How to Write the Just Mercy Part One Response Assignment
A section-by-section guide for students responding to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy Part 1 — covering how to choose the strongest case, how to explain what happened accurately, and how to write a focused analytical response about fairness, treatment, and systemic decision-making.
This assignment looks short — two paragraphs, choose a person from Part 1, explain what happened, say what stood out to you. But two-paragraph responses are harder to write well than longer essays precisely because every sentence carries significant weight. There is no room for a slow warm-up, padding, or vague observations. This guide explains exactly how to choose the right case, what to include in each paragraph, what the question is actually asking when it says “what stood out to you most about how the system handled this case,” and where most responses lose marks.
The second paragraph is not asking for your feelings about the person or whether the story made you sad. It is asking you to evaluate how the legal and criminal justice system functioned — or failed to function — in this specific case. “I felt really bad for Walter McMillian” is not analysis of the system. “The system relied on testimony from witnesses with documented credibility problems and ignored exculpatory evidence because pursuing exoneration was politically inconvenient for state officials” is. The prompt directs you toward three specific lenses: fairness, treatment, and decision-making. Pick one or two and develop them with specific evidence from the book. Do not try to comment on everything — cover one or two things with precision.
What This Guide Covers
What This Assignment Is Actually Testing
This assignment is a reading comprehension and critical thinking task combined. It tests three skills at once: whether you understood the specific details of what happened to the person you chose; whether you can summarize accurately and concisely without distorting the facts; and whether you can move from factual summary to analytical observation — identifying something specific about how the criminal justice system operated in that case and explaining why it matters.
The prompt’s final instruction — “Think about fairness, treatment, or decision-making” — is not decoration. It is telling you the evaluative categories your second paragraph should use. Fairness asks whether the process followed its own rules equitably. Treatment asks how the person was handled as a human being by courts, lawyers, corrections staff, and institutions. Decision-making asks why specific choices were made by prosecutors, judges, juries, or officials — and whether those choices were justified, rational, or defensible given the evidence available.
How to Choose the Right Case for Your Response
The prompt names three figures as examples — Walter McMillian, Herbert Richardson, Trina Garnett — but the assignment does not require you to choose one of those three. Any person or case discussed in Part 1 is eligible. The choice matters because it determines what evidence you have to work with and how clearly you can answer the second paragraph’s question about the system’s handling.
Criteria for a Strong Case Selection
- The case has specific, concrete details you can summarize accurately in a few sentences
- There is a clear moment where you can point to a specific failure, injustice, or troubling decision — not just a vague sense that things went wrong
- The case connects to at least one of the three lenses: fairness, treatment, or decision-making
- You remember enough from your reading to write about it without needing to reconstruct everything — choose the case that stayed with you most clearly
What Makes a Case Hard to Write About
- You remember it only vaguely and cannot recall specific details — this makes Paragraph One inaccurate and Paragraph Two generic
- The case involves many overlapping legal events that are difficult to compress into a few sentences without confusion
- The “what stood out” observation seems obvious or surface-level — “the system was unfair” without being able to say exactly how or why
- You are choosing it because you think it is what the teacher expects rather than because you have something specific to say about it
The Strongest Choice Is Usually the One With the Most Specific Detail You Can Recall
Walter McMillian is the most extensively documented case in Part 1 and gives you the most specific evidence to work with — the fabricated testimony, the sheriff’s manipulation, the reversed conviction, the years on death row for a crime committed in broad daylight with dozens of alibi witnesses. Herbert Richardson’s case gives you a different angle: a Vietnam veteran whose execution raises questions about how the system handles mental health, trauma, and the logic of capital punishment. Trina Garnett’s case gives you the lens of juvenile sentencing and life-without-parole for someone convicted as a child. All three work. The best choice is the one where you can name a specific detail — not just a general feeling — in your second paragraph.
All Major Cases and Figures in Part One
Part 1 of Just Mercy covers the early chapters of Stevenson’s career at the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama. Below is a reference table of all the major figures discussed in these chapters — their situations, the core issue their case raises, and which analytical lens fits best for the second paragraph.
| Person / Case | Core Situation | Best Analytical Lens | Strongest “Stood Out” Observation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walter McMillian | Black man convicted of murdering a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama; sentenced to death; evidence fabricated; alibi witnesses ignored; conviction eventually overturned | Fairness; Decision-Making | The state built its case on testimony from a witness with a criminal record who later recanted, while ignoring multiple alibi witnesses — and the system at every level resisted correcting the error |
| Herbert Richardson | Vietnam veteran on death row; killed a woman with a bomb he had intended as a distraction; severe PTSD from combat service; executed despite questions about his mental state | Treatment; Decision-Making | The system treated a traumatized veteran’s war-caused psychological damage as irrelevant to culpability — the same government that sent him to war executed him for the damage that war produced |
| Trina Garnett | Fourteen-year-old girl convicted of second-degree murder after a fire she set accidentally killed two children; sentenced to life without parole | Fairness; Treatment | A child with a history of severe abuse and trauma was sentenced as an adult to die in prison, with the court treating her childhood circumstances as irrelevant to the sentence imposed |
| Marsha Colbey | Woman on death row convicted of killing her baby; conviction based heavily on disputed forensic evidence; underlying story involves poverty and lack of prenatal care | Fairness; Decision-Making | The state relied on junk science forensic testimony to secure a conviction when the evidence did not conclusively establish what the prosecution claimed |
| Henry (death row encounter) | Death row inmate Stevenson encounters in his first prison visit; established through this early scene as emblematic of the dehumanization of incarceration | Treatment | The strip search Stevenson himself is subjected to during this visit illustrates how the system dehumanizes everyone who enters it — not just the incarcerated |
| Charlie (juvenile sentenced to death row) | Fourteen-year-old boy placed on Alabama’s death row; Stevenson visits him and navigates a system hostile to the idea that age matters in sentencing | Fairness; Treatment | The system placed a fourteen-year-old in an adult death row facility, exposing him to conditions designed for adult offenders with no legal pathway to appropriate placement |
Walter McMillian — The Central Case in Part One
Walter McMillian is the central figure of Just Mercy and receives the most detailed coverage in Part 1. If you choose him, you have access to the most specific evidence in the book. The key facts your first paragraph needs to include are these, and they should come from what Stevenson documents in the text.
The Equal Justice Initiative — the organization Bryan Stevenson founded and which handled Walter McMillian’s case — publishes extensively documented research on wrongful conviction, racial bias in capital punishment, and the systemic failures Stevenson describes in Just Mercy. Their report Slavery to Mass Incarceration and their annual reports on capital punishment provide the institutional context for the specific failures in McMillian’s case. Access their research directly at eji.org. Cite as: Equal Justice Initiative. (2023). Race and the death penalty. https://eji.org/issues/death-penalty/. This is a credible, primary institutional source for the broader systemic context your second paragraph may reference.
Herbert Richardson — The Vietnam Veteran Case
Herbert Richardson’s case appears in one of the early chapters as Stevenson describes trying to assist death row clients in their final days. Richardson was a Vietnam veteran who had returned from combat with severe, untreated psychological trauma. He placed a bomb near the home of a woman he was obsessed with, intending it as a dramatic gesture; the bomb killed her young niece. Richardson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
The System’s Treatment of War Trauma
The analytical observation this case supports is about how the criminal justice system handled — or refused to handle — the connection between Richardson’s military service, his resulting psychological damage, and his crime. Stevenson documents the inadequacy of Richardson’s legal representation and the failure of anyone in the system to meaningfully engage with his mental state as a factor in what he did. Richardson was executed. The system that sent him to war, provided no meaningful mental health support upon his return, and then executed him for the psychological damage combat produced is the subject of Stevenson’s critique. Your second paragraph can make this argument concretely: the decision-making in this case treated Richardson’s trauma as legally irrelevant, which raises a specific question about how the justice system determines culpability for people whose actions were shaped by state-sanctioned violence. This is analytical, specific, and directly connected to the prompt’s instruction to think about decision-making.
Trina Garnett — Juvenile Sentencing and Childhood Trauma
Trina Garnett was fourteen years old when she broke into a neighbor’s home in Pennsylvania with younger boys. A fire started — accounts suggest she may have intended to scare the family — and two children died. She was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole: a sentence that meant she would die in prison for an act she committed at age fourteen.
Facts You Need to Know About Trina’s Case
Stevenson documents that Trina grew up in a household with severe abuse and neglect — conditions the court was aware of but did not treat as mitigating factors in sentencing. She had intellectual disabilities and a history of profound trauma before she was fourteen years old. The life-without-parole sentence meant the criminal justice system decided, when she was a child, that she was beyond redemption and would never deserve a chance at freedom. The legal issue Stevenson develops — and which the Supreme Court later addressed in Miller v. Alabama (2012) — is whether sentencing children to die in prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. For your second paragraph, the analytical angle is about fairness: the system applied adult punishment to a child whose circumstances and cognitive development it chose to ignore.
Other Figures From Part One Worth Knowing
Charlie — Juvenile on Death Row
A fourteen-year-old placed in an adult death row facility in Alabama. Stevenson’s visit to Charlie is one of the book’s early scenes establishing both the dehumanizing conditions of incarceration and the specific harm done when children are treated as adults by the criminal justice system. If you choose Charlie, your second paragraph can focus on the treatment lens: placing a child in a space designed for adult death row inmates causes harm that the system showed no interest in preventing.
Marsha Colbey — Forensic Evidence
A woman convicted of killing her infant based on forensic evidence that was scientifically disputed. Her case illustrates how courts can convict based on expert testimony that later medical and scientific consensus does not support. If you choose her, your second paragraph works best through the decision-making lens: the system accepted expert testimony without sufficiently scrutinizing its scientific basis, with fatal consequences for the defendant.
Stevenson’s Own Strip Search
In Chapter 1, Stevenson himself is subjected to an invasive strip search when visiting death row — despite being a lawyer with legal access. This scene is not a case in the traditional sense, but it illustrates the dehumanization embedded in the system’s routine procedures. If you choose this moment, focus on treatment: the system treats everyone in the carceral space as suspect, including the lawyers whose presence is legally authorized.
How to Write Paragraph One: Explaining What Happened
Paragraph One has a single job: tell the reader who you chose and what happened to them. It should be factually accurate, concise, and specific. Aim for five to seven sentences. Do not spend half the paragraph providing background about the criminal justice system in general — get to the specific person and their specific situation immediately.
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Opening Sentence: Identify the person and the book
Name the person, their situation in brief, and anchor it to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Do not open with a vague statement about the justice system. Example structure: “In Part One of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, [Name] is [brief description of who they are and what happened to them].” This gives the reader immediate orientation without wasting sentences.
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Two to Three Sentences: The Core Events
What crime were they accused of or convicted of? What was the sentence? What were the most significant procedural or evidentiary facts about their case? Do not try to include everything — include the facts that your second paragraph will build on. If you are going to argue in Paragraph Two that the evidence was fabricated, mention in Paragraph One that the key testimony came from a witness who later recanted. Set up your own analysis.
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One to Two Sentences: What Stevenson Did or Documented
Briefly note Stevenson’s involvement — whether he took the case, visited the person, or documented their situation through his work at the Equal Justice Initiative. This connects the narrative to the book and signals that your account comes from Stevenson’s documented observations, not from general knowledge.
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Closing Sentence: Bridge to Paragraph Two
End Paragraph One with a sentence that sets up the transition — either a brief statement of the outcome, or a sentence that points toward what you will analyze in Paragraph Two. Example: “McMillian spent six years on death row for a crime the evidence did not support, and the system’s resistance to correcting this error is what Stevenson documents in detail.” That sentence both concludes the factual account and frames the analysis to follow.
How to Write Paragraph Two: Analyzing the System
Paragraph Two is where the analytical work happens. The prompt asks: “What stood out to you most about how the system handled this case?” The word “system” is doing specific work here — it is not asking about one bad actor, one corrupt sheriff, or one biased juror. It is asking about the institutional patterns and decision-making processes that Stevenson documents.
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Opening: State Your Specific Observation
Do not open with “What stood out to me was…” — that phrasing is weak because it makes the paragraph about your feelings rather than your analysis. Instead, state the observation directly: “The most troubling aspect of the system’s handling of McMillian’s case was its institutional resistance to correcting a known error.” That is a claim. The rest of the paragraph supports it.
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Two to Three Sentences: Specific Evidence From the Book
Name the specific detail from Stevenson’s account that supports your observation. Not a vague reference — a specific fact. For McMillian: the tape recordings proving witness coercion that state officials refused to act on. For Richardson: the absence of any meaningful consideration of his Vietnam-related PTSD at sentencing. For Trina Garnett: the decision to impose an adult sentence on a fourteen-year-old with documented abuse history. Specific evidence is what separates analysis from opinion.
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One to Two Sentences: Connect to a Lens — Fairness, Treatment, or Decision-Making
Now name the category of systemic failure your evidence illustrates. Does it reveal that the process was structurally unfair — operating by different rules for different defendants based on race, age, or social status? Does it reveal something about how the person was treated as a human being? Does it reveal something about how decisions were made — what counted as evidence, who was believed, what outcomes were pursued? Naming the lens makes your paragraph analytical rather than merely descriptive.
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Closing: The Broader Implication
End with one sentence that connects your specific observation to what it reveals about the justice system more generally. You do not need to solve the problem or propose policy — you need to say what this case illustrates. “The McMillian case demonstrates that the system’s resistance to exoneration can be as powerful as its original drive to convict — and that both operate through institutional inertia rather than individual malice.” That is a conclusion, not a feeling.
Unpacking the Three Analytical Lenses
The prompt gives you three lenses: fairness, treatment, and decision-making. Understanding the difference between them helps you write a more precise second paragraph. They are not synonyms. They point to different kinds of systemic failure.
Structure, Language, and Length
Two paragraphs does not mean two short paragraphs. Each paragraph should be substantive — five to eight sentences each. The total response should be approximately 200–350 words. This is not a brief journal entry; it is a focused academic response that demonstrates both reading comprehension and analytical capability.
Language That Signals Analysis
- “The most significant failure in the system’s handling of this case was…”
- “What Stevenson documents reveals that the decision to [X] was driven by [Y] rather than by the evidence”
- “The system’s treatment of [person] illustrates how [institutional pattern] operates in practice”
- “Rather than correcting a known error, the state [specific action] — which demonstrates…”
- “The fairness problem here is not individual bias but structural: [explain the structure]”
- “Stevenson’s account makes clear that [specific fact], which raises the question of whether…”
Language That Signals Summary, Not Analysis
- “I felt really bad for [person] because…”
- “This case was really unfair because the system was corrupt”
- “What stood out to me was how sad this story was”
- “The justice system in America has always been broken”
- “Bryan Stevenson writes about how bad things were”
- “I think everyone deserves a fair trial and this person did not get one” (without saying what specifically made it unfair)
One Specific Cited Detail Is Better Than Three Vague References
In a two-paragraph response, you do not have space to cover multiple pieces of evidence. Choose one specific detail from the book — a specific fact Stevenson documents — and develop it fully. “The prosecution’s key witness, Ralph Myers, had a criminal record and later recanted his testimony, admitting he had been pressured by police” is a specific, citable, analytically usable detail. “The evidence was not very good and people lied” is not. Your second paragraph’s strength comes from the specificity of what you point to, not the quantity of things you mention.
Where Most Responses Lose Marks
Using Paragraph Two to Summarize More Events
Many students use both paragraphs to retell the story — adding more events in Paragraph Two that did not fit in Paragraph One. This means the entire response is summary with no analysis. If your second paragraph is still answering “what happened,” it is not answering “what stood out about how the system handled it.” Paragraph One ends the factual account. Paragraph Two begins the evaluative one.
Instead
End your factual summary in Paragraph One — even if you cannot include every detail — and devote Paragraph Two entirely to your analytical observation. If you find yourself still describing events in Paragraph Two, stop and ask: “Am I explaining what happened, or am I explaining what the system’s handling of this case reveals?” Those are different questions requiring different sentences.
Making a General Claim About Racism Without Specific Evidence
“The system was racist and treated Black people unfairly, which is what happened to Walter McMillian.” This is a claim without evidence. It may be accurate, but it does not demonstrate that you analyzed the specific mechanisms of racial bias in McMillian’s case. The grader cannot distinguish between this sentence and one written by someone who did not read the book.
Instead
Name the specific mechanism: “McMillian was placed on death row before his trial — a procedurally unusual step — in a case where the victim was white and the defendant was a Black man in a county with a documented history of racially stratified criminal prosecution. The decision to pre-emptively house him in death row conditions signals how the system had already determined his guilt before the legal process ran its course.” That is the same observation, made with specificity and analytical precision.
Confusing the Person’s Experience With the System’s Decision
“Herbert Richardson had a really hard life and it was sad that he was executed.” This describes Richardson’s experience but does not analyze the system’s decisions. The prompt asks about “how the system handled this case” — which means the actions of institutions, prosecutors, courts, and officials, not the emotional impact of the story on the reader.
Instead
“The court’s handling of Richardson’s case treated his documented combat-related trauma as legally irrelevant to the question of culpability — a decision-making framework that makes no distinction between criminal acts rooted in predatory intent and those produced by untreated psychological damage caused by government-sanctioned warfare. Executing Richardson without meaningful engagement with this distinction is the system’s most significant failure in this case.”
Writing Only About Stevenson Rather Than the Case
“Bryan Stevenson worked very hard to help Walter McMillian and he showed that the justice system needs to change. He founded the Equal Justice Initiative and fought for people on death row.” This is a response about Stevenson as a person, not about McMillian’s case and what it reveals about the system. Stevenson is the narrator and advocate, not the subject of this assignment.
Instead
Keep Stevenson in the background. His role is to document what happened. Your analysis should focus on the institution — the courts, the prosecution, the police, the corrections system — and what their decisions reveal. Stevenson discovered the tape recordings proving witness coercion; what matters analytically is what the state did when presented with that evidence. That is where the system reveals itself.
- Paragraph One identifies the person clearly by name and situation in the opening sentence
- Paragraph One includes at least one specific detail from the book — not just a general description of events
- Paragraph One ends with a sentence that transitions toward the analysis in Paragraph Two
- Paragraph Two opens with an analytical claim, not with “What stood out to me was…”
- Paragraph Two uses at least one specific fact from the book as evidence for the claim
- Paragraph Two connects the specific observation to at least one of the three prompt lenses: fairness, treatment, or decision-making
- Paragraph Two ends with a sentence that draws a conclusion about what the case reveals — not just what happened
- Neither paragraph is a general statement about the U.S. justice system without grounding in the specific case
- The total response is 200–350 words and both paragraphs are substantive (5–8 sentences each)
- The book title Just Mercy is italicized and Bryan Stevenson is identified as the author at least once