Relevance (Chapters 7-9)

    Hello and welcome to my third blog post! I have now read past the halfway mark in Stevenson's book and I am very invested in all that is taking place within the book. In this blog post, I will be discussing the incarceration of children and young adults. 

   In chapter 8 of Just Mercy, we learn about multiple juveniles who were incarcerated: Ian Manuel, Trina Garrett, Antonio Nunez, and George Stinney. Their stories are all different, but all of them committed crimes at young ages and faced severe punishment for them. In this blog post, I will be focusing on the relevance and correspondence between Antonio Nunez's case and Brandon Bernard's-a Black man who was put to death in December of 2020. 

    Antonio and Brandon's childhoods were similar in that they both grew up with reckless and alcoholic fathers. This would affect their well-being and behavior later on. In 1999 a drive-by shooter injured Antonio and killed his older brother in their hometown of Los Angeles. After this incident, he went to live in a safer community with relatives in Nevada. His probation officer later ordered him to return to California, where he would enter a car with two older men after a party. When police began chasing their van, Anotnio was forced to shoot at them. He was then charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder of police. No one was injured during the chase, but Nunez was sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 14. 

    Brandon Bernard spent the majority of his childhood in Killeen, Texas. In 1994, Brandon's older cousin Melsimeon Pollock joined his household, and they began burglarizing houses together. Bernard also joined a neighborhood gang. During the summer of his senior year in 1988, he applied to the United States Army but was denied due to his juvenile offenses. The following year, Brandon among four others all 19 years of age and under, asked two youth pastors for a ride. Once they agreed, Christopher Vialva held them at gunpoint. They all then drove for several hours with the pastors in the trunk. The teens robbed the couple then pulled to the side of the road where Vialva shot them, killing the male pastor instantly. The teens poured lighter fluid inside of the car, and Bernard set the fire. According to the wife's autopsy, she died of smoke inhalation. Bernard's lawyer said, "Brandon made one terrible mistake at age 18" (Brandon Bernard Was). Brandon was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on December 10, 2020, at the age of forty. He was the youngest person in seven decades to be put to death by the government (based off of his age when the crime took place). 

Brandon Bernard 

    It is clear that Bernard and Nunez were both in the wrong and got involved with the wrong people early on in their lives. However, their young ages at the time of their crimes should be considered when sentencing them. Although Nunez was still a minor when he was convicted and Bernard had just become an adult, both of them were very young. Research suggests that the human brain takes approximately 25 years to fully develop. If this is true, not only should the first-year age of an adult (widely known as 18) be reconsidered, but so should the legal process in which younger people are prosecuted. When it comes to Nunez's case, his age clearly shows he was still a child. His sentence to life in prison is plainly unreasonable and unjust.

    I really enjoyed reading these past few chapters, and I think it's important to read about current issues in our world. Just Mercy was published in 2014 so it's not old, but it has many aspects that have remained relevant over the years. I'm excited to continue reading!

Works Cited

"Antonio Nuñez." Equal Justice Initiative, eji.org/cases/antonio-nunez/. Accessed 10 May 2021.

"Brandon Bernard." Wikipedia, 11 Dec. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Bernard#Early_life. Accessed 10 May 2021.

Brandon Bernard Was Sentenced to Death as an Accomplice in a 1999 Murder of a Texas Couple. NBC News, 10 Dec. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-set-execute-brandon-bernard-who-was-18-time-n1250748. Accessed 10 May 2021.

Johnson, Stephen. "Why Is 18 the Age of Adulthood If the Brain Can Take 30 Years to Mature?" Big Think, 20 Mar. 2019, bigthink.com/mind-brain/adult-brain. Accessed 10 May 2021.

Ortiz, Erik. "U.S. Executes Brandon Bernard, Who Was 18 at the Time of His Crime, despite Appeals." NBC News, NBC Universal, 10 Dec. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-set-execute-brandon-bernard-who-was-18-time-n1250748. Accessed 10 May 2021.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. 2019 ed., New York, Spiegel & Grau, 2019.