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Short note on criminal justice system
Injustices within US criminal justice system
Criminal justice system of US
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(INTRODUCTION)Did you ever have a love one who was innocent but still served time for no reason all because he or she was in the wrong place at the wrong time or just the main suspect of a crime because he or she fit the description a witness provided. I go to a school in West Fargo and I’m a junior haven’t really seen unjust in my life to anyone I know. But read multiple articles on unjust sentence to people and wrote multiple paragraphs on the cases I read 24 to be exact. The article included lawyers view the innocent victim view and also the witness view after the trail. (Reason)people are sent to jail over speculations and evidence that don't connect to the victim of the crime.
Wounds of the Past Battles were fought, lives were taken and wounds were made, some of which remain as an indication of victory or stay as a mark of failure. Whichever one it may be, there were different strategies that were used to try to heal injuries that occurred on the battlefield, more specifically during the Civil War. The problem was, there were more men dying of diseases than men that were falling on the battlefield. Doctors were required to have only two years of medical training, therefore medicine was not as profound back then compared to present day advancements. Three of many brave men that experienced injuries during the Civil War in the book Killer Angels by Michael Shaara were Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, John Buford, and
Morrison was robbed and shot three times in the back of the head. Morrison was a white woman and McMillan is a black man who was at the time dating a white woman. Locals were outraged to find out that their local handy man was having a relationship with a white woman named Karen. He and another man Ralph Myers were both dating the same woman and Myers is who accused McMillan and implicated him in the killing of Morrison. The south condemned interracial relationships and as law enforcement already felt great pressure to make an arrest for Morrison’s murder they and the jury found McMillan to be a great suspect.
In the book Just Mercy: A story of Justice and Redemption Bryan Stevenson details his story of his experiences as a lawyer fighting for justice. This story encompasses over twenty-five years worth of impactful cases and how policy changes, due to major Supreme Court cases, were dealt with locally. The main issue that he was dealing with was the death penalty, and how it was systematically being misused. The main focus of the book to showcase this was on the case of Walter McMillian. After the murder of Ronda Morrison, a well known white woman in the area, there was a lot of pressure exerted by the community on the sheriff to make an arrest on the case.
Bryan Stevenson’s novel Just Mercy tells of his times as a death row attorney for inmates that were unjustly and inhumanely represented in the American court system. A #1 New York Times Bestseller, the book itself tells a story of a man named Walter McMillan who was sentenced to death row in an Alabama state prison. Walter landed in prison after a woman named Ronda Morrison from his hometown Monroe Alabama was found dead at her workplace Monroe cleaners on November 1st, 1983. This telling by Stevenson highlights the injustices and systemized racism that exists in our southern court systems, and without just attorneys like Stevenson to represent these disadvantaged men and women these inhumane practices will only continue.
The book Just Mercy tells the long and sad story of what African American lawyer Bryan Stevenson had to go through in fight towards freeing Walter Mcmillian from his wrongly accused sentence. Walter Mcmillian was put in this position because of the murder of Ronda Morrison who was a white teenage girl that lived in Monroeville Alabama. There was no evidence on the crime scene and the only reason the police arrested Walter was because of a false accusation of man who wasn't even at the crime scene and the whole trial only lasted 2 days. As a result of his case, he ended up with a 30-year sentence in prison for murder but only ended up spending a total of 6 years due to his retrial that was led by his lawyer. Bryan Stevenson, his lawyer, is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization with the goal of fighting for people who have experienced any form of racial injustice or discrimination.
This year at Elon University, all first-year students were given a summer reading. The author Bryan Stevenson, a gifted attorney, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative; fights to raise awareness about the injustices in the United States legal and social systems. Just Mercy, his book magnifies his early career, where he fought for people on death row. This book talks about the injustices that happened back in the 80’s and 90’s but, these same injustices by the police are still around today, but justified by law now.
In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson tells a first person account of his years defending the people who were wrongly convicted or punished by the US justice system. At the heart of the novel is the story of Walter McMillian, a man wrongly convicted of murder and sent to death row. Throughout the novel, Stevenson presents examples of individuals who were wrongfully punished due to racism and discrimination. He shows the readers how our criminal justice system unfairly impacts members of the Black community. He also highlights the destruction and devastation this can cause.
I am 21 and for as long as I can remember I have heard many stories about innocent people being accused of and being punished for crimes they did not commit. On Monday, March 20th of this year, I met Anthony Ray Hinton and learned about his story. Arrested on suspicion of two capital murders at age 29. He was convicted and sentenced to death despite having a reliable alibi and passing a polygraph test. It was only after repeated efforts by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) team that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction based on his attorney’s deficient representation and he was eventually exonerated after 30 years in solitary confinement on Friday, April 3rd, 2015.
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).
Wrongful convictions are a problem that most government officials won’t admit. The United States and other countries such as Australia have been susceptible to these miscarriages of justice. This can arise from a snowball effect of scenarios such as witness misidentification, perjured testimonies, coercive methods of interrogation, prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective counsel. These are some of the reasons that can potentially lead innocent people to be convicted of crimes they did not commit. The thousands of exonerations in the United States has caused concern for other nations to reevaluate their criminal justice system.
1/5/23 Racial injustice has been a prominent issue in the American criminal justice system for centuries prior to Bryan Stevenson's entry in the criminal justice world. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, goes in depth on specific unjust criminal charges based on racial assumptions. Bryan Stevenson does work on ending these suffrages and freeing clients who have been unfairly accused on death row. Throughout the book, Stevenson addresses systemic racism through examples of jury selection, several case studies of unfairly incarcerated individuals, and police brutality which his advocacy for inmates overcomes by creating racial justice within the criminal justice system.
Yet, according to government statistics, African Americans and whites have similar rates of illicit drug use and dealing” (Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander, 2010). Therefore, the war on drugs was a systematic effort to target and arrest African Americans on the pretense of suspicion of drugs, which accounted for a higher incarceration rate among communities of color creating a racial divide. With this intention, the criminal justice system is a racial based institution that marginalizes and controls the fate of African Americans. In the book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson represented Walter McMillian who was wrongfully convicted of murder and put on death row without legal and fair representation states, “We’ve institutionalized policies that reduce people to their worst acts and permanently label them criminal, murderer, rapist, thief, drug dealer, sex offender, felon- identities they cannot change regardless of the circumstances of their crimes or any improvements they might make in their lives” (Stevenson, 2015). With this in mind, Walter McMillian’s case is one of the many racial segregated cases that was denied effective representation and prosecutorial misconduct because he was black, which has subjected many African Americans to unfair treatment by the criminal system leaving
“I thought killing those fools would make me feel good, but it really didn't make me feel anything. I just knew that I could kill somebody, and if I had to, I could do it again”(Caine from Menace ll Society). This quote is a prime example of how physical and mental conflict shapes a person mentally by making them tougher but weaker at the same time. In the book Dear Justice by Nic Stone, conflicts because it makes them stronger, but also damages people’s emotions, and shows the lack of support in his life. Physical conflict has a significant impact on how tough and mentally and physically strong you are.
Ashley Tinajero Mrs. Trull AP Language and Composition 27 December 2022 Just Mercy The book Just Mercy tackles many different issues throughout the novel however its most notable one being the political injustice that consistently damages people of color and to be specific Americans the author Bryan Stevenson translates this issue through his thoughtful rhetoric and eliciting a sense of hope and sadness within the reader to emphasize the issue of the flawed justice system targeting African Americans and imposing rules that are purposefully set to ensure African Americans do not succeed in trials of any sort. In the novel the main case is that of Walter Mcmillion who is wrongly accused by a white man of murdering a young girl with the blatant
