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Summary Of Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

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Certain books can help people understand and reflect on important global issues. This book does exactly that. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a compelling story that addresses significant problems like racial discrimination/bias, socio-economic inequality, and gender roles/inequality. Through the lens of the power of the American justice and court system, Stevenson exposes the biases and injustices that affect vulnerable communities, in this case, black communities, that are viewed as unimportant and treated horribly, through short stories, and powerful dialogue. Stevenson can’t seem to emphasize hard enough how people of color struggle for justice and fairness, by including many short stories about how diverse characters face adversities, …show more content…

His case was sadly based on unreliable witnesses and racial bias, and was surprisingly flawed, as the jury simply disregarded strong evidence, and even the fact that the main witness, Ralph Myers, who was a white man, had a criminal record but had been persuaded by the police through intimidation and force to frame Walter. Stevenson further expressed his disappointment with the justice system by saying to the judge, “It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man of murder and send him to death row for something he didn’t do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.” (227, Stevenson). The police and the legal system’s willingness to manipulate evidence and witnesses to claim an innocent man guilty of a criminal offense highlights the dark side of racial injustice, as the white jury turned a blind eye to the obvious lies in the witness’s story, choosing to instead focus on McMillian's race and alleged …show more content…

He desperately pleaded with Bryan Stevenson to help him get out of the mess, crying, “I don’t have a volunteer lawyer, Mr. Stevenson. I don’t have anyone to help. My volunteer lawyer said he couldn’t do any more to help me, over a year ago. I need your help.” (82, Stevenson). Richardson’s case was complicated because of his lack of resources to hire a good lawyer, leading to a trial that didn’t consider his mental health and background. This example proves how socio-economic status can determine the defense a convict gets, leading to unfair trials and unjust prison sentences for the poor. This inability to afford a proper lawyer creates a cycle of poverty and imprisonment, where unjustly treated “convicts” are stuck in a system that doesn’t provide equal opportunities for justice. The inequality portrayed throughout the case of Herbert Richardson proves that people from poor backgrounds are more likely to be convicted and get harsher sentences. Just Mercy also illustrates how racial and socio-economic issues cross and work hand-in-hand to create a very flawed justice

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Throughout this captivating memoir, Stevenson shares a few of the many cases he was involved with and witnessed. His main goal in the begging was to create a nonprofit business where people could get lawyers for no charge. This business reached out mostly to the black community. When inmates were desperate

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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’

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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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After years, Myers began to feel guilty about his falsified statements during the trial and knew that Stevenson was someone that he could trust, as Myers had known him to be a good, honest man. Myers believed that telling Stevenson the truth would allow McMillian a much higher chance at release, which it did. While working on the McMillian case, Stevenson also took many other cases, one of which was a fourteen-year-old boy named Charlie. Charlie was convicted of murder and sentenced to death after killing his mother’s incredibly abusive boyfriend. When Stevenson went to the prison to visit Charlie, Charlie wouldn’t speak or show emotion for most of the visit.

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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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In Just Mercy, when a young lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, takes on Walter McMilians, a man who was wrongfully convicted for murder, Stevenson also conducts a thorough investigation. Even though Walter is already in jail, when Stevenson takes on his case, he starts at the beginning of the entire federal criminal process. Stevenson makes sure to review all aspects of Walters' case, before making any judgements. Even though his family had already made statements, Stevenson visits Walter and his family to get a sense of who he was and his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He listened to “testimonials about Walter, the town, race, the police, the trial” (pg. 1).

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I kept asking myself, “Who is responsible for this? How could we ever allow this?” (Stevenson, 102). This quote shows that Bryan has never seen this kind of pain. He was angry and asking himself how anyone could ever allow this.

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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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Throughout a student’s high school Language Arts experience, it is important for them to be exposed to texts that stimulate meaningful discussions and allow them to connect the texts’ themes to their everyday lives. Therefore, incorporating Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson in the tenth grade curriculum would add significant value to students’ education because this novel teaches students to look beyond first impressions and to show empathy for others. The various accounts of criminal cases in Just Mercy explore the harm in relying solely on initial judgements to form opinions on a person or situation. For instance, Walter McMillian, an African American man whose case is the main focus of the novel, was convicted for a crime he did not

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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.

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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

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The prison system in the USA is very flawed and functions as a way for racists to torture people, and the story “Just Mercy” is an excellent example. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a true story about the wrongfully accused and about the terrible system functioning on racism and torture. In his memoir, Bryan Stevenson uses literary nonfiction strategies to reinforce his argument that “the criminal justice system can do a better job of respecting the humanity and dignity of all people.” The descriptive settings help to really show the torture and mistreatment, furthering his argument.

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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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The school-wide reading book for summer assignments this year was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson which highlights the legal disenfranchisement of minorities in the criminal justice system while also weaving in Stevenson’s personal experiences as a lawyer. The book centers around the story and trial of Walter McMillian, a young man who is sentenced to death for a murder of which he is wrongly accused. Because of the nature of this

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1. Which social problems are treated in this book? Why did they develop? Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption focuses on many social problems, including the miscarriage of justice to the poor, disabled and minorities; along with the poor living conditions in prisons, and the cruel and unusual punishment. The miscarriage of justice developed throughout our country’s history.

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