Download or read book Guilty Until Proven Innocent written by Jon Robins and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whenever a miscarriage of justice hits the headlines, it is tempting to dismiss it as an anomaly – a minor hiccup in an otherwise healthy judicial system. Yet the cases of injustice that feature in this book reveal that they are not just minor hiccups, but symptoms of a chronic illness plaguing the British legal system. Massive underfunding, catastrophic failures in policing and shoddy legal representation have all contributed to a deepening crisis – one that the watchdog set up for the very purpose of investigating miscarriages of justice has done precious little to remedy. Indeed, little has changed since the 'bad old days' of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six. Award winning journalist Jon Robins lifts the lid on Britain's legal scandals and exposes the disturbing complacency that has led to many innocent people being deemed guilty, either in the eyes of the law or in the court of public opinion.
Download or read book Presumed Guilty written by Martin D. Yant and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American judicial system is far too often a source of injustice for the innocent rather than justice for the guilty. Despite all the alleged protections built into the trial process, a person facing criminal charges is virtually presumed guilty until proven innocent - not the reverse. Presumed Guilty is about thousands of innocent Americans who each year are convicted of serious crimes they did not commit. Many are convicted of crimes that did not even occur. Journalist Martin Yant vividly and dramatically explains the process by which American justice is miscarried, providing carefully researched details about more than 100 wrongful convictions. Yant''s writing reveals both passion and frustration as he explains how most mistaken convictions could easily be avoided. "No criminal justice system is infallable," he writes, "but most errors aren''t the result of carefully considered decisions that happen to be wrong." He cites examples of outrageous carelessness, investigations that conform facts to predetermined theories, the use of long-discredited investigative techniques, rampant prejudice, and the desire of police and prosecutors to "win" convictions at any price - even if evidence is fabricated to do so. Yant goes on to propose achievable solutions that would not only prevent years of imprisonment for the wrongfully convicted but also save the lives of innocent individuals who face the increasingly used death penalty. Presumed Guilty reveals not only how often the American justice system goes awry, but how easily - and how quickly - it is possible to become its victim.
Download or read book Convicting the Innocent written by Brandon L. Garrett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-04 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.
Download or read book An Innocent Proved Guilty written by Michael Fitzalan and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Hayward is a mathematics teacher who thinks of himself as 'Mr Nice Guy'. He tries to be generous and giving, but he harbours a guilty secret, he wants his brother, Patrick, dead. Ten years previously they had bought a flat together but when Patrick lost his job through shady deals, a year later, they were forced sell.As the elder brother, Patrick was the principal name on the mortgage and he held the account. When they sold, the capital payment for the flat was paid into his bank, and he disappeared to America with all the money. The mortgage company came after Phil for the whole debt, leaving him with a huge sum of money to pay off and nowhere to live.He fantasized about fratricide; the bitterness at his unfair treatment had become greater as time passed and as his poverty weighed more heavily on him.When a serendipitous meeting reveals his brother's whereabouts, he stumbles into his brother's new house to discover a body.
Download or read book Innocent Until Proven Guilty written by Duane Gundrum and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-06 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man murdered...A man framed for the murder with only a short time to prove his innocence before the killer strikes again and strikes at him. A murder mystery set at the highest levels of corporate America where lives are played as a game, where the results are success...or death.
Download or read book An Innocent Proven Guilty written by Michael Fitzalan and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Hayward is a teacher who thinks of himself as 'Mr Nice Guy'. However, due to his brother's cheating him out of his home, he fantasized about fratricide. When a serendipitous meeting reveals his brother's whereabouts, he stumbles into his brother's new house to discover a body.With his brother dead, he feels duty bound to find out who killed him. The police want him 'to help them with their enquiries' because he has left a bloody footprint on the floor.Phil sees himself like the fugitive, Hannay, in 'The 39 Steps', the only way he can stop running is to find the culprit and clear his name.It's time to call in some favours, but has he really been good enough for people to help him; a known murderer who had motive and who was the last person at the crime scene?Can he prove his innocence before the police move in and who is Diana Deverill who signs herself "Deadly nightshade" and pursues Phil at every opportunity?
Download or read book Guilty Until Proven Innocent written by D. Corbett Everidge and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent? D. Corbett Everidge cannot vote, own a firearm, or hold public office: he is a convicted felon. But did he actually commit the crime? In this true-life legal drama, former magistrate D. Corbett Everidge chronicles the events of the summer of 2005 and the ensuing criminal trial that led to a felony conviction and the end of his criminal justice career. He then asks you to assess the evidence and make your own reasonable decision about whether he is, indeed, innocent or guilty as charged. Everidge gives personal insight into his career and background to illustrate that guilt in a complex society is not always a matter of black and white. He also challenges many beliefs regarding the modern criminal justice system in the United States, effectively drawing a line between the theoretical and the actual. Ultimately, Guilty Until Proven Innocent is an intriguing literary criminal trial in which you decide the outcome. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict?
Download or read book 33 An Innocent Proven Guilty written by Michael Fitzalan and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2014-08-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Hayward is a mathematics teacher who is 'Mr Nice Guy'. He tries to be generous and giving, but he harbours a guilty secret, he wants his brother, Patrick, dead. Ten years previously they had bought a flat together but when Patrick lost his job through shady deals, a year later, they were forced sell. As the elder brother, Patrick was the principal name on the mortgage and he held the account. When they sold, the capital payment for the flat was paid into his bank, and he disappeared to America with all the money. The mortgage company came after Phil for the whole debt, leaving him with a huge sum of money to pay off and nowhere to live. He had even contemplated fratricide; the bitterness at his unfair treatment had become greater as time passed and as his poverty weighed more heavily on him. When a serendipitous meeting reveals his brother's whereabouts, he stumbles into his brother's new house to discover a body. With help, he can find his brother's killer but will he be in time?
Download or read book Convicted but Innocent written by C. Ronald Huff and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1996-01-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the specific issues surrounding wrongful convictions and their implications for society, Convicted but Innocent includes: survey data concerning the possible magnitude of the problem and its causes; fascinating actual case samples; detailed analyses of the major factors associated with wrongful conviction; discussion of public policy implications; and recommendations for reducing the occurrence of such convictions. The authors maintain that while no system of justice can be perfect, a focus on preventable errors can substantially reduce the number of current conviction injustices.
Download or read book False Accusations written by Nik Greene and published by Strategic Book Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author was accused of molesting a child and spends 3 years in the court system to clear himself of those false charges.
Download or read book Not Guilty written by Daniel Givelber and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brilliant book that masterfully debunks the conventional wisdom that those who are charged with crimes in our criminal justice system, even when they are acquitted at trial, are almost certainly guilty. It is a data-driven tour de force.” --Richard A. Leo, author of Police Interrogation and American Justice “Givelber and Farrell make a persuasive case that most jury acquittals are based on evidence not emotion, and that acquittals should be taken to mean what they say: that the defendant is Not Guilty.” --Samuel Gross, co-author of A Modern Approach to Evidence: Text, Problems, Transcripts, and Cases As scores of death row inmates are exonerated by DNA evidence and innocence commissions are set up across the country, conviction of the innocent has become a well-recognized problem. But our justice system makes both kinds of errors—we acquit the guilty and convict the innocent—and exploring the reasons why people are acquitted can help us to evaluate the efficiency and fairness of our criminal justice system. Not Guilty provides a sustained examination and analysis of the factors that lead juries to find defendants “not guilty,” as well as the connection between those factors and the possibility of factual innocence, examining why some criminal trials result in not guilty verdicts and what those verdicts suggest about the accuracy of our criminal process.
Download or read book Guilt by Accusation written by Alan Dershowitz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal bestseller! Alan Dershowitz, one of America’s most respected legal scholars and a New York Times bestselling author proves—with incontrovertible evidence—that he is entirely innocent of the sexual misconduct accusations against him, while suggesting a roadmap for how such allegations should be handled in a just society. “Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.”—Politico Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. Yet he has come under intense criticism for applying those same principles, and his famed “shoe‑on‑the‑other‑foot test,” to those accused of sexual misconduct. In Guilt by Accusation, Dershowitz provides an in‑depth analysis of the false accusations against him, alongside a full presentation of the exculpatory evidence that proves his account, including emails from his accuser and an admission of his innocence from her lawyer, David Boies. Additionally, he examines current attitudes toward accusations of sexual misconduct, which are today, in the age of #MeToo, accepted as implicit truth without giving the accused a fair chance to defend themselves and their innocence, and suggests possible pathways back to a society and legal system in which due process is respected above public opinion and the whims of social media mobs. This book is Alan Dershowitz’s plea for fairness for both accuser and accused, his principled stand for due process no matter the allegation, and his compelling assertion of his own innocence. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the inside story behind the accusations against him or who cares about the current societal debate over how we should handle accusations of sexual misconduct. The #MeToo movement has generally been a force for good, but as with many good movements, it is being exploited by some bad people for personal profit. Supporters of the #MeToo movement must not allow false accusers to hurt real victims by hiding behind its virtuous shield, turning it into an exploitive sword against innocent people.
Download or read book The Innocent Man written by John Grisham and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LOOK FOR THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES • “Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”—Entertainment Weekly John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime masterpiece that tells the story of small town justice gone terribly awry. In the Major League draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the state of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A’s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a twenty-one-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you. Don’t miss Framed, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, co-authored with Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey.
Download or read book Presumption of Innocence in Peril written by Anthony Gray and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains the historical significance and introduction of the presumption of innocence into common law legal systems. It explains that the presumption should be seen as reflecting notions of moral comfort around judgment of others. Specifically, when one is asked to make a judgment about the guilt or otherwise of a person accused of wrongdoing, the default position should be to do nothing. This reflects the very serious consequences of what we do when we decide someone is guilty of wrongdoing and is not a step to be taken lightly. Traditionally, decision makers have only taken it when they are morally comfortable with that decision. It then documents how legislators in a range of common law jurisdictions have undermined the presumption of innocence, through measures such as reverse onus provisions, allowing or requiring inferences to be made against an accused, redefining offenses and defenses in novel ways to minimize the burden on the prosecutor, and by dressing proceedings as civil when they are in substance criminal. Courts have too easily acceded to such measures, in the process permitting accused persons to be convicted although there is reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and where they are not guilty of sufficiently blameworthy conduct to attract criminal sanction. It finds that the courts must be prepared to re-assert the prime importance of the presumption of innocence, only permitting criminal sanctions to be imposed where they are morally certain that the accused did that of which they have been accused, and morally comfortable that the conduct being addressed is worthy of the kind of criminal sanction which prosecutors seek to impose. Courts must be morally comfortable about the finding of guilt, and the imposition of the criminal penalty in a given case. They have lost sight of this moral underpinning to criminal law process and substance, and it must be regained.
Download or read book Postconviction DNA Testing written by National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence (National Institute of Justice) and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A report from National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence"--Cover.
Download or read book Guilty Until Proven Innocent written by Donald S. Connery and published by Putnam Publishing Group. This book was released on 1977 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the 1973 arrest and trial of eighteen-year-old Peter Reilly for the murder of his mother and of the community action that prevented a miscarriage of justice.
Download or read book Actual Innocence written by Jim Dwyer and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten true tales of people falsely accused detail the flaws in the criminal justice system that landed these people in prison
