Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
As a young lawyer, Bryan Stevenson began working on behalf of convicted death row inmates. From aiding people who were wrongly accused, mentally ill, or too young to be given adult sentences, Stevenson’s experiences led him to found The Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to ending mass incarceration and racial injustice.
Filled with staggering statistics and heartbreaking case studies, Just Mercy is both a testament to the American legal system’s deep-rooted inequality and a powerful memoir about a man determined to pursue justice against overwhelming odds.
Quote:
“In the 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled that under-representation of racial minorities and women in jury pools was unconstitutional, which in some communities at least led to black people being summoned to the courthouse for possible selection as jurors (if not selected). The Court had repeatedly made clear, though, that the Constitution does not require that racial minorities and women actually serve on juries — it only forbids excluding jurors on the basis of race or gender […] Nearly everyone on death row had been tried by an all-white or nearly all-white jury.”
Author:
Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer, professor, and the founder and executive director of The Equal Justice Initiative. Just Mercy is his first book.
Published: 2014
Length: 334 pages
Set in: Alabama, U.S.