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The Many Challenges Faced In Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

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In the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, Bryan faces many challenges and helps innocent people prove their innocence. His business becomes stronger than the law. Just Mercy shows the suffering and injustice of past cases. Bryan Stevenson faced many difficulties during his work. Some difficulties he faced were social obstacles. There was a lot of racism At the time and people did not support what Stevenson was supporting. Many people thought the innocent minorities should stay on death row just because of their bias against African Americans. Another difficulty Stevenson faced were death threats. Him and his compant recieved death threats. This was the backlash of him supporting the minority. Another difficulty Bryan faced was that he was African American. He didn’t get most privileges white lawyers got. “Lawers don’t have to sign that book– If you want to come into my prison, you’ll sign the book” (Stevenson, 169). This quote conveys the racism and disprivilege Bryan got for being African American. This made it hard for Stevenson, it even discouraged him slightly. The last difficulty Bryan faced was working with people with mental disabilities. People did not take them seriously and …show more content…

What kept him going was having the families of the accused support and cheer him on. Another thing that motivated Bryan to keep going was the pain in the accused when he saw them. There was one boy that really hit hard for Bryan. “I’d never held anyone who gripped me as tightly as that child did or who cried as hard or as long.. When I left the jail, I was more angry than sad. 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. This shows that Bryan wants to keep working to get that boy

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Bryan, the protagonist of Bryan Stevenson's novel Just Mercy, is depicted as a well-dressed, bearded black lawyer who is both ambitious and knowledgeable, demonstrating to the reader that Bryan is an amazing lawyer who wants to help save people on death row. Bryan describes himself when he says, "I was a bearded black male, and I was trying to meet the court’s expectations of what a lawyer looks like. " This shows that Bryan takes his job seriously and is willing to please the court and show the court he’ll dress nicely just to help win his case with Walter. Bryan also shows that he has the ambition to help defend condemned people on death row and is willing to do anything to help them win their case when he says that he is "determined to do

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Bryan Stevenson is a young Harvard intern on his way to meet a man on death row and is mostly undereducated about the prison systems, and what he wants to do exactly in life and with his career. On his flight he meets the director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, Steve Bright. He tells the scared and nervous Bryan “them without the capital get the punishment,” applying class is largely involved in the justice systems and capital punishment. After only working at a law firm for a short amount of time, he is assigned to meet with one the death row inmates and is instructed to assure the condemned man that he will “not be killed in the next year.” When Bryan finally met the man Henry, although nervous at first, they instantly clicked and Bryan realized

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After the burglaries, a stranger went and raped the same woman that they burglarized. At 13 years old, Sullivan was sentenced to life without parole even though he had no involvement with the rape and very little involvement with the burglary. He was a child that was unfairly thrown into prison with grown men, his previous family history and trauma was disregarded, the evidence against him was destroyed. Lastly, he was repeatedly raped and abused in prison where he then eventually developed Multiple Sclerosis. This case was especially troubling for Stevenson because Sullivan was racially profiled as a bad, dangerous, black boy, and he was sentenced like he was a habitual criminal when clearly he was not.

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Even though it’s nonfiction, it reads much like a fiction novel would, getting comparisons to ¬To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. What makes it even more compelling than the fictional novel is that these are the stories of real people, of those wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Stevenson’s memoir truly shows the power of mercy and what it can do for those wronged by judiciaries. This book’s story of justice and redemption and Stevenson’s struggle to free convicts from unjust or excessive punishment is deeply moving and powerful. The reader will root for him as he struggles to do as much as he can for the accused.

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Many of the people Bryan interacts with have committed heinous and terrible crimes. To get the audience to sympathize and root for Bryan to help these people, he has to humanize and relate them to the audience. Bryan does this masterfully by providing the audience with their backgrounds in incredible detail, pointing to how most of the crimes they committed were non-violent and if violent, accidental. He also provides a history of the topic surrounding the individual and shows brief examples of cases or statistics. When talking about these cases and people he represented he frames them as the victims and argues that the system and environment played a larger role in the crimes committed.

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As a black man, there were places he could not go, he would get rocks thrown at him, and blacks were forbidden to have any of the well-paying jobs. In fact, Johnson remembers when Sammy Davis Jr would come to Las Vegas, he was not allowed to stay in the hotels after his performance, he had to find other places to stay. The local police were equally as racist. Black police could not arrest black people, and blacks would be beat up just for being in the wrong neighborhood. This level of racism and discrimination shocked him.

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He was half black, and thus white privilege was not accessible to him. However, he didn't fit in with the black population either. They rejected him, because of his half white heritage, he had a trait in him that was linked to oppression of his community. He wasn't white enough or black enough to fit into either way of life. No

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Maybe that was evidence enough,” (Stevenson 31). This part of the book captures how something that has nothing to do with the case, the color of one of the important characters (i.e. Walter McMillian) skin, impacted whether or not he was proven guilty of a murder that he had nothing at all to do with. If racism wasn’t such an extreme issue in the book, Walter would have never been accused of doing something so vile. The blame was pinned to Walter because he was a black man,

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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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By explaining Walter’s situation and why he was convicted and put on death row, Stevenson was able to highlight the injustices within the judicial system and how so many innocent people can be judged too quickly because of one’s race, status, or class. Another anecdote used to demonstrate these prejudices is Stevenson’s mention of the inhuman death of Lourida Ruffin; also a black man, Ruffin lived in Alabama where the predominantly white society felt very negatively towards anyone of a different race. After committing a minor traffic violation, Ruffin was beaten by police and then was refused his asthma inhaler, and he later died in the police station’s holding cell. This case alone emphasizes the constant issue of police brutality, especially towards African American males that is still prevalent today. Stevenson later moves to discuss unfair treatment of the mentally ill in prison, using the case of Herbert

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This is the moment of exigence for Stevenson and his commitment to becoming a lawyer to help those in need while facing capital punishment. His tone shifts from his feelings in a narrative to his realization of the flaws in the American justice system. He describes the United States as having a "radical transformation that would turn us into an unprecedentedly harsh and punitive nation and result in mass imprisonment that has no historical parallel" (15). This description of the United States also shows his reasons for becoming a lawyer.

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Bryan Stevenson never knew what could happen and he was full of fear of the possibility of jail time or death. Herbert Richardson was a mentally ill person who didn’t get the help he needed, and due to that, he killed little girl and was executed. During that time, the mentally ill lost most of its funding, and because of that, those who needed help couldn’t get it. Richardson and other mentally ill people didn’t have much money and lived in poverty. Without justice, the world would become nothing but poverty, despair and fear, and the only ones who wouldn’t be affected are the

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They had to follow rules and behave in a manner that wouldn’t get them in trouble, but more specifically lynching. Owing to Johnson for making such an impact during this time era. Johnson joined the “staff of the interracial National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a key figure, perhaps the key figure, in making the NAACP a truly national organization capable of mounting the attack that eventually led to the dismantling of the system of segregation by law” (James Weldon Johnson’s Life and Career). Its hard to imagine how African Americans felt living with this around them all the time, to know if a white person had something against you.

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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. By Bryan Stevenson. Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Pp. 368.

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The new laws that the government had set in place made lives for black people very difficult at the time. When this law was put in place, the differences between blacks and whites were very clear. Whites got preferential treatment, just for being white whereas blacks had to struggle with daily

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