Just Mercy Summary Sparknotes

Although civil rights acts had long been adopted by the United States, in 1986 several states still retained their cultural segregation and adaptation of social norms that continued to alienate African Americans – especially in the southern states. Bryan Stevenson depicts several examples of people being wrongly accused of crimes because of circumstantial evidence, biases and discretion by those who have power. In particular, Stevenson’s Just Mercy, focuses on Walter McMillian’s case, a man whose conviction was handed to him based on false allegations gathered by the police’s bargaining tactics, dehumanizing practices, and his race, with the case being ultimately decided in the flawed U.S. adversarial justice system. The county in which the case took place sought to find its own version of the truth to satisfy the majority’s ideals.

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

Bryan Stevenson was a lawyer based out of Montgomery, Alabama. He helped many of these people get an honest, fair sentence. Through the publication of his book, he has educated many on the reality of our prison systems in America. He shares his firsthand accounts of children being charged as adults, innocent men being charged for crimes they had clearly not had any involvement with, and women living in poverty being charged with murder for burying their stillborn children. All of these cases had one thing in common: poverty.

“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.

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.

In his memoir Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson shares his experiences with justice and mercy--or the lack there of; be these experiences his own, or the experiences of others which he has witnessed. Unfortunately, because of the color of their skin or their social standing, Stevenson and his clients are often treated with a justice rendered from mercy. An example of this is when the two police officers accosted Stevenson. Had they been calm and clearly expressed that there were concerns of burglary in the area, they could have peacefully come to the conclusion that Stevenson was no threat. Instead one of the officers immediately drew his gun which lead to a hostile treatment of Stevenson, a cruel violation of his rights, and, when the officers rummaged through his files, an unlawful breaking of attorney-client privilege.

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.

What if you were innocent, but people couldn't see past your race and called you "guilty" for something you didn't do? This is one of the problems in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy. To Kill a Mockingbird is about a girl named Scout, who is growing up during The Great Depression. Just Mercy is about an upstart lawyer that deals with racial discrimination in the court system. Both To Kill a Mockingbird and Just Mercy correlate with each other, are significant today, and can be tied back to racial profiling.

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

Just mercy is a powerful novel Written by Bryan Stevenson in the book he put us in a different world. while he depicts the social injustices he experiences while he defended an innocent man. Walter whom was set up for a murder of a women named Ronda even with multiple witnesses he is still convicted. Which made this be my topic of interest during the time that I was reading Just Mercy. Because In this society we have a race based institution where they can directly say a African American is guilty without fair trial. in the which mean that African Americans are “Guilty until proven innocent”. which is the opposite when it come to the opposite races.

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.

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.