Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson

The play Mission of Mercy was written by Esther Lipnick. It was about a woman becoming a nurse. That woman's name was Florence. Florence Nightingale is many different things. But she is brave more than anything.

On page 96 of Just Mercy, Stevenson visits Walter’s family after he had been accused of murder. He talks with Minnie, Walter’s wife, who expresses her anger about the trial. In order to sympathize with her, Stevenson uses repetition, using the word “lies” several times during his response. This repetition demonstrates his outrage at the injustice experienced by Walter. He expresses his emotional support for Walter, gaining the trust of his wife as a result.

After reading “the Innocent Man” by Pamela Colloff’s who write a long journalism about Michael Morton, who was found guilty for murdering his wife Christine was sentenced for fifteen years in prison. Later founding that Michael was Innocent after reinvestigating his case, capturing DNA testing and finding new evidence was able to help prove his innocence. The theme of this essay a widow husband who seek to fight for his freedom in prison and staying connected with his son. Michal son Eric gave him a reason to have hope that they would one day reunite and his son would know for himself that he did murder his wife. The point of view of this essay although a man is falsely accuse for a crime he did not commit he is self-determined to fight.

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

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.

Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, is a lawyer from the rural south that advocates for mostly children on death row. He spends most of his time in low income communities with next to no hope. His TED talk was based on his experiences in these communities, his career, and his knowledge regarding minorities while addressing his predominately financially stable, White audience. Trying to persuade an audience that is not effected by what you are trying to speak against is hard, however, Bryan Stevenson is able to do so. Bryan Stevenson’s 2012 TED talk uses ethos to persuade his audience by using his status as a prominent lawyer and an everyday person who many people know and can relate to with strong respectable values in life to prove himself as a trustworthy person in order to argue his point on how the American justice system distorts the truth racial discrimination in the system, as well as the poverty t faces. His use of ethos enables him to establish trust in his audience that can make a major difference in the justice system with most of them being well respected people in society.

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is a story of innocents sentenced to death row (2015). As an attorney at law, he sheds light on the fraudulent Criminal Justice System with the corruption of cops and prison guards, bribed witnesses, and paid off judges. Written in first person, Stevenson’s (2015) account depicts 50 years of debasement of the Criminal Justice System. Telling the accounts of corruption in first person and using dialogue that included the actual victims conversations allowed his readers to be invested in the story. His vocabulary and the stories used, made the reader realize that corruption takes place in the United States Criminal Justice System both in history and continues through today.

The novel, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson covers many aspects of the legal system, including Stevenson’s quest to get prisoners who were convicted as adolescents out of adult prison. Through Stevenson’s experiences, he sees first hand experience of children that are sent to adult prisons. Specifically he saw how the prisoners who were convicted as children revert to a very low mental state and often have a great deal of trouble readjusting if they are even remotely capable of doing so. One of these experiences that Bryan Stevenson encountered was with a young fourteen year old named Charlie and the impacts of an adult world in a child’s head. Children should never be pushed into adult prisons or receive adult punishments because of their lack of clear understanding of difficult situations.

In today’s society the criminal justice system that we live in is flawed in so many ways. Some say that it works while others go to prison or jail for crimes that they didn’t commit. In this paper I will be covering specific examples from the book, The Innocent Man, where the defendant’s rights were violated. John Grisham talks about innocent men being innocent and convicted for murder and sent to unlawful court proceedings. In this paper I will be focusing mainly on the violations of his 6th amendment. The 6th amendment is the right to effective assistance of counsel.

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.

Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy, has many themes in his book. One of which is the importance of human life. He goes through many cases of which, in the end, he realizes that every human deserves empathy and mercy and a fair chance at living their lives. Throughout the novel there is one specific case that changes Stevenson’s perspective the most however. This case is the Walter McMillian case that demonstrates the unfairness that was tolerated for death row inmates. Stevenson expresses this theme throughout the book. Some examples are through the McMillian case, the mental patient case, the juvenile case, and his own experience.

In the book Just Mercy: A story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, there are several topics discussed regarding the American Justice system. One of those many topics discussed is regarding how a person’s race, social status and income, may influence the outcome of a court trail. In present day America, many years after the era of Jim crow and segregation the Justice system still seems to be more lenient towards white Americans, especially those with high income and a good standing in society. The American justice system has become unjust in the trials deemed to be fair, due to an evident prejudice against minorities, their social status and whether or not they receive a well off or poor income.

Many people believe the titles of names of places, people, or books have little to no meaning, I can argue there is a reason behind every single capitalized letter and chapter title and every person’s name. In the common read, Just Mercy we can truly test this theory. Throughout the introduction and sixteen chapters that follow, the amount of emotion and strategically placed names of each chapter depict a strong image of struggle or happiness. The title of the book itself “Just Mercy” represents all that America strives to become a civil and lawful society. We can start by dissecting the title “Just Mercy”. If you were to google “Just” the word is defined by having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason. (“Just.” Merriam-Webster). The definition of the word “Mercy” states two different meanings, compassion; or a blessing that is an act of divine favor. (Mercy.” Merriam-Webster). Immediately upon putting these two words together you come to find they balance each other. The correspondence between just and mercy sound like they belong together, it simply means the fact of being kind. Beginning with the rest of the titles, Stevenson parallels Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird into his day to day struggles of an unjust court system.

Normally, if a defendant is arrested and brought to court, the prosecutor must present enough evidence to make the judge or grand jury believe that the defendant had committed the crime. In the memoir, “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson, cases regarding corruption and quick trials are presented to the reader from Stevenson’s point of view. Many times Stevenson implied that characters such as Sheriff Tate and other officers abused their power to cause hasty trials and take cases that did not have enough evidence to convict and create false witness testimonies. Testimonies were manipulated to give the advantage to the prosecutors and when other people spoke up for the defendant they were either bribed or silenced. For example, in the Walter McMillian case, the testimonies of his family and neighbors saying he was at his house was dismissed while Ralph Myers testimony was the key factor for the case. When Myers had admitted that he had lied in his testimony, he was “threatened and harassed by the local authorities”(Stevenson

Looking at the cover of the book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redempt, written by Bryan Stevenson, one could not understand what would be thrown at them after opening the crisp pages. Breaking the title of the book down, we know what ‘mercy’ is defined as the feeling toward offenders through a person with the ability to oversee justice within our system. Furthermore, the two words ‘just mercy’ is implied that our officials that are administering the justice within our system go about it in a conscionable way. Stevenson’s starts off with an autobiographical introduction that sets forth how the context will be delivered to the readers. From the start, Stevenson explains how he got into the profession of defense law.