A Story of Justice and Redemption
So, my father has a degree in law, my mother has wanted to pursue the career of a lawyer but couldn’t, all together it’s made me engaged in the field as well. I have an extremely long and sometimes painful history with it. That’s why when Ms.B presented the opportunity to choose any written in English book in the world as our Individual Reading project, I gladly took it as I knew exactly what genre to pick.
The book I’ve chosen is called Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Its author, Bryan Stevenson, is a gifted social justice lawyer, activist, and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Basically, his work is about the people he has represented and how unfairly the system has treated them.
One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young African American man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn’t commit. He really didn’t, the prosecution’s case was extremely far-fetched. The case exemplifies how the system treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.
I think that these two sentences I’m about to present fully describe the US criminal justice system of the 1990s (the book starts there): “But there was no evidence against McMillian — no evidence except that he was an African American man involved in an adulterous interracial affair, which meant he was reckless and possibly dangerous, even if he had no prior criminal history and a good reputation. Maybe that was evidence enough.” The way they thought the man was possibly dangerous gives you everything you need to know, that is them having no material proof or witness whatsoever and basing their judgment solely on the man being black and having an interracial relationship. Last time I checked it doesn’t make him a murderer. By the way, is it possible that the repercussions of the 1990s were present up until this very day? Absolutely. I see that almost every time I hear the news about another instance of police brutality “oh, but he seemed as if he were reaching for a gun”, “he had many driving offences he was liable to act recklessly”. That’s reasonable enough to shoot people to death why? My sophomore year I wrote a super embarrassing post calling this a controversial issue, now I don’t find controversy in this at all (this is the one belief I’m sure in).
Sorry, back to the book. I’ve selected it because it shows injustice as it is, because that’s the only way we can understand the root and the basis of the system and why it desperately requires change. The day in class when we talked about freedom in America made me question how they manage to restrict and control that freedom. How CAN you control it if it’s freedom? Generally, this piece of writing is also very moving and thought-provoking which is exactly what I was eager to achieve: this book makes me THINK. Moreover, it abides in legal terms giving my inner lawyer joy.
Now, some delicious vocabulary pieces I’d like to share with you. I’m just 100 pages in, so, there aren’t too many.
Adversarial — involving people opposing or disagreeing with each other
(Doesn’t really count as vocabulary, I just adore this phrase) Them without the capital get the punishment — basically, you’ll never meet a person with money on death row.
Indelibly — in a way that is impossible to remove by washing or in any other way
To beat the drum for — to speak enthusiastically about a belief or idea in order to persuade other people to support it too
Clemency — mercy
I’d like to end this post with another quote from the book, but let’s make it an open ending. “My short time on death row revealed that there was something missing in the way we treat people in our judicial system, that maybe we judge some people unfairly. The more I reflected on the experience, the more I recognized that I had been struggling my whole life with the question of how and why people are judged unfairly.”
Thank you,
Anita
