Lynnie 
memoir
Just Mercy was assigned as summer reading for my daughter & I completely understand why. It's an excellent look at the systemic racial & economic discrimination in our country's justice system, particularly in regards to how sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole and the death penalty are issued.
This is a memoir and often I found Bryan Stevenson's musings about his own feelings on what he was discussing would pull me out of the book and distract my attention from the consequences for his subjects. The main focus is on one case- Walter McMillian from Monroe County, Alabama was convicted of a murder he could not have possibly committed (parallel's to Monroe's most famous daughter Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird are everywhere) and Stevenson works tirelessly to prove McMillian's innocence in order to free him from death row. When the book focuses on Walter and all that he's been through and survived the book makes its strongest points.
Every other chapter however, we meet another lifer or death row inmate and while many of them were sympathetic in circumstance and legal situation, there were several that I found it hard to muster sympathy for. One gentleman in particular, placed a bomb on the porch of a woman he was obsessed with in the hopes of "saving" her from the blast & gaining her favor. When people were killed, he was remorseful and while everyone agreed he never intended for anyone to die, people did die. I didn't feel badly that he had been held accountable.
There's a lot to think about in this book. It shines a light on a real problem in this country.
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