just mercy a story of justice and redemption

The thread that ties it all together is the story of Walter McMillian, a black man convicted and sentenced to death for killing a young white woman in Monroeville, Alabama in the 1980s. In Just Mercy, he uses his own experiences fighting for those inside our system to illuminate where our retributive system of criminal processing has led us. Over these last 25 years as he looked deeper and deeper into our system of justice, he sadly found injustice around every turn – fourteen year olds automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide offenses, children condemned to death and housed with adults who subjected them to sexual violence, children housed in solitary confinement for decades, black people sentenced to death by all-white juries in all-white courtrooms where legal counsel were barely present and completely silent … and the list goes on. At that time, Alabama was executing people at an alarming rate, primarily poor people of color who were herded through the criminal justice system as if cattle to the slaughter. Westervelt Sociology Professor, 2016 Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemptionīryan Stevenson started the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama over 25 years ago to provide legal services to inmates condemned to death who had never been provided competent legal counsel.

Saundra Westervelt Discusses New Book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemptionĭr.

Just mercy a story of justice and redemption