Reflection On Just Mercy

Growing up in a mainly white middle class community my entire life, I rarely got to see society from a wider perspective. Throughout my public school career, I had a couple of classmates from diverse background but there really was not many or any real variety. Despite that though, the lives of people in different classes, races, and time periods had always fascinated me. On top of that, I loved mysteries and crime shows, so once I got to high school I took various world culture classes as well as Forensics and Contemporary Legal Issues.

I had thought that my young unbreakable curiosity would be enough to find a way to discover everything there was to know about the topics that peeked my interest, though I was proved incorrect. My dilemma

In school, I studied practically everything that impacted the African American population, good or bad, from the abolition of slavery to the civil rights era. But after that, my history class curriculum ended. It was like the class wanted us to think that the civil right era had closure and that it had solved all of the populations problems, when in reality, African Americans still face unethical persecution today. There was a gray space in my education where so much was left unanswered.

Going into reading Just Mercy, I was prepared to read a book in which I would most likely dislike it, not for its writing, but because I knew just by the back cover page that unlawful actions would occur that would anger me. What I was not prepared for, was to the extent I would be angered by the

Even though the story mainly takes place decades before now, the fact that Walter’s story happened in a time where I never realized how bad African Americans were treated even after so many societal victories a few decades before that, reminds me that it may still be possible despite current changes. My crime classes taught me that evidence can be faulty, even witnesses testimonies, which can result in innocent people going to jail. This book backed up that lessen and showed that even in ridiculous cases an innocent person can be victimized just based on what a jury decides. It is easy to believe that the justice system is just fine and trust it if you do not know the truth, but even Walter had faith in the system that inevitably put him on death row,