Just Mercy By Bryan Stevenson: Summary

Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson was published on October 21, 2014. This is a book that followed Bryan Stevenson’s career, a grad student that had attended Harvard Law School and created a small business called Equal Justice Initiative. This little business that Bryan started in the deep south of Alabama, worked to right the many wrong convictions of many innocent people on death row. Throughout the book the main case followed was the case of McMillian. This case was unique in the way that he was convicted of a murder based upon one person and the little evidence that the police were able to gather. The story line is constantly backed up by examples and details that Bryan Stevenson thought was important in understanding not only the case but …show more content…
After a few pages of introduction of the case, Stevenson mentioned about how when McMillian was arrested and accused of the murder that the only thing that they had on McMillian was not evidence from the actual crime, not an eye witness but just solely arrested him just because he was an African American. An African American who was involved in an affair, which lead to the conclusion that he was a dangerous man even though he had no priors. This isn’t a criticism of Stevenson’s book but of the criminal justice system now and back then. That really sparked an emotion that created anger and confusion for me because I still don’t understand why people go out of their way to accuse the wrong man. Wasn’t the entire point of the way that the criminal justice system was setup is so that people black and white could get a fair chance in court? McMillian had no hard evidence at the time that suggested that he was involved and then was followed with an accusation without seeing one day in court. This is still happening today which is so frustrating, however not in the same way. Today, African Americans are being shot in the streets. Such as the Philando Castile shooting, which the officer later was then found not guilty of man slaughter. Although these are very different they are basically the same in the way that the criminal justice system and one may argue that society still has racism. Thankfully, today’s society seems to recognize that we still have this problem today, which is resulting in more awareness and training for individuals in the criminal justice system. Again, this isn’t a criticism, this book spiked an interest for me to be able to here this story from someone else on the