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Summary Of Ted Talk About Injustice By Bryan Stevenson

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Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer devoted to assisting the incarcerated, poor and condemned, shared his thoughts on how “we”, americans, cannot fully evolve due to the lack of consideration for human rights and basic dignity of all persons, in his recent Ted Talk, “We Need to Talk about Injustice”. Stevenson gives numerous statistics which shows the numbers growing in reference to people who have been incarcerated. He continues on to go into detail about unfairness throughout the justice system in America. Stevenson brings to light the issues amongst the justice system with various scenarios that have occurred in the past. I agree with Bryan Stevenson that America is flourishing when it comes to technological advancements and innovations, …show more content…

A justice system where as long as you have money it is seen as a lesser crime than if you were on the poorer spectrum. There was a case of a hit and run that happened in the past, including Martin Joel Erzinger as the defendant, in which the defendant did not face felony charges due to holding a high paying job. Although the victim endured spinal cord injuries and bleeding in his brain, the defendant still managed to get off with a misdemeanor all due to his current job status. (Alden, 2010) It is sickening to know that our justice system is so influenced by the amount of assets a person holds over their true guilt or innocence. Stevenson later backs his claims of a lack of human rights and basic dignity in America as he states, “Right now in Alabama 34 percent of the black male population has permanently loss the right to vote.” (Stevenson, 2012) America was built of democracy which is basically a government built and based on voting. Thirty-four percent of a state has been stripped of one of the most basic rights as an American. How can America grow and flourish as a country if we constantly strip the aspects that make up America away from the citizens?

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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.

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Author and lawyer Bryan Stevenson chronicles the unjust and inhumane stories of multiple prisoners throughout the South. He tries to appeal and save each individual from unethical sentences that were handed down upon them. Stevenson uses this book as way to shine a very bright light on the unfair practices and sentences that consistently happen throughout American court rooms to the mentally ill and the vulnerable. He is able to provide a prologue for each prisoner and case he encounters that provides crucial information that can potentially alter whether each client would end up dying in prison, or have the potential to see life outside of cement walls and bars. Stevenson is able to show readers the unfair practices of not only prosecutors

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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).

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Bryan Stevenson negotiates the prejudice and intolerance within the criminal justice system, and the biases within based on economic and racial status. This book exposed myself to a deeper level of injustice inside our system than what I already had a conception of. Each story Bryan talks about hits on different subjects that opened my eyes to how our system truly treats minorities so coldly. Those of a different race, economic status, are treated far worse than we can imagine. Within the past few years racial injustices have began to gain more attention in the media, allowing awareness into the discrimination still present in our system.

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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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