Download or read book I Our Family Sentenced to Life written by Christine Infelise and published by . This book was released on 2010-03-08 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of a family's downward spiral with the brutal murder of Rosario's youngest brother and uncle by a trusted friend with the case being engulfed in the well-publicized Chicago Greylord judge tampering scandal. Their true story encompasses the loyalty of brothers in a true Italian family which led to drugs, organized crime associations, and incarceration. The slew of sizzling twists and turns hurls through the course of their tumultuous life. Chris has to somehow pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, being exposed to a world she was so unaccustomed. Just when there is a glimmer of light, their dreams are dashed as they are caught up in immigration regulations requiring deportation, separating their family further. Experience the ghastly and heart-wrenching emotional effects of one family's struggle and survival through all these torments as they hold on to their deep love for each other and the hope of someday all being together.
Download or read book Sentenced to Life Mental Illness Tragedy and Transformation written by Joan Becker and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Travel with one heartbroken family as they struggle to find help for their son, face unspeakable tragedy, receive unexpected forgiveness, and deal with the aftermath of a child whose mental health issues ended in calamity . . . and transformation. Discover the confidence that buoys author Joan Becker and her family as they push for reform in the broken mental health system before more lives are ruined. Their story offers hope, help, and heart-felt compassion. "Joan Becker has a generous spirit and kind heart that come forward in this book. By sharing her family's experience she'll help other families struggling with mental illness feel less alone. That's a tremendous accomplishment when the illness causes feelings of isolation and hopelessness for parents who are desperate to help their suffering child. The mental health system can and should be better, and this book inspires all of us to do everything we can to make it so." U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Download or read book Death Sentence written by Jerry Bledsoe and published by Diversion Books. This book was released on 2014-05-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “true story that reads like a novel,” the #1 New York Times–bestselling author reveals the facts behind a notorious Southern murder case (Library Journal). When North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor died after a sudden illness, his forty-six-year-old fiancée, Velma Barfield, was overcome with grief. Taylor’s family grieved with her—until the autopsy revealed traces of arsenic poisoning. Turned over to the authorities by her own son, Velma stunned her family with more revelations. This wasn’t the first time she had committed cold-blooded murder, and she would eventually be tried by the “world’s deadliest prosecutor” and sentenced to death. This book probes Velma’s stark descent into madness, her prescription drug addiction, and her effort to turn her life around through Christianity. From her harrowing childhood to the crimes that incited a national debate over the death penalty, to the final moments of her execution, Velma Barfield’s life of crime and punishment, revenge and redemption, this is crime reporting at its most gripping and profound. “A painfully intimate, moving story about the life and death of the only woman executed in the U.S. between 1962–1998 . . . With graceful writing and thorough reporting, it makes the reader look hard at something dark and sad in the human soul . . . Breathes new life into the true crime genre.” —The News & Observer “Undertakes to answer the questions about the justice system and the motives that drive women to kill.” —The Washington Post Book World “An extraordinary piece of writing . . . The most chilling description of a legal execution that we are ever likely to get.” —Citizen-Times “Taut and engrossing on the nature of justice and the death penalty as well as on guilt and responsibility.” —Booklist
Download or read book In My Father s House written by Fox Butterfield and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist: a pathbreaking examination of our huge crime and incarceration problem that looks at the influence of the family--specifically one Oregon family with a generations-long legacy of lawlessness. The United States currently holds the distinction of housing nearly one-quarter of the world's prison population. But our reliance on mass incarceration, Fox Butterfield argues, misses the intractable reality: As few as 5 percent of families account for half of all crime, and only 10 percent account for two-thirds. In introducing us to the Bogle family, the author invites us to understand crime in this eye-opening new light. He chronicles the malignant legacy of criminality passed from parents to children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. Examining the long history of the Bogles, a white family, Butterfield offers a revelatory look at criminality that forces us to disentangle race from our ideas about crime and, in doing so, strikes at the heart of our deepest stereotypes. And he makes clear how these new insights are leading to fundamentally different efforts at reform. With his empathic insight and profound knowledge of criminology, Butterfield offers us both the indelible tale of one family's transgressions and tribulations, and an entirely new way to understand crime in America.
Download or read book Test of Faith written by Bonnie S. Hirst and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bonnie S. Hirst is a woman of faith who has always believed that everything in life works out for the best. So, when her daughter, Lacey, is accused of a terrible crime, although Bonnie is devastated, she is also convinced that God will protect her family from harm. He always has, after all. But when her prayers are not answered and Lacey is sentenced to life in prison, Bonnie questions every aspect of her existence: her beliefs, her role as a mother, and the purpose behind the events that are tearing her family apart. As Bonnie and her family navigate the complicated labyrinth of the legal system, she struggles with the duality of presenting a façade of being okay on the outside and screaming for air on the inside. Finally, she is guided to ask for help—a concept previously foreign to her—and is rewarded with a bubble of friends who surround her and her family with love. Poignant, hopeful, and ultimately uplifting, Test of Faith is the story of one mother’s spiritual journey of awareness—and her discovery that even when your life seems to have radically veered off course, there are always blessings to be found, if you can just keep your heart open enough to receive them.
Download or read book Doing Time Together written by Megan Comfort and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By quadrupling the number of people behind bars in two decades, the United States has become the world leader in incarceration. Much has been written on the men who make up the vast majority of the nation’s two million inmates. But what of the women they leave behind? Doing Time Together vividly details the ways that prisons shape and infiltrate the lives of women with husbands, fiancés, and boyfriends on the inside. Megan Comfort spent years getting to know women visiting men at San Quentin State Prison, observing how their romantic relationships drew them into contact with the penitentiary. Tangling with the prison’s intrusive scrutiny and rigid rules turns these women into “quasi-inmates,” eroding the boundary between home and prison and altering their sense of intimacy, love, and justice. Yet Comfort also finds that with social welfare weakened, prisons are the most powerful public institutions available to women struggling to overcome untreated social ills and sustain relationships with marginalized men. As a result, they express great ambivalence about the prison and the control it exerts over their daily lives. An illuminating analysis of women caught in the shadow of America’s massive prison system, Comfort’s book will be essential for anyone concerned with the consequences of our punitive culture.
Download or read book Survived by One written by Robert E. Hanlon and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle’s sentence to natural life. The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Odle. Prior to the commutation of his death sentence, Odle lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution associated with his death sentence, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality. A future. As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family. He reached out to Dr. Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr. Hanlon engaged Odle in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book. Hanlon tells a gripping story of Odle’s life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Odle’s unadorned reflections of his childhood, finding a new family on death row, and his belief in the powers of redemption. As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.
Download or read book Real Justice Sentenced to Life at Seventeen written by Cynthia J. Faryon and published by Lorimer. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Milgaard was a troubled kid, and he got into lots of trouble. Unfortunately, that made it easy for the Saskatoon police to brand him as a murderer. At seventeen, David Milgaard was arrested, jailed, and convicted for the rape and murder of a young nursing assistant, Gail Miller. He was sent to adult prison for life. Throughout his twenty-three years in prison, David maintained that he was innocent and refused to admit to the crime, even though it meant he was never granted parole. Finally, through the incredible determination of his mother and new lawyers who believed in him, David was released and proven not guilty. Astonishingly, in hindsight the real murderer was obvious from the start. This is the true story of how bad decisions, tunnel vision, poor representation, and outright lying and coercion by those within the justice system caused a tragic miscarriage of justice. It also shows that wrongs can be righted and amends made. [Fry Reading Level - 4.3
Download or read book The Life She Once Knew The Incredible True Story of Queena The Bloomingdale Library Attack Survivor written by Vanna Nguyen and published by Ambassador International. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1981, a young woman faced death as she lay on the floor of a small boat in the South China Sea fleeing the life she once knew in Vietnam. In 2008, her teenage daughter lay fighting for her life after being brutally raped and abandoned while returning books at a library near Tampa, Florida. The attack in front of the Bloomingdale library left Queena with a traumatic brain injury, sentenced to a life unable to walk, see, or speak. As Vanna Nguyen lovingly poured herself into caring for her now severely disabled daughter, she also battled with reliving her own Vietnam War survival story. And she must decide, can she forgive the attacker whose unforgivable decision changed both their lives as they knew them forever? In The Life She Once Knew, Vanna candidly chronicles the deeply spiritual and emotionally powerful journeys of these two strong women as they fight for their lives and their futures decades apart.
Download or read book Circumstantial Evidence written by Pete Earley and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1996 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A piercing, provocative true story that is also a commentary on our system of justice, centered around a wrongful murder conviction that bares the dark side of the American soul. This book highlights a case that was front page news--featured on "60 Minutes", in The New York Times in 1993.
Download or read book No Choirboy written by Susan Kuklin and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Choirboy takes readers inside America's prisons, and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices—raw and uncensored—they talk about their lives in prison, and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there. Susan Kuklin also gets inside the system, exploring capital punishment itself and the intricacies and inequities of criminal justice in the United States. This is a searing, unforgettable read, and one that could change the way we think about crime and punishment. No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Download or read book In Cold Blood written by Truman Capote and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.
Download or read book Just Mercy written by Bryan Stevenson and published by One World. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. “[Bryan Stevenson’s] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many others and made a lasting impact on our country.”—John Legend NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • Esquire • Time Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice. Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction • Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize • An American Library Association Notable Book “Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.”—David Cole, The New York Review of Books “Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times “You don’t have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.”—Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review “Inspiring . . . a work of style, substance and clarity . . . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he’s also a gifted writer and storyteller.”—The Washington Post “As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.”—The Financial Times “Brilliant.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Download or read book The Sacred Acre written by Mark Tabb and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When tragedy devastated a small town, an unlikely source of inspiration pieced the community back together in this dramatic true story. On a Sunday in May 2008, an F5 tornado hit the town of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight people and destroying 250 homes and businesses within a span of 34 seconds. The next day, Parkersburg's beloved football coach, Ed Thomas, made a stunning prediction: "God willing, we will play our first home game here on this field this season." One hundred days later, the home team scored a victory on the field they dubbed the Sacred Acre, serving as a galvanizing point for the town to band together and rebuild. But just as Parkersburg was recovering, another disaster struck. While working with a group of football and volleyball players early one morning, one of Thomas's former students walked in and gunned him down at point-blank range. Thomas was only 58 years old. The murder of this hometown hero spread across national news headlines, and Thomas's community reeled from the shock. But his story doesn't end there. As you discover more about this incredible town, you'll learn: That grief is no match for love The life-changing power of faith and forgiveness What it truly means to lean on your community How to use your God-given gifts for good Praise for The Sacred Acre: "Ed Thomas was a man who lived the gospel, loved his family, and believed in doing things the right way. He taught his players that there are no shortcuts and that you will ultimately be judged, not by what you did, but on how you did it. His heart, his faith, and his Christian character are evident in so many of them. I believe that reading this book will give you a better understanding of this special man and the example he left for all of us to follow." --Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Indianapolis Colts
Download or read book Salvation on Death Row written by John T. Thorngren and published by Kicam Projects, LLC. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Pamela Perillo combines true-crime reporting with a moving spiritual memoir, proving that every life is meaningful and every individual can make a positive impact on the world.
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 Death Sentence written by Joe Sharkey and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true account of the man who murdered his family in their New Jersey mansion—and eluded a nationwide manhunt for eighteen years. Until 1971, life was good for mild-mannered accountant John List. He was vice president of a Jersey City bank and had moved his mother, wife, and three teenage children into a nineteen-room home in Westfield, New Jersey. But all that changed when he lost his job. Raised by his Lutheran father to believe success meant being a good provider, List saw himself as an utter failure. Straining under financial burdens, the stress of hiding his unemployment, as well as the fear that the free-spirited 1970s would corrupt the souls of his children, List came to a shattering conclusion. “It was my belief that if you kill yourself, you won’t go to heaven,” List told Connie Chung in a television interview. “So eventually I got to the point where I felt that I could kill them. Hopefully they would go to heaven, and then maybe I would have a chance to later confess my sins to God and get forgiveness.” List methodically shot his entire family in their home, managing to conceal the deaths for weeks with a carefully orchestrated plan of deception. Then he vanished and started over as Robert P. Clark. Chronicling List’s life before and after the grisly crime, Death Sentence exposes the truth about the accountant-turned-killer, including his revealing letter to his pastor, his years as a fugitive with a new name—and a new wife—his eventual arrest, and the details of his high-profile trial. Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos.