The Struggle Of The Black Community In Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

In the book Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, we see the struggle of the black community in Alabama that largely stems from the systemic racism in the South during the 1980s and into the 1990s. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer fresh out of law school, who was inspired by an internship while he was attending Harvard that took him to death row where he met Henry, the inmate who would later help him decide where his career would take him. Throughout the book, we see that he has a very strong moral code and self righteousness, while also expressing large amounts of empathy towards almost everyone he meets, especially his clients. Stevenson praises mercy on the condemned while also believing in a fair justice system, insisting we need to have both justice

Walter McMillan was guilty of one thing and one thing only: having an affair with a white woman. At the time, this was seen as very scandalous, the Civil Rights Movement had ended but the deeply ingrained racism in the South had not. Because of this, Walter McMillan, known by many as Johnny D., was shunned and mistreated to the point that when a murder he didn’t commit was pinned on him no one thought twice about whether or not he could have done it. The Justice Department handled the case poorly by not fact checking witness testimonies, illegally moving the prisoner to death row without a conviction, intimidating a witness before a trial to convince him to lie, and so much more. One day Walter McMillan and several other prisoners get a visit from an upstart lawyer named Bryan Stevenson, a man who had just started a federally funded program known as the Equal Justice Initiative to help men like Walter. Bryan and Walter worked closely together on the trial, and when they eventually won the case after taking it to the Alabama Supreme Court they managed to stay in touch. Stevenson helped free Walter and they stayed friends over the years while Stevenson continued to work for the EJI to help others like

He did, however, eventually agree to try and help somehow. Herbert Richardson was technically guilty, but his case was more complex than just ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty’. Herbert Richardson had in fact killed that little girl, but he had excessive PTSD from serving our country in the Vietnam War and major breakdowns to the point he should have been hospitalized instead of sitting in a jail cell waiting to die. Stevenson talks about how much Herbert’s execution affected him; how he had to hold Herbert’s wife while she cried, how he himself wanted to cry for Herbert, how badly he felt for Herbert because all he had wanted was the flag he’d so rightfully earned in Vietnam, how uncomfortable he felt seeing Herbert fully shaven for the electric chair, etc. On Stevenson’s drive home from Herbert’s execution, he talks about the emotions he witnessed in the chamber, not only from Herbert’s family but from the officers themselves. At the end of Chapter 4, he talks about how he’s applied this experience to how he approaches arguments about the death penalty now, and how odd and inhumane it is to kill people who kill people as punishment for killing people. Specifically, “In debates about the death penalty, I had started arguing