Justice in the Making

Hello everyone, 

I am sure you all stumbled upon this blog and are wondering, who Sophie is and why I am reading a blog written by her about criminal justice through Imparial, NC. I hope to answer those questions in this first introduction to me and my passion for criminal justice. First off, to introduce myself. My name is Sophie Pilkington and I am from a small town in Western North Carolina where I grew up on big blue mountains, with my very big family. I now attend The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will be graduating with my bachelor's in May of this year! I will be graduating with a double major in Political Science and History and a minor in Women and Gender Studies, and I hope to attend law school in the Fall of 2025. 

I am currently waiting for final decisions on my law school applications and taking a breather before I embark on this journey! I have spent years working toward law school by taking classes, researching, participating in law organizations, taking the LSAT, preparing personal essays, and coping with all that amazing application stress. Law has been my passion for the majority of my life, I knew when I was ten that I wanted to be a lawyer. Criminal justice, politics, government, history, and law, both domestic and international, are truly my passions. Though I do not yet know what kind of law I will end up practicing, I have known since my freshman year of high school that criminal justice would be a part of my life. 

For my summer reading going into my freshman year honors English class I was assigned Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Being the overachieving type A student that I was, I decided to tackle the seemingly harder book first and write the assigned short essay earlier on in the summer. As I sat down to read Just Mercy I had no clue how much it would change me. I knew that the book was about an attorney who worked to get wrongly accused or innocent people out of prison, specifically off of death row, but I had no clue how deeply connected I would become not only to Brian Stevenson himself and his work but to the stories within the novel. It was shocking for me as a young girl, living a fairly sheltered life, to read about the horrific situations Stevenson clients were put in, the vast majority of which were simply based on their race. 

I was enraptured by each story and equally heartbroken by both the successes and the ones he couldn't save. I finished the book, cried, and sat there stumped for almost the entire summer trying to answer my short essay prompt. How was I supposed to write about what I learned from this story when what I learned was that our nation's justice system is so incredibly broken? How is one meant to summarize stories of innocent people whose lives and families were irreparably broken simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time? Eventually, I decided I had to look at this book from a new lens and decide what gave me hope in this story. I found it in Brian Stevenson and the amazing work he has done throughout his life and continues to do as Executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. 

When I took a step back and reminded myself why this story was being written I realized that Bryan Stevenson wasn't attempting to depress his audience to use that heartbreak that he experiences every day to kindle a passion for change in them. It is lawyers like Brian Stevenson who represent those who are wronged by the criminal justice system and work to create lasting institutional change that is the inspiration. It is non-profits like the Innocence Project, Impartial, The Marshall Project, The Sentencing Project, and so many more, which are the hope. It was with this realization that I decided that whether or not I become a defense attorney, work for the Innocence Project, or make any kind of a difference in the criminal justice system, I want my generation to be the one that changes things.

 I believe that we all have the power to be like Bryan Stevenson and that if enough of us care we can truly set up a better justice system for future generations. Though it won't happen overnight, we can take the small steps necessary to educate ourselves on what is truly going on in our legal system in America. Once we know this we can understand how to best support the individuals and organizations that are fighting every day to advocate against overcriminalization, false imprisonment, hefty sentencing, plea trial, and police unaccountability, and support those who have already faced these issues and may not have won. I hope that this blog will become a place for all of you readers to come to not only learn about the pressing issues within criminal justice but also to find a community of similarly passionate individuals who hope to one day make a difference in the legal field or our justice system.

I cannot say that I am an expert on all things criminal justice, but I can say that I believe that future law students like myself contribute as the future leaders of this movement will be invaluable. I am writing this blog as I take you all on my path of discovering what my future may be within the legal field. I hope you will all enjoy this journey with me and that I can encourage everyone to look deeper. Whether it be going beyond my blog and reading some of the amazing investigative journalism on the Impartials webpage or taking a course at your school. Step one I would say read Just Mercy, trust me it's worth it.