{"id":4410,"date":"2015-07-15T00:00:29","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T07:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/?p=4410"},"modified":"2015-07-14T22:31:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T05:31:40","slug":"book-review-just-mercy-a-story-of-justice-and-redemption-by-bryan-stevenson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/?p=4410","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: &#8220;Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption&#8221; by  Bryan Stevenson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1yWxZGmY9iU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Mr. Stevenson should wear a cape or win the Nobel Peace Prize (My prediction). He&#8217;s like a modern Atticus Finch as in the novel &#8220;To Kill a Mocking Bird.&#8221; He saved many people from the death rows unjustly convicted because of the sloppy police work, being young and ignorant, mentally retarded (like Horace Dunkins), but mostly being poor. &#8220;The opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice,&#8221; as he&#8217;s often quoted. He wants to do more than Atticus Finch accomplished, where the jailed black man in the novel did not have a good ending.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My key takeaways are:<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; The Walter McMillian case is an epitome of the racial injustice in this country especially in the south like the state of Alabama. It can be attributed to the prevailing racial bigotry against blacks especially ones that are relatively successful, uneasiness about interracial relationship (he had an extramarital affair with a white woman), and the legal maneuver of the over zealous prosecutors without concerns for the truths, and inertia of the legal system to not &#8220;rock the boat&#8221; or boosting the judges&#8217; chance of being elected by acting tough and winning the votes. Of course, the biggest contributor to injustice is their poverty &#8211; not having enough money to get proper legal representation. Sad to see attorneys fighting over the budgeted $1,000 legal fee for a capital (death-sentence) case.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Mr. Stevenson makes very arguments about turning away from executing juveniles in capital cases and reducing the sentences of the juvenile non-capital cases. Yes, we were all young and stupid in our youths. For those unlucky ones not having the proper adult supervision, they would go astray and got themselves in huge troubles. They deserve a second look and mercy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; For the past years, I myself have gradually moved away from believing in capital punishment to one against it. In addition to legal costs, the margin of error is simply too large for this legal system, despite being one of the best in the world. Of course, this means the innocent ones may get locked up for life without the news focus of death sentence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; The books are relative lopsided on the side of the unjustly accused and punished. Would be good for Mr. Stevenson to present the other side &#8211; those that are justly accused &#8211; to be more impartial.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Mr. Stevenson is very good at telling stories. The book reads like a novels, full of intrigues and twists. <\/p>\n<p>&#8211; This is an excellent book on show how disadvantaged a person can get in trouble in this legal justice systems especially if you&#8217;re poor, young without supervision, being a women and just being black, or in his words &#8211; &#8220;broken.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure he and his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eji.org\/\">Equal Justice Initiative<\/a> can save all but he&#8217;s making a difference in turning the tide. <\/p>\n<p>Click &#8216;2&#8217; below for next page<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/>\n<strong>A short Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 1 ~ 3:<\/strong><br \/>\nSets up the story of Walter McMillian, whose interracial extra-marital affair with a young white woman got himself targeted as a suspect of a murder of white young woman in an laundry store.<br \/>\nAlso, his encountered with an old man in a wheel chair encouraged him to keep &#8220;Beating the drum of justice.&#8221;<br \/>\nWalter ended up in the death row.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 4:<\/strong> Several death row cases were described including Horace Dunkins, a mildly retarded man, whose execution took a second jolt because of wrongly placed electrodes. Also a PTSD veteran who unintentionally killed a child to win the heart of his girl friend when the child picked up the bomb. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 5:<\/strong> Stevenson took Walter case and met Walter&#8217;s extended family. He got a call from the accuser&#8217;s (Bill Myers) colleague (Darrel Houston) who spoke about being with the accuser at work during the time of crime. This person was harassed and arrested by the police as a warning shot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 6:<\/strong> The author narrated a juvenile being tried as an adult. Charlies, a 14-year-old boy, shot and skilled a police officer, George, after his mother&#8217;s boyfriend knocked his mother unconscious, not dead as he suspected. When Stevenson met Charlies at the adult prison, Charlie was still in shock from being raped by several men in the prison. The story had a good ending as a nice old white couples from a church Stevenson gave a speech to, eventually corresponded with Charlie and took him in as their own family. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 7:<\/strong> McMillian&#8217;s case got a break from getting Bill Myer&#8217;s withdrawal of the testimony. They finally got the incredulous police records. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 8:<\/strong> In this chapter, the three child lifer&#8217;s stories: Trina Garnet story was described &#8211; a sad case of poor, broken, large family whose mother died when she was 9. She later became homeless at 14 in order to escape her father&#8217;s sexual abuse then found herself in jail for indirectly causing 2 boys&#8217; death in a fire. In the jail, she was raped by an correction officer and became pregnant. She&#8217;s serving life sentence and is now 53 years old. Then there is this Ian Manuel&#8217;s story of serving life sentence after shooting a victim in a failed robbery attempt. He was 13 years old. Another boy, Antonio Nunez, was given a life sentence at 14 for a fake kidnapping and attempted murder of police officer. No one was injured in this case.<\/p>\n<p>Click &#8216;3&#8217; below for next page<br \/>\n<!--nextpage--><br \/>\n<strong>Chapter 9:<\/strong> Stevenson described the hearing on Walter McMillian&#8217;s case. This was the turning point whereby the accuser recant in front of judge and other witnesses were brought in. There were several dramas involving Mrs. Williams appearance, confronting the police dog twice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 10:<\/strong> The condemned mentally-ill is the central theme of this chapter. The statistic of over 50% jail inmates are mentally ill is stunning. George Daniel suffered a head drama during a car accident and became disoriented after being kicked out of a bus. He accidentally shot a police officer during a struggle. He was given the death sentence after being diagnosed competent to stand trial by a fake doctor. Then there is this story of Avery Jenkins, raised as a foster child in many foster families due to his mental illness. He kept asking for a chocolate milk shake during the visit by Stevenson, who faced difficulty passing the white prison guard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 11:<\/strong> Back to Walter McMillian&#8217;s case, Stevenson got 60 Minutes and other media involved and finally won the freedom for Walter after enduring numerous bomb threat and several setbacks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 12:<\/strong> Marsha Colbey&#8217;s baby died in stillbirth and they buried in the backyard. She was arrested for being a baby killer serving a life sentence and ended up serving 10 years after Stevenson&#8217;s successful appeal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 13:<\/strong> Now Walter McMillian was out and facing new challenges including the financial one to get back on his feet. His civil lawsuit against the police and prosecutors didn&#8217;t go anywhere as they were exempt. Walter&#8217;s mental state deteriorated.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 14:<\/strong> Joe Sullivan was 14 and convicted of the rape assault, most likely wrongfully and became ill and contracted M.S and became wheelchair bound. Here Stevenson described his battle with Supreme Court to ban life sentence for juvenile offenders.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 15:<\/strong> Walt has deteriorated into a point where he needs constant care. He&#8217;s &#8220;broken.&#8221; Another retarded person, Jimmy Dill had a stuttering problem that brought back an old childhood memory. Despite Stevenson&#8217;s gallant effort, he was executed. At this point, Stevenson was &#8220;broken&#8221; too. &#8220;Our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.&#8221; &#8220;Embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can&#8217;t otherwise see; you hear things you can&#8217;t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity the resides in each of us.&#8221; Stevenson also describes his encounter with Rosa Parks and the interesting conversation they had.<\/p>\n<p>Chapter 16: Stevenson in May of 2010 celebrated the victory of winning the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision on banning life imprisonment without parole imposed on children convicted of non-homicide crimes is cruel and unusual punishment and constitutionally impermissible. His effort is starting the take effect across the country. Stevenson is the stonecatcher, referring to the Bible story about casting the stone at people. &#8220;Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven&#8217;t earned it, who haven&#8217;t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is a great book to change people&#8217;s mind about capital punishment or just enjoyed good stories with good and bad endings. It may cheer you up and feeling hopeful knowing there are people like Bryan Stevenson in the world.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GqdpSpfWtEQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is a good video on the mission of Equal Justice Initiative by Bryan Stevenson hosted on their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eji.org\/\">EJI website<\/a>:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r4e_djVSag4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe<\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. Stevenson should wear a cape or win the Nobel Peace Prize (My prediction). He&#8217;s like a modern Atticus Finch as in the novel &#8220;To Kill a Mocking Bird.&#8221; He saved many people from the death rows unjustly convicted because of the sloppy police work, being young and ignorant, mentally retarded (like Horace Dunkins), but &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/?p=4410\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Book Review: &#8220;Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption&#8221; by  Bryan Stevenson<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4410"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4438,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4410\/revisions\/4438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learnbyblogging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}