Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption Hardcover – October 21, 2014 Author: Visit Amazon’s Bryan Stevenson Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0812994523 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – October 21, 2014
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- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (October 21, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812994523
- ISBN-13: 978-0812994520
- Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Lawyers & Judges
- #1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Criminology
- #1 in Books > Law > Criminal Law > Criminal Procedure
At its core, Bryan Stevenson’s JUST MERCY is about the inherent inhumanity of the American justice system. As Stevenson puts it, “Presumptions of guilt, poverty, racial bias, and a host of other social, structural, and political dynamics have created a system that is defined by error, a system in which thousands of innocent people now suffer in prison.” This is a system that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole, that makes petty theft a crime as serious as murder, and that has declared war on hundreds of thousands of people with substance abuse problems by imprisoning them and denying them help. Stevenson is an attorney with the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, an organization that offers free legal services to the poor and disenfranchised. His book is a sobering look at criminal justice from the perspective of those least likely to be treated fairly.
JUST MERCY explores a number of devastating cases, including children as young as fourteen facing life imprisonment, and scores of people on death row – mostly poor, and mostly black – who have been unfairly convicted. But the central focus is on Walter McMillan, a black man sentenced to death for the murder of a prominent young white woman. McMillan claimed he did not commit this crime, and he had a score of alibi witnesses, but he was quickly railroaded into both a conviction and a death sentence. Stevenson spent years working to get McMillan a new trial, and the two men remained connected throughout the remainder of McMillan’s life. It’s a fascinating case, one that involves perjury, police corruption, a racist judge, and prosecutors more intent on protecting their political positions than finding justice.
The saddest person I ever met was an appellate criminal defense attorney who spoke to our law school class for two hours on a drizzly October day. Morning, noon, and night, he dealt with death penalty appeals and almost always lost. During the presentation, he never smiled once, never uttered a happy or hopeful word. This book is nothing like that talk. It is, in fact, full of hope. While there are a tremendous number of losses, the author also reports important victories – victories that saved inmates’ lives and over three decades moved the American criminal system incrementally closer to justice for all. In addition to the hope, you will be surprised how often Bryan Stevenson mentions hugs. Whether it’s the hug from his grandmother, the hug from the director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, the hug he gives a client on death row, or the hug a victim’s mother gives him in a courthouse hallway, the book is full of hugs.
I mention the hope and the hugs not to distract from the main subject of the book, which is the broken nature of our criminal justice system and the terrible cost it extracts from all of us. I mention them because they give you an idea of the extraordinary humanity of the author. Bryan Stevenson is a remarkable person, a courageous lawyer, that rare human being who stands up for the most reviled among us at great personal risk to himself, who maintains his kindness in the face of cruelty, his decency in the face of indecency, and his love in the face of hatred. His life has been all about justice and mercy.
He tells his story well. The reader shares his naiveté as he first begins his law school experience and moves into advocacy for the unjustly convicted and sentenced.
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