Analysis Of Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy

In the book “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson, the author is a lawyer and founder of the Equal Injustice Initiative who helps and defends those that are in desperate needs. Stevenson tells different stories of different cases that he had through the course of his professional career. One of the most heartbreaking stories that Stevenson shares on his books is about a boy named Charlie. Charlie is a fourteen years old who murdered his stepfather because he was abusive with his mom and left her unconscious on the floor. Charlie was sentenced to an adult prison because his stepfather was an ex-police officer. When Steven heard about Charlie’s case he ran to the prison to go see him and the first thing that Charlie tells Stevenson is how every night he would get sexually abused in prison by so many men ,and how they would do really awful things to him. “Florida is one of a few states that allows the prosecutor to decide to charge a child in adult court for certain crimes and has no minimum age for trying a child as an adult.”(Stevenson). Charlie’s case is not an unusual one. There are hundreds of prisoners currently in US prisons who are suffering ridiculous prison sentences while other prisoners with more violent, heinous, and terrible crimes have been sentenced to lesser time in jail or are already out. In order to understand why this is still a problem, it’s important to first understand the current issues facing prisons today and what effects come from these issues. Then

“Just mercy” written by Bryan Stevenson is a story about “justice and redemption”(title). Bryan Stevenson tells the story about Walter McMillian a convicted murder. McMillian was unjustly charged for the murder of Ronda Morrison by Ralph Myers even though there was clear evidence that McMillian did not commit this murder. McMillian’s story proves the inequities in the American justice system, and Stevenson proves the faults in the system by telling McMillian’s story. “Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”(17). When we judge people based on their person not the facts innocent people can be charged for crimes that they never committed, and that is where are justice system is unjust.

America is supposed to be the land of the free, but in reality does America give freedom to all? Not if your poor, black, or disabled. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, who is a lawyer, writes about the harsh realities of the justice system in the United States. He illustrates his encounter with several prisoners, who were wrongly defended based off of race, disability, and class. The main story follows an innocent man put on death row, Walter McMillian.

Starting off with Mr.Norton, the narrator is given the job to be his driver for the day. Having a conversation while driving, Mr. Norton says, “’ So you see, young man, you are involved in my life quite intimately, even though you’ve never seen me before… You are my fate. And you must write to me and tell me the outcome” (Ellison 43). The narrator feels

The book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, and the film “Shawshank Redemption” both contain similarities and differences in reference to the justice system. Both the book and the film have characters in them which go through certain situations. Some of the similarities and differences being shown have to do with hope, industrialization, and how people are being treated by guards.

By using the first-person present tense—I am here; you are not—and guarding specific scenes and emotions, Levi actively distances readers from his narrative. This, the book tells its readers, is not your narrative; you are not characters in this story. As readers, we are forced to recognize that we do not speak Levi’s language; we do not know what it truly means to be “cold,”

In Bryan Stevenson’s novel, Just Mercy, it is extremely apparent that there is a link between poverty, wealth, injustice, and justice. This book incorporates a strong theme of poverty and how it relates to justice, as well as injustice. Furthermore, it works to explain and provide examples of problems within the justice system, and the urgency to correct these. This being said, throughout a personal reading of the book, one might come to agree with Stevenson's statement, "the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice" (Stevenson 18).

Just Mercy was written in 2014 by Stevenson Bryan. This story takes place in Montgomery Alabama. This story is about the broken system of justice. How people are judged unfairly even in the supreme Court. Bryan Stevenson primarily focuses on death penalty cases and juveniles sentenced to life or death. He provides relief for those incarcerated also, he understands the need to fix this criminal justice system by focusing on poverty, and racial disparities. Stevenson chooses cases that did not receive justice. This book discusses the prison life and how they are treated. It also decides about the different cases and how each case has one theory. It provides additional insight into the rush to incarcerate for life people as young teenagers, putting them in an adult prison. Where they are certain to suffer from sexual, mentally and physical abuse.

In “A Gun to His Head as a Child. In Prison as an Adult,” the consequences of the traumatic childhood of Rob Sullivan are narrated by Audra D.S. Burch. Sullivan had made multiple trips to jail throughout his life, all was due to not having a proper childhood. In Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson relays multiple stories of imprisonment of black males who received severe punishment such as the death sentence. Stevenson’s main goal is to bring racism and legal injustice to light, to achieve this aim, Stevenson

Segregation and discrimination both happen to African Americans in Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. They are viewed as less, like they show be treated differently. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the town of Maycomb took Bob Ewell's word over Tom Robinson's because he was of a different race. Bryan Stevenson mentions that many young African Americans go to prison because they did something bad, but this then affects these children for the rest of their lives. Many African Americans are still affected today by the justice system and how they are treated by other people. Racial injustice has been a huge part of history and both, Just Mercy and To Kill a Mockingbird talk about racial injustice, that is still happening today.

I can infer thru my reading of Just Mercy that Stevenson is a believer in Jesus Christ and that belief is what motivated him with great courage and conviction to fight for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, the wrongly condiment, women and children and those with no hope. It seems he has a heart for the death row cases and life without parole sentences where young teenagers are involved. He fought for changes in the law around the trial and incarceration of minors. A reader can find Stevenson’s idea throughout his book is that everyone make mistakes, even terrible mistakes, and that, at one time or another, everyone will need to be granted mercy. I believe people are more than the worst thing they have ever

Of the supplementary readings provided, I found “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration” by Loïc Wacquant the most intriguing. This particular article is based on “rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US” and the disproportionate institutions set apart for African Americans in the United States. The volatile beginnings of African Americans presented obvious hardships for future advancement, but Wacquant argues that they still suffer from a form of modern slavery.

Have you ever imagined some people are sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and even sentenced die in the prisons? Across the United States, thousands of people meet with misfortune of the injustice system, and they have been sentenced and even put in the death rows. A man, Bryan Stevenson, he noticed the situation, and he tried to make the changes with his profession. In the book, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” written by Bryan Stevenson, and published in 2014. Stevenson described the real various law cases to show the injustice exists in the past United States until now, and how he as a lawyer to take the risks to challenge the unfair justice, and to dedicate to serve and defend the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the justice system who desperate and in need; at the same time, he tried to tell people that acknowledge the imperfect part of the justice is a way to make people can understand the importance of the justice with mercy. Stevenson recognized that the unfairness exists between the poverty and the racial injustice, and he decided to insist justice, and keep the mercy.

“It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend’s quarters and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a tasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the table laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. (Stevenson

Marcus Garvey once said that “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Throughout this semester I have learned a lot. As the class progressed I’ve had the chance to really get a look on how the system really works. Being able to study the systems origin and history has really opened my eyes. However, the one topic that really grabbed my attention was in chapter 10 when we discussed the prison system.