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Summary Of Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

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Currently, the United States holds 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners (eji.org), which comes out to around 2.3 million inmates. 10,000 of these prisoners are children housed in adult facilities. 20,000 of these prisoners are wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit (huff post). 356,000 are seriously mentally ill (treatment advocacy). One million of these convicts are African Americans (NAACP). These numbers are staggering, and difficult to fully comprehend. Bryan Stevenson is one of the few leaders who has dedicated his life to defending vulnerable populations in heinous legal situations. In Just Mercy, Stevenson recounts his experience on his most influential case defending Walter McMillian. Leadership is a learned skill. Bryan Stevenson’s childhood environment naturally educated Stevenson on the traits required to effectively lead. Bryan Stevenson was born on the tail end of 1950. His home was the small town of Milton, Delaware. Although Delaware was in the North, Stevenson experienced the segregation and racial bias of the South during his childhood. Stevenson’s continuing life experience with racial bias, combined with …show more content…

He understands that each case he works on makes an impact on personal lives and families of offenders. Furthermore, he understands the impact each case makes towards historical discrimination, inequality, and unfair treatment of those in poverty or vulnerable situations. Aside from his fight for justice, he also passionately fought memorializing lynching victims. He tallied all known lynching victims at over 4,000 and created a six-acre memorial for the victims. The lynching memorial in Montgomery is the first memorial of its kind. The incorporation of historical inequality into modern justice is an emphasis Stevenson focuses on to pursue guidance of fellow social justice

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In the memoir Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, closeness contributes to Stevenson’s success as a lawyer by allowing his clients to form trust, hope, and understanding in the toughest of times. In his autobiography, Steveson relied heavily on the element of trust in order to succeed in his career. Many of Stevenson’s clients, like Walter McMillian, trusted him from the beginning, while others took a while to open up, like Charlie and Ralph Myers. Even after McMillian was pronounced guilty several times, McMillian still put his trust in Stevenson, he never let go of that joyfulness that kept him going.

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“There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy (Stevenson 109) .” This bold statement is one of many as Bryan Stevenson sets the tone for his renowned award winning novel Just Mercy. As a young lawyer from Georgia, built the foundation for his company, SPDC (Southern Prisoners Defense Committee) to help convicts that are on death row or in need a second chance. Bryan Stevenson, a young lawyer from Georgia who fought for justice on the behalf of inmates on death row, showed tremendous intelligence in becoming a successful lawyer, demanding for not backing down in moments of refusal, and was an overall advocate

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Racism means hate towards another race and injustice mean unfair treatment, according to learner 's dictionary. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, an African american lawyer, was helping people get justice for the colored community. Another book similar to Just Mercy is, To Kill a Mockingbird, which made in 1960 was written by Harper Lee. Harper Lee addressed many issues about racial injustice too. Just Mercy was written in 2014,

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He now understands that the idea of justice is not set in stone and can differentiate from person to person. On page 24, Stevenson states, “interracial relationships were legally prohibited by ‘anti-miscegenation statues’ (the word miscegenation came into use in the 1860s, when supporters of slavery coined the term to promote their fear of interracial sex and marriage and the race missing that would result if slavery was abolished). For over a century, many Southern law Enforcment officials saw it as part of their duty to punish black men who had been intimate with ‘their’ white women.” Both sides, supporting and opposing interracial marriage, believed that they were fighting for justice. This shows how the definition of justice can vary due to a difference in morals and

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African American now are nearly 1 million of 2.3 million incarcerated population. They are being incarcerated six times the rate of whites. Together, with Hispanics, they are covering prisons by 58 percent as of

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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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Draft Paper In the documentary film, “Kids for Cash”, Robert May shows his audience the horrors of the Luzerne County justice system. He uses imagery, appeals to logos and pathos, personal experiences and anecdotes to support his claim. Robert May made this documentary to show the world that the government needs to make sure that even minors have a fair trial and justice before being incarcerated.

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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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Stevenson concludes, “the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” While reading chapters one through four, I was able to conclude that Stevenson meant, when there is no justice, most people will live in poverty, despair, and fear. Despair, Walter McMillian faced despair while he was in prison, because while he was in prison, the prisoners kept talking about how the electric chair failed to kill the last man that was on death row. Even if Walter was found innocent, he would of lived in poverty because his reputation was ruined and there was a possibility he would of been lynched by the white people who heard about what he has done. Stevenson felt the fear of death, when an officer was pointing his gun at Stevenson.

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Stevenson used pathos when he gives the detailed visit that he had with Henry. To get his point across the author emotionally convinces his readers by introducing Henry. While Stevenson was at the prison talking to Henry in private visitation room a very angry guard walks in and start to handcuff Henry. Full of rage the guard notifies Stevenson that he had taken two extra hours instead of one hour that he has initially requested. Stevenson can only stand helplessly and watch how “[t]he guard was shoving him toward the door roughly.

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“For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness” (Stevenson 288). Stevenson realized that his clients struggle with racism, mental illness, and poverty and that they are not getting good legal support because of these

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In the eyes of Martin Luther King Jr., Justice within a society is achieved through the implementation of just laws. Furthermore, “just laws are regulations that have been created by man that follow the laws of God for man” (“Clergymen’s Letter”). Any law that does not correspond with the ideals of God and morality are considered to be unjust or a form of injustice. King identifies that injustice is clearly evident within the justice system. This injustice can truly be seen through the misconduct imposed toward the African American community.

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People of all different races and ethnicities are locked behind bars because they have been convicted of committing a crime and they are paying for the consequences. When looking at the racial composition of a prison in the United States, it does not mimic the population. This is because some races and ethnicities are over represented in the correctional system in the U.S. (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2018). According Walker et al. (2018), African-Americans/Blacks make up less than fifteen percent of the U.S. population, while this race has around thirty-seven percent of the population in the correctional system today.

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The prison population rate in the U.S. is 716 per 100,000 people. Unless someone has spent time researching this rate for different countries, the statistic probably doesn’t make much sense. Of the 222 countries and territories listed in the Tenth Edition of the ICPS World Prison Population List, 54% had rates below 150 per 100,000, and the world’s average was 144 per 100,000

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