Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Review

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Review Beacon Lights Book Review Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Every once in a while a book comes along that makes you think and even changes the way you have previously looked upon a subject. Just Mercy is such a book. This is the true story of a young lawyers fight for justice on the part of many on death row. The author, Bryan Stevenson battles racial injustice and represents many poor, non-white, mentally ill and young offenders. Their stories are interspersed throughout the book as he recounts his defense of Walter McMillian, a black man on death row. The memoir reads like a legal thriller, juxtaposing his many triumphs and failures. Bryan Stevenson grew up poor in Delaware. His great-grandparents had been slaves in Virginia and this legacy of slavery influenced the way his grandparents raised their children and grandchildren. They particularly emphasized the importance of faith and education. Stevensons faith was cultivated in the African Methodist Episcopal Church where he played the piano and sang in the choir. Stevenson attended Eastern College, a Christian institution outside Philadelphia, and then Harvard Law School. His focus to defend the poor began during college when he took an intensive class on race and poverty litigation. He was required to spend a month with an organization doing social justice work. They sent him to Georgia to work with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee where his first case required him to meet with a condemned man on death row. In the late 1980s, Stevensons legal firm first took up the cause of Walter McMillian, who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. The states case had many inconsistencies. They manufactured stories from witnesses who said they were with Walter when he committed the crime and disregarded accounts from many eyewitnesses who said they were with Walter at a church fundraiser. The legal system was determined to find someone to convict for this murder and decided Walter would be prosecuted because of his affair with a prominent white woman (a crime during this time period). The exposition of this case opened my eyes to the unfortunate fact that since prosecutors and police have legal immunity they can do considerable harm to innocent citizens when they are on the hunt for justice. A large portion of this book deals with the cases of poor black children sentenced to adult prisons and serving life sentences. Stevenson tells these stories very convincingly and sympathetically. He challenges their sentences because he says they are juveniles and his firm recognized the incongruity of not allowing children to smoke, drink, drive à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ because of their lack of maturity and judgement while simultaneously treating some of the most at-risk, neglected, and impaired children exactly the same as full-grown adults in the criminal justice system. Circumstances that would bring a youth to be put in a situation where he felt his only option was to kill someone because he is not aware of his other options, should be recognized upon sentencing. One example is a young boy who shoots his mothers abuser. Yes, punishment needs to occur, but placing a young child in an adult prison is not always appropriate justice. Stevenson also defends many poor white women who have been convicted of the murder of their spouse or stillborn child. He tells the stories of pregnant women who are too poor to see a doctor or go to the hospital, and then unfortunately during labor deliver a stillborn child. These women are then arrested and charged with capital murder which is punishable by the death penalty. Not all of the characters in Stevensons book are sympathetic and his defense of them does not always seem to be justified. As a defense lawyer his heart may sometimes get in the way of seeing their crimes objectively. In particular, he unsuccessfully defends a prisoner who commits the heinous act of killing a child with a bomb meant for a neighbor. While justice has been denied for a large portion those in the prison system, the authors faith in both the power of redemption and justice, underlines his continued hope in the possibility of change. The true measure of our character, Stevenson writes, is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ we all need mercy, we all need justice, and perhaps we all need some measure of unmerited grace.

Enders Game Essay

Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you’re good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.† Graff is explaining to Ender the philosophy behind everything they are doing. Although Ender does not know it at the time, this is the same reasoning that the adults will use to manipulate the children time and time again. Ender objects to this idea, because he believes that people are more than just tools, but nevertheless it is the pervading ideology of the I.F. throughout the book. This philosophy justifies doing terrible things in the name of humanity, and it also means that individuals will have to make awful sacrifices for their species. â€Å"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.† Ender is telling Valentine why he hates himself. He is able to understand his enemies better than anyone else, but once he understands them he destroys them. With such tremendous empathy, even in coming to understand his worst enemies Ender loves them. This means that when he crushes them he is hurting himself in the process. Ender does not want to have enemies, so that he will not be forced to hurt anybody. He will love even those who seem to be his most bitter enemies when he properly understands them. But in the situations Ender has been in he has no choice other than destroying those enemies. At the end of the book, when Ender comes to truly understand the buggers, he is able to try to help them. He has already done them great harm, but now he can be happy because he has a chance to undo what he did to them. â€Å"So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.† â€Å"If the other fellow can’t tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn’t trying to kill you.† â€Å"What if we just left them alone?† â€Å"Ender, we didn’t go to them first, they came to us. If they were going to leave us alone, they could have done it a hundred years ago, before the First Invasion.† â€Å"Maybe they didn’t know we were intelligent life. Maybe—† This conversation occurs when Graff tells Ender his theory of why they are at war with the buggers. Graff tells Ender that since the buggers communicate through thought, they probably cannot understand that humans are thinking beings. Ender therefore wants to know why this cannot be remedied.

Essay The Internet - 2117 Words

The Internet The Future of Internet 1.Audience My Forum Paper was designed to that typical person who is always connected to the Internet and has an interest in knowing how Internet has influenced our society in this century and their lives. However it will be more directed to our traditional Gonzaga student, who has that normal personal computer and used normally to navigate through the Internet and would like to know how the Internet influenced our society and their lives. This forum paper has a very simple language for easy understanding for anyone who is not familiar with the Internet. 2.Introduction One of the most revolutionizing inventions of the century is the computer. Nowadays the computer is an†¦show more content†¦Isn’t that easy? Internet has become a very important tool in business if not the most important. It has decreased distances; we now can buy things from the other side of the world. For example, my father works in a high tech company that needed a piece, to construct their new car, which was only found in Japan. So the first thing he thought to buy the piece in less time and cheaper by the Internet. Nowadays we have companies that only operate through the Internet and have a bigger profit than normal companies. For example, Yahoo, one of the most famous companies in the Internet, makes a bigger profit than the Ford Company. However, all this has a bad part. Some economists have been asking themselves, how does a company that has 20 years of existence and doesn’t exist in reality only in a computer gain more than the Ford Company that has been around for nearly one hundred years? Some economists are afraid that what Internet is creating is a false economy, where you see no money just Internet interactions. The economists say that this economy may collapse and consequently make a great disaster in our world market. In my opinion, what these economists are saying is not wrong one problem of Internet business is that you can create a false economy with less jobs than the formal economy. Another problem in Internet business are the called â€Å"hackers† that destroy Internet pages, and can cost a lot ofShow MoreRelatedInternet Privacy And The Internet954 Words   |  4 Pagesunauthorized information by computer, but they actually make the internet a safer place. With the growth of the int ernet comes the growth of hackers and internet privacy. New laws that would increase internet privacy and, limit hackers would halt the internets growth and development. Since the year 2000, the internet has grown enormously we can all agree and with this growth comes a growth of internet users. 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Candy Diet By Seth Godin - 1137 Words

In the article â€Å"Candy Diet†, Seth Godin discusses how intellectual information has become unpopular in our modern day society. Today, people value simple and fast information more than in-depth, thought provoking material. Godin makes it clear that people need to stop this anti-intellectualism from snowballing and totally dominating our media by purchasing information of substance, avoiding videos that are intellectually numbing, and conversing in an intellectual manner. Godin successfully persuades the reader to choose intellectually stimulating information by his use of facts, quotes, examples, structure, encouraging tones, and even the title. The first few â€Å"paragraphs† of Godin’s article begins with an important fact that ultimately†¦show more content†¦He starts going into the tv channels we watch, â€Å"Fifteen years ago, cable channels like TLC†¦, Bravo, and the History channel...promised to add texture and and information to the blighted tv landscape. Now these networks run shows about marrying people based on how well they kiss†. These are great examples on how tv channels that are now seen as â€Å"trash tv† at one point used to be educational and informative. Another example he used was, â€Å"...newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn’t want to hear. We’ve responded by not buying newspapers anymore†. He’s pointing out to the audience that the newspapers know what they’re doing reporting information the reader needs to know and even award winning for doing their job well but as society declines intellectually so d oes the popularity of informative newspapers. In addition to the examples he also uses the structure of his article to appeal to the reader. Throughout the article he bashes simplicity and only looking at the key points instead the whole idea. Yet he is writing in such a way, very spaced out with only two sentences per paragraph. Talking with other readers of this article they actually complained and thought that this was very poor writing on Godin’s part and he was kind of being a hypocrite. In actuality Seth Godin knew exactly what he was doing. If he wants to change the minds of a simple and find the easy route society then he has to appeal to them. Actually get them to read his argument so