The Justice System In Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy is a reflection on the justice system in the United States and how minorities are treated without justice in the system. In his book, Stevenson has countless excerpts of his cases where he fights injustice in the system for women, children, minorities, and the poor. Bryan Stevenson is an African-American lawyer who was born in a rural town. His grandfather was stabbed to death, so from a young age, Stevenson knew what it was to feel the loss of a family member, but he was also raised to forgive. Stevenson was able to understand the pain of having a family member murdered. He went to Harvard Law, and was rather out of place as it was his class was heavily white. He became first introduced to people on death row through

“The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes,” (Death Penalty Information Center, “Introduction to the Death Penalty”). Capital Punishment has also been in various other codes such as Seventh Century B.C.'s Draconian Code of Athens, where death became the sole punishment for all crimes. People have argued that the death penalty is a violation of amendment VIII, that bans cruel or unusual punishments. Advocates against it have argued the imperfection, the possibility that the defendant is innocent, and inhumanity of capital punishment. In the United States, there are 31 states that still have the death penalty, four of which have a gubernatorial moratoria, a suspension of the death penalty. All states that practice the death penalty and the federal government use lethal injection as the primary execution method. Protocol varies from state to state as they use either a one, two, or three-drug protocol. The three-drug protocol generally starts with a sedative or anesthetic, proceeded by a drug to paralyze the prisoner, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride which stops the heart. A lethal dose of anesthetic or sedative is typical for the one or two drug protocols.

In many cases, bias piles up resulting in an unfavorable situation for African-American defendants. According to research done by Richard Dieter for “The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides” compared to all other eligible defendants, African-Americans have a 40% higher rate of being sentenced to death. One main cause, Dieter concluded, was that almost all prosecutors who make the decision whether or not to give the death penalty are white, in fact 98% are white, which is a factor in the racial imbalance in the practice of the death penalty. Another element in the racial disparity regarding capital punishment, is that prosecutors fail to treat the family of the victims depending on race equally. While often times prosecutors reach out to white families about whether or not the death penalty should be pursued but failed to do the same for the families of an African-American victim. The emotional decision of the distraught white families to push for the sentencing of the suspect’s death is a cause of why, despite African-American victims being over 60%, almost 80% of people on death row are in for committing crimes against white people. Among other things, juries play a big role in the role of race in capital punishment. Despite Batson v. Kentucky which ruled the expulsion of jurors based on race