Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson: Summary

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.

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

The novel Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina is a fictionalized tale of the conflict that took place in the coal fields of West Virginia. The novel brings to light the stereotypes, race and religion of the Appalachian people. In this paper I’d like to briefly discuss Denise Giardina’s life, her novel Storming Heaven and some of the issues that arise within the storyline of the text.

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.

"It was so abundantly clear that George was mentally ill that it came as no shock when we discovered that the doctor who had examined him… was a fraud with no medical training" ( Stevenson 191).1 Author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson, shares the story of a man named George Daniel, who, due to his mental handicap, committed murder, and when evaluated for sanity was deemed healthy by a fraudulent doctor then sentenced to death.2 The United States criminal justice system is the process through which the judicial branch indicts people for crimes they have committed by disobeying laws the nation has in place.3 Throughout the 1900s and into the 2000s, the conditions of the criminal justice system have been on the

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

On Monday October 24th I went to the First-Year Success Series presentation of the Common Reading Experience Book Just Mercy presented by author Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson’s presentation focused on key points that we as a society and a university need to work on. His key points were that we should: stay close to what we care about, pay attention to identity, change the narrative that sustains the problems, remember that hopefulness is the enemy of justice, and have the willingness to do uncomfortable things. All of these things are what we as a university need to focus on to succeed. As a history education major, I need to stay near to what I want to do so I must stay close and engaged in the classroom

My commitment to resolve issues concerning water and our environment draws on one of my biggest strengths, the will to care and get close to others. In my History 105 class, we discussed the book, Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. The book has been a big influence in my way of contributing to my community. One evening the author spoke in the Beasley Coliseum, he mentioned proximity and keeping hope alive. Afterward, I put these two philosophies together to significantly influence others. I met Jordan during the Week of Welcome. She was feeling disconnected and marginalized here in Pullman. I committed sometimes helping Jordan finding clubs, church and other activities. I took the initiative of seeking for anything around the campus that might

Having imaginary friends is a coping mechanism, but how often does a treatment have side effects and finally become the underlying cause? In Toni Morrison’s novel, A Mercy, the story takes place during the 1680s in the middle colonies and she focuses on Florens’ journey to find the blacksmith who can heal her mistress from smallpox. Florens is a black slave, living on a farm with a couple, Jacob and Rebekka, and two other slaves. One of the other slaves is named Sorrow, a strange curly haired girl who spent her early years at sea until she fell off it with a friend she created named Twin, and was saved by the sawyer's family. Through writing her novel, Toni Morrison had trouble deciding whether mercy or a mercy would have been a better title

Unfortunately, I grew up with a deeply held value of racism without knowing it. This view originated from my racist parents and grandparents. While I was completely unaware that my thoughts and language were racist, I realized as I got older that I had unintentionally held racist beliefs. I had thought growing up that I was not racist, that only my family members were. I believed I was being “honest” as my mother had always called it. Years later, I realized I had been racist as well; I was just more subtle. Stereotypes were so firmly rooted in my belief system I never realized they were there. Moving to North Carolina my sophomore year of high school initiated a slow change; my best friends were African-American. This was really the first time I ever had African-American friends.

A Mercy is a fictional work that centers on the lives of both slaves and the slave owners. One of the main characters that Morrison is focused on is Florens, a sixteen-year-old slave girl who lives on the D’Ortega tobacco plantation in Virginia. The D’Ortegas are notorious for their cruelty toward their slaves. It is revealed that the D’Ortega family has spent some time in Angola, where the Portuguese were known historically for their severe and inhumane treatment of slaves. As such, Morrison’s fictional narrative places itself in the realistic, historical context surrounding the extreme violence and human cruelty associated with many slave owners.