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Racial and social injustice
Racial discrimination and disparity in united states justice system
Racial disparities in the court system
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The book, “Just Mercy”, written by Bryan Stevenson, tells the story of true justice in helping incarcerated people fight for freedom. He develops convincing arguments showing the hidden flaws and inequality in the American criminal justice system. Bryan Stevenson makes his arguments through three appeals, ethos, logos and pathos, using personal experiences, his viewpoint on juvenile sentencing and justice, and his priorities. In chapter 2, Stand, Stevenson shares his personal experiences with the Atlanta Police Department to provide exposure to racial inequality. On a drive home from Gadsden, Alabama, Stevenson gets pulled over by an Atlanta SWAT car: “The other officer was now leaning inside my car and going through my papers.
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
In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson tells a first person account of his years defending the people who were wrongly convicted or punished by the US justice system. At the heart of the novel is the story of Walter McMillian, a man wrongly convicted of murder and sent to death row. Throughout the novel, Stevenson presents examples of individuals who were wrongfully punished due to racism and discrimination. He shows the readers how our criminal justice system unfairly impacts members of the Black community. He also highlights the destruction and devastation this can cause.
Stevenson closely examines the role of racism in the criminal justice system showing how America’s past still haunts the present. Through his experiences as a lawyer, he recognizes
Mary Kwentus Mr. Singleterry ENGL 2250 22 May 2023 Social Unjustness In Bryan Stevenson’s novel Just Mercy Stevenson gives his first-person accounts of the social justice system in America and marginalized Americans who are unfairly punished. The novel retells the cases of Stevenson. Stevenson fights to end the justice system’s unjustness and racial discrimination. The novel follows Stevenson as he and his company the Equal Justice Initiative work to help prisoners on death row and give them the legal representation they deserve.
The (In)justice System “‘I feel like they done put me on death row, too. What do we tell these children about how to stay out of harm’s way when you can be at your own house, minding your own business, surrounded by your entire family, and they still put some murder on you that you ain’t do and send you to death row?’”(Stevenson 93). In the memoir Just Mercy, we follow the life story of Bryan Stevenson who we see start out as a young Harvard law student and as the novel progresses transforms into a lawyer helping those on death row who do not have any help. He has many experiences where he sees people change, statistics that prove injustice, and where he experiences injustice. All of these are examples of rhetorical strategies, which are
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.
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
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.
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
In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson retells powerful stories to highlight how minorities and juveniles within the criminal justice system are often unheard. Stevenson addresses Walter McMilliam’s case to prove that he was ignored by the police and others because he was an African American accused for interracial romance with a white women and murder. During the 1800’s, racial discrimination was extremely harsh onto black people which led their community to be targeted by the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system incarcerates African Americans but no other races which proves that they’re avoiding their safety and rights.
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.
The author Bryan Stevenson teaches his audience about criminal and racial discrimination in judicial systems using his own firsthand knowledge of devastating occurrences, and references in the nonfiction novel Just Mercy. The stories that Stevenson tells are all examples of how the legal system has been corrupted. Firstly, Stevenson uses ethos throughout his prose to provide an individual's perspective on America's racial injustices. Stevenson is a civil rights lawyer who shares personal experiences with injustice.. When Stevenson states, "I've represented abused and neglected children who were prosecuted as adults,"(9)
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
Ashley Tinajero Mrs. Trull AP Language and Composition 27 December 2022 Just Mercy The book Just Mercy tackles many different issues throughout the novel however its most notable one being the political injustice that consistently damages people of color and to be specific Americans the author Bryan Stevenson translates this issue through his thoughtful rhetoric and eliciting a sense of hope and sadness within the reader to emphasize the issue of the flawed justice system targeting African Americans and imposing rules that are purposefully set to ensure African Americans do not succeed in trials of any sort. In the novel the main case is that of Walter Mcmillion who is wrongly accused by a white man of murdering a young girl with the blatant
