Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy almost feels like a real-life version of To Kill A Mockingbird. This is the story of multiple cases where people were wrongly or unjustly convicted. Bryan Stevenson is the lawyer who represents these people for free. Many of these cases show how race plays an unfair role in the criminal justice system. Not only are minorities treated unfairly, but so are the mentally ill and minors. The main character who was wrongly convicted is a black man from Alabama named Walter McMillian. After the murder of a well-liked white girl, the police have no one to arrest. When Walter is accused by a white man, he is quickly arrested, despite his alibi that he was at a fish restaurant with dozens of people miles away at the time of the murder. Although Stevenson is ultimately able to fight and prove Walter's innocence, he ends up spending six years on death row, leaving him traumatized and scarred. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Bryan Stevenson works for a nonprofit agency that provides free lawyers to those who are wrongly convicted. There are a number of such programs across the country. An example of this type of agency is the South Alabama Volunteer Lawyer Program located in Mobile, Alabama. According to their website, they have more than 855 volunteer attorneys who work with low-income clients on certain types of civil cases. Bryan Stevenson's practice in Montgomery, Alabama is very similar to the South Alabama Volunteer Attorney Program. According to his book and LinkedIn page, he is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI. On the EJI website, there are a number of tabs at the top listing issues important to the organization. It has a Racial Justice tab, a Children in Prison tab, a Mass Incarceration tab, a Death Penalty tab, and a Just Mercy tab. Under the Racial Justice tab, there are three sub-tabs titled “Evolution of Slavery,” which gives the reader a brief history of Black slavery in America; “Legacy of Lynching,” gives us a Moderately long story and context. the lynching of African Americans in the South, “Resistance to Civil Rights,” gives us insight into the civil rights movement and the backlash African Americans faced for standing up for what was right, and finally “Presumption of Guilt,” essentially explains how African Americans are and have always been presumed inferior by the dominant (white) culture, making them more deserving of being incarcerated and enslaved because it is for their own good. Stevenson describes his program as volunteer-based. Although it is a private practice, anyone using its services is affected by the state's criminal justice system. At the time the book was published, EJI was just getting started, so Stevenson was not able to take on as many clients as he could now that his practice is quite well developed. This meant that some people left without any service and were put to death. However, Stevenson accepted as many clients as possible. Although in the 1980s racism and segregation were not overtly permitted in laws, for example Jim Crow laws, racism was (and is) still widely practiced and ingrained in Southern culture in particular. This meant that it also affected the.