Through Jamie Foxx’s stunning, emotionally nuanced portrayal of McMillian, we witness his complexity and resilience, and the importance of the relationships that he has forged with his fellow inmates. This, in a larger sense, is the film’s real victory. As McMillian’s story unfolds, viewers gain increasing levels of insight into the humanity of incarcerated individuals. These people are, of course, the death row inmates Stevenson seeks to defend. It is in this way that the film makes space for, and honors, its characters whose voices and very humanity have been too long stifled. While the film sets up Stevenson and Ansley as battling a corrupt judicial system, once that framework is established, they begin to fade into the background. From start to finish, the film ripples with an intense, though often quiet, emotional current evoked by a compassionate confrontation with the U.S. Finding glaring gaps and inconsistencies in the testimony and evidence that condemned McMillian to death, Stevenson embarks on a battle against Alabama’s judicial system, one steeped in the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and the history-and present day reality-of racist ideologies. It is during this early period in Stevenson’s career that he meets McMillian, who has been wrongfully convicted of murdering a white teenager and sentenced to death. Jordan, establishes the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) along with his colleague Eva Ansley, who is played by Brie Larson. To accomplish this, Stevenson, whose spirit of quiet determination is masterfully portrayed on screen by Michael B. He recognizes an urgent need to correct the injustice inherent in the mass incarceration of people of color who, historically, have been illegally and unfairly sentenced due to inadequate legal assistance, racial bias, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence.

What follows is the true story of Stevenson, a young public interest lawyer, and his tireless quest to exonerate McMillian and achieve justice.Īfter graduating from Harvard Law School, Bryan Stevenson moves to Alabama on a mission to provide free legal services to people trapped within the criminal justice system. So begins Just Mercy, the new film based on Bryan Stevenson’s best-selling memoir of the same title. He is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. On a quiet Alabama road, McMillian, a black man, is ambushed by an all-white police unit. It had been a day like any other, but as night begins its descent over Monroe County, McMillian’s journey home to his family-and the course of his very life-is forced to a halt. In Monroeville, Alabama, Walter “Johnny D” McMillian is driving home from work.

Bryan stevenson innocence project