Criminal Justice In Just Mercy, By Bryan Stevenson

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Capital punishment and bias in sentencing is among many issue minorities faced for many years in the better part of the nineteen hundreds. Now it continues to spill into the twenty first century due to the erroneous issues our criminal justice system has caused many people to suffer. In the book Just Mercy authored by Bryan Stevenson, Stevenson explains many cases of injustice. Stevenson goes into details of numerous cases of wrongfully accused people, thirteen and fourteen year olds being sentenced to death and sentences of life without parole for children. These issues Stevenson raises bring to question whether the death penalty is as viable as it should be. It brings to light the many issues our criminal justice system has today. There …show more content…

Stevenson took McMillian’s case after reading his case file and found his case was full of vary questionable facts, circumstances and evidence against his client. The cases involved the murder of a local girl in Monroe County where McMillian resided. Stevenson (2014) “In the late morning of November, 1, 1986, Ronda Morrison… was found dead on the floor of Monroe Cleaners…” (p, 30). Due to testimony by people who never knew or met McMillian, McMillian was charged and sentenced to the death penalty for Morrison’s …show more content…

He worked hard and had his own business cutting trees. McMillian became well known due to an affair he had with a local married women Karen Kelley. Kelly was a white women and it became big news once in Monroe County about her affair with a black man. A few months after the murder of Ronda Morrison, a criminal named Ralph Myers was arrested for the murder of Vickie Pittman in a nearby county. Myers was a well-known criminal who was into drugs. Myers, but had started seeing Kelly during the months after McMillian and her split. Myers now in jail was trying to pin the murder on people including Sherriff Tate of Monroe County. Once he realized that was not sticking, he changed his story. Stevenson (2014) “… he had been involved in the murder of Vickie Pittman along with Karen Kelly and her black boyfriend, Walter McMillian. But that wasn’t all. He also told police that McMillian was responsible for the murder of Ronda Morrison.” (p, 33). Ralph Myers has now implicated McMillian, an innocent man, for the murder of Morrison who he no part in the event. McMillian was quickly charged and sent to death row before even being sentenced for the murder or Morrison. Within a year or so Myers and couple other people gave false testimony and McMillian in less than two days was sentenced to capital punishment with the death

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