Just Mercy — DSI Film

An unforgettable true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us.

I decided to analyze the film Just Mercy. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as recently graduated lawyer Bryan Stevenson and Jamie Foxx as wrongfully convicted death row inmate Walter McMillian.

The film is based on the true story of Walter McMillian who was sentenced to death row in 1988 for a crime he did not commit. The latest of a many lawyers to appeal his sentence was Stevenson, who was finally able to prove he was wrongfully accused in the first place. Thanks to Stevenson, McMillian won his case and was released from prison in 1993.

Photograph of McMillian and Stevenson during the trials.

This film brings a lot of attention to the unfair treatment of African-Americans in judicial systems, especially those in the South. There has been shown to be a shocking amount of error in our legal system, unfortunately a large part can be attributed to racial bias.

As of October 15, 2016, the National Registry of Exonerations listed 1,900 defendants who were convicted of crimes and later exonerated because they were innocent — 47 percent of them were Black, three times their rate in the population.

#RepresentJustice

Along with the film, Warner Bros. promoted the Represent Justice campaign. Their mission is to turn stories into action, achieve a fair legal system, and end mass incarceration.

In the film, while still a student, Stevenson meets a black young man on death row. The young man is friendly and Stevenson notes that in a different life it could have been him. He believes this is his calling and moves to the South to defend poor death row inmates. He is of course met with resistance, white officers who antagonize and threaten him, and black inmates who think what he's doing is pointless because they were born guilty for being black. He doesn't give up and believes that he can find the evidence, provide the arguments, and prove that he was unjustly sentenced. Many of the people in his neighborhood are invested in the case because even though McMillian was not perfect, they did not believe he was a murderer, and certainly did not deserve the punishment. The case isn't about them, but like Stevenson says in the beginning of the movie, "that could have been me". The victory in the courtroom was a victory for the community, they'll fight injustice and support each other the entire way.