Bryan Stevenson's 'Just Mercy'

Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer and the author of the book “Just Mercy.” The main story is about him defending an African American named Walter McMillan, from a small town named ‘Monroeville’ in Alabama. This man was falsely accused and convicted of killing a young white woman. The story of this book takes place in the 1980s and 1990s, which makes it so unbelievable. The writer compares the occurrence of his book to a very well-known American Classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” in which a black male was wrongfully accused of raping a white woman, who was defended by a white lawyer in the 1930’s.
Stevenson is an African American lawyer who grew up in Delaware and went to Harvard Law School. After studying philosophy, he realized that it wouldn’t pay the bills and he thought to himself that he needed to find a better profession and decided to go to law school, where he discovered his passion for helping death row candidates. Stevenson didn’t really know if he had picked the right field to be in and was unsure about his profession choice until he met Stephan
Bright. After completing an internship with Stephan Bright, who Stevenson described as a “brilliant” trial lawyer and director of SPDC (Southern Prisoners Defense Committee), his mission was to assist convicted people on death row. Stevenson is the founder of EJI (Equal Justice Initiative), which is an organization that only works for donations. Stevenson and his lawyers work day and night to help prisoners wherever they can, for example the people on death row, the one’s appealing the death penalty and people facing racism in our system. Something big he was able to achieve was the Supreme court verdict that changed the law about being able to put children in adult prisons, for life without parole.
Him and his lawyers have helped so many people who have been wrongfully convicted. He also won the Walter McMillan case which is the main story of this book. Walter was on death row for 6 years because the sheriff of his hometown and the prosecutor forced a white male (Ralph Meyer) to falsely accuse McMillan of the crime of killing a young white woman. Stevenson fought so hard to get McMillan off death row, which he eventually accomplished. Later when Ralph Meyer tried to change his story, it was very hard to get a new trial for Walter. Stevenson and his lawyers finally got the chance to present the new evidence and Walter was a free man at last. But his new freedom did not benefit him much. He was happy for a while, but after a bad accident with his logging company his life declined. Due to all the trauma on death row he eventually got dementia and in the end Walter died very lonely.
This book contains a lot of very sad and emotional stories about different cases, which made me rethink my viewpoints and opinions of the death penalty; and also, the justice system as a whole. I’ve always been one of the people who thought it’s ok to kill a person who is a killer or is convicted of a certain crime, but after reading this book I definitely have had to reevaluate my views. Also, it’s very hard to believe that not even 30 years ago kids were sentenced to life in prison without parole who were only 13 years old and weighing less than 90 pounds. They were in adult prisons being sexually abused by other inmates and nothing was being done about it. This book shows that we have a lot of issues and flaws in the system and we must be able to change the way we look at things. We need to open our eyes and we need to stop ignoring the racism and unfairness towards poor people in our society. This book has made me want to change, from now on I will think twice about how I look at and judge people. I believe this is something that’s very important to the author and something that he wanted to get across to people with his book. He wants people to realize that it’s not right to just kill someone, even if this person is a murderer. You have to be able to see a person’s upbringing and the circumstances in which they were raised. This author has definitely changed my view of things. As the daughter of a paralegal I have met a lot of lawyers and people working for the justice system, but I have never come across a person like Stevenson. I truly admire what he is doing for these prisoners. They may be criminals but they are still humans. All the lawyers I’ve met do it to help people, but not in the extend Stevenson does. I know my mother’s old bosses wouldn’t work such challenging cases for such little money. So, I really think it is fantastic what this man has achieved.
I find it great that this book really shows his fight against the unfair and horrific treatment that African Americans and people of other races experience. He describes the injustice and silence there is towards poor people, the people of color, or kids who can’t afford a good lawyer. And whether it is the judges, the prosecutors, the wardens, the prison guards, or the police, there are so many mistakes that can be made that can lead to someone’s life being destroyed, yet they seem to not have any real consequences.
This book was a little hard to read for me especially because of the parts with the children cases.
But even though this book was emotional and a bit challenging to read, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed his style of writing and telling stories. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone really, but specifically to lawyers, law students, paralegals, but I would really encourage people who are strongly for the continuation of the death penalty to read this book. I was one of those people and this book totally changed my point of view. I feel like this is an important reason the author wrote this book, he wants people to be able to see what’s going on on the inside and change their mind about their views on the justice system, especially on the topic of death row. Which he did accomplish in my opinion, not only did he do that he also made me broadened my understanding of the subject on injustice towards people in our
society. In my opinion it shouldn’t be as hard as it is for a new trial to be started on the basis of new evidence for a case. At the time of this book being written there have been 152 people in the U.S. who’ve been proven innocent after being wrongly convicted and sentenced to be executed. I have realized that it’s difficult for our justice system to admit to mistakes that have been made. Mistakes are part of who we are and we all make them. The justice system should be responsible enough to admit to these mistakes and live up to them. I feel like this is another crucial point that the author is trying to bring across to the audience; there are flaws in our system and we need to find ways to fix them, especially when it comes to the lives of human beings. I really think the author did a great job in getting his main points across and grabbing the audience’s attention. Stevenson did a great job in telling his story and the stories of all the cases and people he has dealt with and helped. Not only is he a great writer in my opinion he also really seems to be a sincere and wonderful person who wants to help people. I appreciate the fact that he genuinely cares about the people he fights for and really tries to make a difference.