BLOG POST #3: Argument

     In the book, Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson heavily focuses on his clients that served on death row. As the reader, you learn a lot about death row that you may not have previously known. You learn the living conditions, the crimes many of these people are convicted of, and the treatment they receive. You learn about the deeply rooted racism within some of these prisons. Stevenson has a few main platforms throughout the book that he gets across, and one of them is the abolishment of the death penalty. 

    The death penalty has recently become a sensitive topic for discussion. The United States is one of the few countries that still have the death penalty at all, though certain states have gotten rid of it. However, Alabama is not one of those states. Stevenson often talks about the high execution rates in Alabama; as well as the high rate of execution that people are convicted of. This in itself is one of the problems; he talks about how judges are voted into their position, and in Alabama, they are more likely to be voted in again depending on how harsh their sentencing is. This drives the judges to give more harsh sentences to people who may not deserve it, just because it will give them personal gain. Systematic racism runs deeper then just within the prisons, it is also affecting the judicial system that America is based off of. 

    In addition to political prejudice, there are also often swayed juries. In many of Stevenson's cases, he had to deal with having a black defendant, with an all-white jury. There are many studies that show that all-white juries with a black defendant almost always result in a harsh conviction, or are more likely to result in a conviction than if the defendant was white, or if one person in the jury was black. For example, a study done at Duke University shows that an all-white jury in Florida convicted black defendants 16% more often than white defendants; a gap that was nearly eliminated when a least one member of the jury pool is black. This percentage should not be existent in general, even more so in the court rooms. Stevenson supports his argument throughout the novel by sublty using pathos. He does this by angering and upsetting the reader through describing the injustices black defendants have to endure. The novel highlights on the mistreatment and injustice that the death row inmates live with; but it also applies to every other black defendant within the country. 

    Stevenson qualifies his argument about abolishing the death penalty by speaking on the mistreatment of not just death row inmates, but the rest of the black community. In so many cases, black people receive much more harsher punishments compared to a white person. This is highlighted in Stevenson argument, which focuses on black death for inmates. Quoting from the novel and film, about 1 in 9 death row inmates is wrongly sentenced; that is inexcusable. Stevenson presents a strong and aggressive argument for the better of the black community, but also our nation as a whole.