Review: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
Spiegel & Grau
2015
I missed this one in its original offering, but I am glad to
have discovered it in paper. Yes, this is about justice and mercy from a
lawyer’s own experience and practice. A
single case serves as the base story line for this book, but there’s plenty of
others interspersed as well. This reads
as well as most recent fiction, but it’s true and with endnotes too.
Stevenson originally worked with death row inmates primarily
in the Alabama prisons. If you are from
Alabama I’ll tell you now it isn’t a pretty story of the legal system in that
state. Not only in the days gone by, but
also in more recent times. Other states
take some hits too, so he didn’t single just Alabama out. And they aren’t all in the South. This book
has been compared to Harper Lee’s To Kill
a Mockingbird. It does carry a sad
resemblance.
What the author is attempting to do, however, is to bring to
the forefront some issues with the justice system in the USA that need the
light of day on them. We all know that
there’s stuff that has happened, but for me I wasn’t aware of the frequency and
breadth. And it isn’t just a minority
issue. But before your hair burns too
far down, he’s not a total far, far left progressive as far as his treatment of
his story. He is wants the reader to see
justice dispensed with mercy as the title suggests. That’s what we all want to see happen and he
has taken up cases that were brought to his attention in service of that credo.
His original involvement had to do with the reviews that death row inmates apparently
are entitled to have before their execution.
Something that some were not able to obtain and his career grows from
that point.
It’s worth your time to read. I learned about some practices that I didn’t
know existed in our legal system. I imagine you will also.
I received this book form the publisher in return for a
review.
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