Stevenson's Experiences In All Throughout Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

There are so many different kinds of books with different themes, genres, and stories to tell that trying to find one that can interest a lot of people at once is almost impossible. A good author is able to take a chunk of people with different likes, dislikes, backgrounds, and political views and make them unite together to believe what the author is trying to say. Bryan Stevenson is a good author. Stevenson wrote about his experiences as a lawyer who is primarily faced with criminals looking to appeal their sentence to shorter ones or to prove their innocence in his book called Just Mercy. Just Mercy is composed of different people’s experiences as convicted felons, many on death row, and Stevenson introduces problems that the United States

Stevenson does this many times, especially when he writes about Walter McMillian’s case. Walter was one of Stevenson’s clients, who was wrongfully accused of murder and put on death row. Stevenson uses logos to prove Walter’s innocence by telling Walter’s story as if he were actually there because he is able to give actual times and dates of events that happened. For example, Stevenson writes on account of Walter’s arrest, “On June 7, 1987, Sheriff Tate led an army of more than a dozen officers to a back-country road that they knew Walter would use on his return home from work. Officers stopped Walter’s truck and drew their weapons, then forced Walter from his vehicle and surrounded him” (47). A couple pages later he writes about Walter’s alibi, “By 9:30 in the morning, the two men had dismantled Walter’s truck, completely removing the transmission. By 11 o’clock relatives had arrived and had started frying fish and other foods to sell...the Morrison murder took place around 10:15 A.M., eleven miles or so from McMillian’s home, at the same time that a dozen church members were at Walter’s home selling food while Walter and Jimmy worked on his truck” (51). In these examples, Stevenson effectively uses logos by stating facts to support his argument which are

As Walter’s lawyer, Stevenson has access to these documents and it appeals to readers’ logic because by quoting these official documents one can see that Stevenson isn’t lying. Stevenson quotes Ralph Myers in Walter’s Rule 32 hearing which states, “anything that was told about McMillian was a lie...As far as I know, McMillian didn’t have anything to do with his because on the day, on the day they say this happened, I didn’t even see McMillian. And that’s exactly what I told lots of people” (171). Then if one looks in the notes section of the back of the book, one can find where he has cited his source as being the testimony of Ralph Myers during the court case of McMillian v. Alabama. The fact that Stevenson has a notes section in the back of his book at all shows he quoted official public information which effectively appeals to readers’