those experiences is injustice. Everyone has experienced injustice in their life in one way or another. However, the experiences that most people have had with injustice were something small. But that is not the case for Walter McMillan in just mercy.

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Opening up a firm is no easy task and this shows how dedicated Stevenson is to his work. It is also a nonprofit organization which shows how much he cares about the people on death row. In conclusion, Stevenson shows credibility in Just Mercy with the use of

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Bryan Stevenson knew the perils of injustice and inequality just as well as his clients on death row. He grew up in a poor, racially segregated area in Delaware and his great-grandparents had been slaves. While he was a law student, he had interned working for clients on death row. He realized that some people were treated unfairly in the judicial system and created the Equal Justice Institute where he began to take on prisoners sentenced to death as clients since many death row prisoners had no legal representation of any kind. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson focuses on some of these true stories of injustice, mainly the case of his client, Walter McMillian.

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Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy exposes several ethical failures that permeate the criminal justice system, reflecting a profound disregard for human dignity and justice. Firstly, the book highlights the systemic racism that unjustly targets minorities (Stevenson, 2014). The disproportionate incarceration of African Americans, despite constituting a small percentage of the population, is a testament to the biased application of laws and policies. The pervasive racial profiling, leading to discriminatory arrests and excessive bail amounts, further perpetuates this injustice. Secondly, Stevenson highlights indigent defendants' lack of adequate legal representation (Stevenson, 2014).

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Prisons are meant to detain those that are deemed unjust by society, based on legislation enacted by all in order to maintain order. Due to this, the average person regards prisoners as dangerous people unfit to live freely amongst others. This stereotyping of prisoners makes frequent appearances in Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, a title that recounts his journey as a lawyer over the past few decades. A Harvard Law School graduate, he finds himself intrigued with defending those wrongly facing the strictest punishments allowed: prison for life or even the death sentence. Initially at the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, Stevenson eventually manages to move to Montgomery where he establishes the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), in an attempt

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Mercy, a concept describing compassion or forgiveness towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. As a humanitarian, future world leader and citizen of America I’d like to think that the world I live in is a forgiving place where everyone gets a second chance. Unfortunately, in the court of law, this is not always true. By reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson I found that it is very hard to acquire justice and redemption to many civilians who have been incarcerated. This book explores various stories of injustices in the judicial system by incorporating people from different racial groups, socioeconomic background, mental disabilities and more.

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In the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, he talks about how some people do not get fair treatment in the legal system, especially if they can not afford good lawyers. I think the book is really important because it shows how the justice system can be unfair. I am going to talk about two big problems: first, how some people do not get good legal help because they can not pay for it, and second, how young people, especially those who are struggling, are treated unfairly in court. We will look at examples from the book, like Johnnie D., Trina Garnett, Charlie, and Antonio Nunez, to see why these are big problems and what we can do about them. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson shows how the legal system in America often treats people unfairly, especially

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In Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, he writes to illustrate the injustices of the judicial system to its readers. To do so, Stevenson utilizes multiple writing styles that provide variety and helps keep the reader engaged in the topic. Such methods of his include the use of anecdotes from his personal experiences, statistics, and specific facts that apply to cases Stevenson had worked on as well as specific facts that pertain to particular states. The most prominent writing tool that Stevenson included in Just Mercy is the incorporation of anecdotes from cases that he himself had worked on as a nonprofit lawyer defending those who were unrightfully sentenced to die in prison.

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New York, Spiegel Grau, 2014. The book Just Mercy is a book that covers the stories of many criminals and ex-criminals of varying ages, but Chapter Eight, “All God’s Children” focuses specifically on people convicted while under the age of eighteen. The first person that Stevenson focuses on is Trina Garnett, who was sentenced to life without parole at the age of sixteen, for setting an unintentional

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There are many victims of unfortunate circumstances in the world today, yet some of these results could have been easily avoided. In the novel, Just Mercy, the author Bryan Stevenson addresses many cases in which children under the age of 18 are incarcerated within the adult criminal justice system. By treating children as adults in the criminal justice system their innocence and undeveloped person, become criminalized. These children become dehumanized and only viewed as full-fledged criminals and as a result society offers no chance sympathy towards them. Stevenson argues that children tried as adults have become damaged and traumatized by this system of injustice.

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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. By Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Pp. 368.

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