Download or read book Failure of Justice written by John Ferak and published by WildBlue Press. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A chilling piece of journalism” from the bestselling author of Wrecking Crew: Demolishing the Case Against Steven Avery (Ron Franscell , author of Alice & Gerald). In this thrilling true crime book, bestselling and award-winning author John Ferak explores the murder, investigation, trial, conviction and eventual exoneration—the largest such ever in the United States—of the Beatrice 6. On February 5, 1985, one of the coldest nights on record, Beatrice, Nebraska widow Helen Wilson was murdered inside her second-floor apartment. The news of six arrests was absolutely stunning to the locals in this easy-going, blue-collar community of 12,000 residents. But why were six loosely connected misfits who lived as far away as Alabama, Colorado and North Carolina being linked to the rape and murder of a beloved small-town widow? After all six of the condemned were convicted of murder and sent away to prison for the ghastly crime, the town moved on, convinced that justice was served. For more than twenty-five years, the Beatrice 6 rotted in prison, until the unthinkable occurred in 2008 . . . In Failure of Justice, John Ferak delivers a “riveting account . . . [of] an overzealous police investigation that generated false confessions and false evidence. The unbelievable story of the Beatrice 6 provides a wake-up call at a time when serious wrongful convictions continue to come to light with disturbing frequency” (Brandon L. Garrett, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law). “One of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever heard of.”—Burl Barer, Edgar Award-winning true-crime author, host of Outlaw radio’s True Crime Uncensored

Download or read book Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform written by Greg Berman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised edition of their concise, readable, yet wide-ranging book, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tackle a question students and scholars of law, criminology, and political science constantly face: what mistakes have led to the problems that pervade the criminal justice system in the United States? The reluctance of criminal justice policymakers to talk openly about failure, the authors argue, has stunted the public conversation about crime in this country and stifled new ideas. It has also contributed to our inability to address such problems as chronic offending in low-income neighborhoods, an overreliance on incarceration, the misuse of pretrial detention, and the high rates of recidivism among parolees. Berman and Fox offer students and policymakers an escape from this fate by writing about failure in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to encourage a more forthright dialogue about criminal justice, one that acknowledges that many new initiatives fail and that no one knows for certain how to reduce crime. For the authors, this is not a source of pessimism, but a call to action. This revised edition is updated with a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and afterword by Greg Berman.

Download or read book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice written by William J. Stuntz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.

Download or read book When Law Fails written by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1989, there have been over 200 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. On the surface, the release of innocent people from prison could be seen as a victory for the criminal justice system: the wrong person went to jail, but the mistake was fixed and the accused set free. A closer look at miscarriages of justice, however, reveals that such errors are not aberrations but deeply revealing, common features of our legal system. The ten original essays in When Law Fails view wrongful convictions not as random mistakes but as organic outcomes of a misshaped larger system that is rife with faulty eyewitness identifications, false confessions, biased juries, and racial discrimination. Distinguished legal thinkers Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., and Austin Sarat have assembled a stellar group of contributors who try to make sense of justice gone wrong and to answer urgent questions. Are miscarriages of justice systemic or symptomatic, or are they mostly idiosyncratic? What are the broader implications of justice gone awry for the ways we think about law? Are there ways of reconceptualizing legal missteps that are particularly useful or illuminating? These instructive essays both address the questions and point the way toward further discussion. When Law Fails reveals the dramatic consequences as well as the daily realities of breakdowns in the law’s ability to deliver justice swiftly and fairly, and calls on us to look beyond headline-grabbing exonerations to see how failure is embedded in the legal system itself. Once we are able to recognize miscarriages of justice we will be able to begin to fix our broken legal system. Contributors: Douglas A. Berman, Markus D. Dubber, Mary L. Dudziak, Patricia Ewick, Daniel Givelber, Linda Ross Meyer, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Austin Sarat, Jonathan Simon, and Robert Weisberg.

Download or read book Between Justice and Beauty written by Howard Gillette, Jr. and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the only American city under direct congressional control, Washington has served historically as a testing ground for federal policy initiatives and social experiments—with decidedly mixed results. Well-intentioned efforts to introduce measures of social justice for the district's largely black population have failed. Yet federal plans and federal money have successfully created a large federal presence—a triumph, argues Howard Gillette, of beauty over justice. In a new afterword, Gillette addresses the recent revitalization and the aftereffects of an urban sports arena.

Download or read book United States Attorneys Manual written by United States. Department of Justice and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Manifesting Justice written by Valena Beety and published by Citadel. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working with the Innocence Movement and Leigh Stubbs-a woman denied a fair trial largely due to her sexual orientation-a former federal prosecutor weaves Leigh's story through the broader story of a broken criminal system.

Download or read book Unfair written by Adam Benforado and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A legal scholar exposes the psychological forces that undermine the American criminal justice system, arguing that unless hidden biases are addressed, social inequality will widen, and proposes reforms to prevent injustice and help achieve true equality before the law.

Download or read book Dark Ghettos written by Tommie Shelby and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Spitz Prize, Conference for the Study of Political Thought Winner of the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award Why do American ghettos persist? Scholars and commentators often identify some factor—such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime—as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to “fix” ghettos or “help” their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban poor as moral agents responding to injustice. “Provocative...[Shelby] doesn’t lay out a jobs program or a housing initiative. Indeed, as he freely admits, he offers ‘no new political strategies or policy proposals.’ What he aims to do instead is both more abstract and more radical: to challenge the assumption, common to liberals and conservatives alike, that ghettos are ‘problems’ best addressed with narrowly targeted government programs or civic interventions. For Shelby, ghettos are something more troubling and less tractable: symptoms of the ‘systemic injustice’ of the United States. They represent not aberrant dysfunction but the natural workings of a deeply unfair scheme. The only real solution, in this way of thinking, is the ‘fundamental reform of the basic structure of our society.’” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Scapegoat Justice Lloyd Miller and the Failure of the American Legal System written by Willard J. Lassers and published by Bloomington : Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies written by Aziz Z. Huq and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book describes and explains the failure of the federal courts of the United States to act and to provide remedies to individuals whose constitutional rights have been violated by illegal state coercion and violence. This remedial vacuum must be understood in light of the original design and historical development of the federal courts. At its conception, the federal judiciary was assumed to be independent thanks to an apolitical appointment process, a limited supply of adequately trained lawyers (which would prevent cherry-picking), and the constraining effect of laws and constitutional provision. Each of these checks quickly failed. As a result, the early federal judicial system was highly dependent on Congress. Not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century did a robust federal judiciary start to emerge, and not until the first quarter of the twentieth century did it take anything like its present form. The book then charts how the pressure from Congress and the White House has continued to shape courts behaviour-first eliciting a mid-twentieth-century explosion in individual remedies, and then driving a five-decade long collapse. Judges themselves have not avidly resisted this decline, in part because of ideological reasons and in part out of institutional worries about a ballooning docket. Today, as a result of these trends, the courts are stingy with individual remedies, but aggressively enforce the so-called "structural" constitution of the separation of powers and federalism. This cocktail has highly regressive effects, and is in urgent need of reform"--

Download or read book Putting Trials on Trial written by Elaine Craig and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few years, public attention focused on the Jian Ghomeshi trial, the failings of Judge Greg Lenehan in the Halifax taxi driver case, and the judicial disciplinary proceedings against former Justice Robin Camp have placed the sexual assault trial process under significant scrutiny. Less than one percent of the sexual assaults that occur each year in Canada result in legal sanction for those who commit these offences. Survivors often distrust and fear the criminal justice process, and as a result, over ninety percent of sexual assaults go unreported. Unfortunately, their fears are well founded. In this thorough evaluation of the legal culture and courtroom practices prevalent in sexual assault prosecutions, Elaine Craig provides an even-handed account of the ways in which the legal profession unnecessarily – and sometimes unlawfully – contributes to the trauma and re-victimization experienced by those who testify as sexual assault complainants. Gathering conclusive evidence from interviews with experienced lawyers across Canada, reported case law, lawyer memoirs, recent trial transcripts, and defence lawyers’ public statements and commercial advertisements, Putting Trials on Trial demonstrates that – despite prominent contestations – complainants are regularly subjected to abusive, humiliating, and discriminatory treatment when they turn to the law to respond to sexual violations. In pursuit of trial practices that are less harmful to sexual assault complainants as well as survivors of sexual violence more broadly, Putting Trials on Trial makes serious, substantiated, and necessary claims about the ethical and cultural failures of the Canadian legal profession.

Download or read book The Bail Book written by Shima Baradaran Baughman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the causes for mass incarceration of Americans and calls for the reform of the bail system. Traces the history of bail, how it has come to be an oppressive tool of the courts, and makes recommendations for reforming the bail system and alleviating the mass incarceration problem.

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

Download or read book The Punishment Imperative written by Todd R. Clear and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the last 35 years, the United States penal system has grown at a rate unprecedented in U.S. history, five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. This growth was part of a sustained and intentional effort to "get tough" on crime, and characterizes a time when no policy options were acceptable save for those that increased penalties. In this book, the authors, both eminent criminologists argue that America's move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation; it was a grand social experiment. Tracing a wide array of trends related to the criminal justice system, the book charts the rise of penal severity in America and speculates that a variety of forces, fiscal, political, and evidentiary, have finally come together to bring this great social experiment to an end. The book cautions that the legacy of the grand experiment of the past forty years wiil be difficult to escape. However the authors suggest that the U.S. now stands at the threshold of a new era in the criminal justice system, and they offer several practical and pragmatic policy solutions to changing the approach to punishment." -- Publisher's website.

Download or read book Usual Cruelty written by Alec Karakatsanis and published by . This book was released on 2025-01-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "searing, searching, and eloquent" (Martha Minow, Harvard Law School) investigation into the role of the legal profession in perpetuating mass incarceration--now in an accessible paperback format from the award-winning civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings--an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color, for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty offers a radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively--and wildly successfully--challenging it. Hailed by luminaries from James Forman Jr. and Vanita Gupta to U.S. Circuit Judge Bernice Donald, and MacArthur Award-winning poet and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts, Usual Cruelty offers a condemnation of the whole deplorable enterprise, starting with profound questions about the specific things our system chooses to criminalize (marijuana plants, low-level gambling, petty theft) versus those we don't (tobacco plants, high-level gambling by bankers, massive wage theft by employers). It calls out a bail system that charges people money to go free despite the lack of any evidence this will make them more likely to show up in court or make anybody safer. And it explores the everyday brutality of our courts, prisons, and jails, and the ways in which the legal profession has allowed itself to become desensitized to the everyday pain these institutions inflict on our most vulnerable populations. Now in an accessible paperback format, Usual Cruelty will cement Karakatsanis's reputation as one of the most inspiring civil rights lawyers of our time.

Download or read book Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes written by Yvon Dandurand and published by United Nations Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present handbook offers, in a quick reference format, an overview of key considerations in the implementation of participatory responses to crime based on a restorative justice approach. Its focus is on a range of measures and programmes, inspired by restorative justice values, that are flexible in their adaptation to criminal justice systems and that complement them while taking into account varying legal, social and cultural circumstances. It was prepared for the use of criminal justice officials, non-governmental organizations and community groups who are working together to improve current responses to crime and conflict in their community