preview

Just Mercy Analysis

Decent Essays

The novel Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, is a heart wrenching novel that tells stories about death row inmates that Bryan Stevenson has represented as a lawyer. The person that I want to talk about today is Walter McMillian. McMillian was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Ronda Morrison, a young white woman who worked as a clerk at Jackson Cleaners in Monroeville Alabama. He was held on Death Row prior to being convicted and sentenced to death. There was no tangible evidence against McMillian. He was held on Death Row before he was even convicted and sentenced to death; his trial lasted only a day and a half. Three witnesses testified against McMillian, and the jury ignored multiple black witnesses, who testified that he was at a church fish fry at the time of the crime. The trial judge overrode the jury’s sentence for life in prison without parole and sentenced McMillian to death instead. Stevenson took on McMillian’s case, and he exposed that the state’s witnesses had lied, and the prosecution had withheld very important evidence that proved McMillian’s innocence. McMillian was released in 1993 after spending six years on death row.
McMillian was an everyday man before this trial. He had a family, a job, and a life. McMillian was by no means a saint, he was having an affair with a white woman behind his wives back. During the story Stevenson provides about his meeting with McMillian, Stevenson points out multiple characteristics of

Get Access