The Finale

     And just like that, it's over. In retrospect, I wasn't very excited about this book at all. I had automatically assumed that it would be a tedious read full of nothing but facts and numbers. I could not have been more wrong. By saying this I do not mean that there was nothing factual or educational about this book because there was a lot. What I mean instead is that the necessary information was skillfully woven into a main story-line as well as multiple side stories that related to the main one. As someone who would much rather read something entertaining and fun than something dry and boring, this really helped.
     Another thing he skillfully wove into his writing was his main ideas. They were never said outright, but rather hinted at numerous times in the writing. A big one that I gleaned from his words is that not all people who go to prison are bad people. In all of the cases that he mentioned in his book, none of them were terrible or nasty when he was meeting with them and later describing them. In fact, many of them that did commit the crimes(for there were multiple who didn't) felt awful about it and realized how their actions had negatively affected others. They were not only looking for ways out of prison and out of their unfair sentences, but also for ways to help others as a way to repent.
     Another big thing that you pick up on as you read is that our justice system is broken. In this book alone, we hear about dozens of cases where people were wrongly sentenced, treated cruelly, and submitted to cruel and unusual punishments. And these are only cases that this one man had worked on. That leaves one to think about how many others are left like this around our country. Even after considering the numbers, it was far harder to get these people justice than it should have been. Multiple times the evidence provided proved that a person was innocent of their alleged crime, and yet they were kept incarcerated for it. The system should make it easier to release the wrongly convicted, not harder.
     The final big thing that one learns from this book is that everyone deserves kindness and mercy. This point is really brought up in the final pages of the novel when Bryan is saying goodbye to one of his mentally disabled clients who is about to be executed. As he is on the phone, he thinks about a moment from his past, when he had laughed at a young boy who had a severe stutter. His mother had made him go back to the boy and apologize, give him a hug, and tell him that he loved him. To Bryan's surprise, the boy hugged him back. Looking back on this moment he realized that everyone can forgive and be kind, even to people who don't necessarily deserve it.
     As far as I am concerned, this is one of my favorite assigned books I've read in school. Just the way the writing made me feel things, not only for the people who were suffering but for how we need to fix all of the problems we have with the justice system in our country. And how most of all, how everyone needs the chance to get just mercy.

The Wrongs Continue

    For many people, money is not the most valuable thing in the world.
The title for most valuable depends on the person, whether it be love, family, or something else entirely. But one thing that almost everyone can agree on is that time is one of the most valuable things in the world.
    This is something that Stevenson touches on in this latest piece of reading. There are thousands of wrongly convicted people in the United States, and if they are released from prison, it only seems fair that they are properly compensated for the years that they have lost. Yet in many states, 22 to be exact, they "offer no compensation to the wrongly imprisoned,"(245). Even in states that do allow compensation, many have a cap to the amount of money an individual can receive. For example, New Hampshire has one of the lowest compensation caps in the country, with the wrongly imprisoned only able to collect up to $20,000 in compensation. As a person who lives in this state, it seems absurd that someone could be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for decades, and when they are finally released all they get in return is $20,000. As a citizen, you always want to believe that wherever you live, it is a fair and just place. But I guess this is not the case in all aspects of society.
    I think that Stevenson included this passage for a very specific reason. All through this book, we have always viewed Walter's release to be the biggest and most important thing that could happen, and after that, all of the wrongs would be righted. But now that he has been released, we now see that the injustices continue. Right out of prison, Walter was awarded nothing, and only after lots of legal stuff that I didn't totally understand. He shouldn't have to fight so hard for things that many people believe should be his by right. This passage demonstrates one of the many ways life is made more difficult for people fresh out of prison, even if they are innocent of the crime that put them there.

Chocolate Milkshake

      All of our books in this unit are about race, and even though I haven't read any of them other than Just Mercy, I am making the assumption that they all promote an end to racial injustice in all walks of life. This is a goal that wouldn't be possible if not for people's ability to change, whether it be themselves entirely or just their opinions and actions. Stevenson knows this, and that is why he included the section about Avery Jenkins and one of his correctional officers.
      Mr. Jenkins was a prisoner in a southern prison who suffered from mental health issues. He was arrested and sentenced to death for the stabbing murder of an older man, a man he had thought was a demon. When Stevenson went to visit Avery, he was mistreated by one of the correctional officers at the prison, one that is never named and Stevenson had never seen during all of his visits to the prison prior. The officer forced him to strip, even when "lawyers don't have to get strip-searched to come in for legal visits,"(194) and made sure that Stevenson knew that the "truck out in the visitation yard with a lot of bumper stickers, flags, and a gun rack"(196) was his. For reference, the stickers and flags that covered this vehicle were all pro-confederacy and segregation. This treatment was not reserved only for Stevenson, for he treated Avery with the same abusiveness. But, it would not stay like this forever.
      For a hearing about whether or not to take Avery Jenkins off of death row, the same officer was the one tasked with bringing him to the courthouse. Over the course of the hearing, during which Stevenson outlined the traumatic and life-threatening experiences Jenkins had during his many years in the foster system, as well as bringing in medical professionals to talk about the effects those experiences could have on people, that correctional officer was watching. He too had been failed by the foster system as a child, and with the truths of Avery's life coming out, he suddenly felt a connection and an understanding of how and why. He knew that Avery had meant no harm, and he knew that there was a man who had gone through even more than he had and had been punished for the disabilities he had sustained. At that moment he had a change of heart. That is what Stevenson's goal for this passage of the book was. To prove that even the most radical of us can change their ways and their opinions. Because if we don't, we are truly lost.

Charlie (Not Class Charlie)

     At the very foundation of this piece, it is about racial injustice in America and how African American individuals are treated differently than whites. We can see an example of this from pages 120-126. During the segment of writing, we meet a 14-year-old black boy named Charlie who has been sentenced to death after killing his mother's boyfriend, who had been abusing her for some time. Now, the thing that makes this case different from many of the others is that the thing in question is not whether or not he actually committed the crime, because he had already confessed. This issue in question here was whether or not he could legally be sentenced to death. According to the book, in 1988 the Supreme Court "had barred the death penalty for children under the age of fifteen,"(118). So therefore by law, Charlie could not be sentenced to death. Yet because the man he killed was a county police officer and the judge deemed it necessary, the child was tried as an adult because of the capital nature of the crime.
     Based on the main points Stevenson has been weaving into his writing, it seems that the race of the little boy also played a role in his incredibly harsh punishment. Would he have sustained the same sentence if he was a white child instead? There is no way of knowing for sure but based on the rest of the book and our knowledge of history, we can make an assumption that race is indeed a factor. Stevenson is trying to show us that it shouldn't be and that a little boy of 14 shouldn't be put on death row when the law clearly states he can't, especially when the only reason for being there is his race.

An Interesting Description

     In this post, I would like to focus on one piece of writing that really reflects one of the main points that I think the author, Bryan Stevenson, will be trying to make throughout this book. The section in question is a description in the introduction of the book on page 9 and goes as such; "The man who walked in seemed even more nervous than I was. He glanced at me, his face screwed up in a worried wince, and he quickly averted his gaze when I looked back. He didn't move far from the room's entrance, as if he didn't really want to enter the visitation room. He was a young, neatly groomed African American man with short hair-- clean-shaven, medium frame and build-- wearing bright, clean prison whites. He looked immediately familiar to me, like everyone I'd grown up with, friends from school, people I played sports or music with, someone I'd talk to on the street about the weather." Now, by itself, this description doesn't really seem out of the ordinary. What makes it so interesting is the build-up of this passage. Everything written before the above passage comes across with a sense of foreboding, with a feeling that everything's building up to the reason for the author's journey, a death row inmate. There are numerous things that help you to feel that something sinister is coming. "The intimidating barbed wire fence," "it's dark corridors," "each step echoing ominously," "The room was an empty cage,". Hearing these words we build up the picture that the man Mr. Stevenson is meeting is going to be some kind of monster, not the totally normal and seemingly kind and worried young man we meet. This right here is the problem that Bryan Stevenson is trying to address. Because the man, whose name is Henry, is an African American man on death row, we automatically form this image in our head of what he is going to look like, what kind of personality he's going to have, how he's going to behave. Instead, we are presented with Henry, and we feel guilty for making those assumptions, or at least I did and Bryan Stevenson did. It is the source of this guilt that is one of the main points Mr. Stevenson addresses, that all death row prisoners are monsters and that in many cases we view them to be, even if that couldn't be farther from the truth. No-one is totally lost, and everyone has a chance to find redemption.