Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, by Branden L. Garrett. 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 America 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. Click here for more information or to order.

The Boys of the Dark

The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South, by Robin Gaby Fisher, Michael O'McCarthy, and Robert W. Straley. A story that garnered national attention, this is the harrowing tale of two men who suffered abuses at a reform school in Florida in the 1950s and 60s, and who banded together fifty years later to confront their attackers. Michael O’McCarthy and Robert W. Straley were teens when they were termed “incorrigible youth” by authorities and ordered to attend the Florida School for Boys. They discovered in Marianna, the “City of Southern Charm,” an immaculately groomed campus that looked more like an idyllic university than a reform school. But hidden behind the gates of the Florida School for Boys was a hell unlike any they could have imagined. The school’s guards and administrators acted as their jailers and tormentors. The boys allegedly bore witness to assault, rape, and possibly even murder.

For fifty years, both men---and countless others like them---carried their torment in silence. But a series of unlikely events brought O’McCarthy, now a successful rights activist, and Straley together, and they became determined to expose the Florida School for Boys for what they believed it to be: a youth prison with a century-long history of abuse. They embarked upon a campaign that would change their lives and inspire others.

Robin Gaby Fisher, a Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestselling After the Fire, collaborates with Straley and O’McCarthy to offer a riveting account of their harrowing ordeal. The book goes beyond the story of the two men to expose the truth about a century-old institution and a town that adopted a Nuremberg-like code of secrecy and a government that failed to address its own wrongdoing. What emerges is a tale of strength, resolve, and vindication in the face of the kinds of terror few can imagine.

Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition

Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, by David Garland. The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts.

America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture.

In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales.

Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike.

Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques

Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques, by Nathan J. Gordon. (3rd edition) This is a practical manual which provides the forensic practitioner/investigator critical insight into human behavior, enabling one to become a better interviewer, interrogator and, most importantly, an expert detector of truthful and deceptive behavior. The Forensic Assessment Interview Technique (FAINT) and the Integrated Interrogation Technique (IIT) were developed at the Academy for Scientific Investigative Training and are used by forensic practitioners and investigators to detect truthful or deceptive behavior. FAINT is applicable to all forensic type interviews and incorporates the assessment of nonverbal behavior, projective analysis of unwitting verbal cues, statement analysis and the Morgan Interview Thematic Technique (MITT). This volume teaches how to combine, apply and quantify these techniques to reach a numerical conclusion to the truthfulness of the interviewee.

The third edition expands chapters on torture, assessing the interview, statement analysis, MITT, and interrogation. It contains new chapters on passenger screening, and report writing, along with new case studies. Also covered are ways to maximize the collection of information from a prospective employee, and legal considerations.

Gordon and Fleisher have created a one-stop guide to mastering the art of credibility assessment during an interview, with successfully tested techniques for obtaining a confession from guilty suspects. Forensic practitioners, law enforcement, the intelligence community, the private security sector, attorneys, and forensic and criminal justice students will all find this volume a valuable resource.

Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators

Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators, by John Madinger. With numerous case studies, graphs, tables, and charts, Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators gives law enforcement professionals a clear understanding of money laundering practices, legislation, and investigation. This second edition highlights the link between money laundering and terrorist funding. It includes new sections on basic terrorist financing and explores specific terrorist financing schemes, describing in detail methods, applicable federal laws, and examples from real cases. The author also presents up-to-date information on legislation and its impact on money laundering investigation and explains how changes to federal forfeiture law affect money laundering law.

Race to Incarcerate

Race to Incarcerate, by Mark Mauer. In this revised edition of his seminal book on race, class, and the criminal justice system, Marc Mauer, executive director of one of the United States' leading criminal justice reform organizations, offers the most up-to-date look available at three decades of prison expansion in America. Including newly written material on recent developments under the Bush administration and updated statistics, graphs, and charts throughout, the book tells the tragic story of runaway growth in the number of prisons and jails and the over-reliance on imprisonment to stem problems of economic and social development. Called "sober and nuanced" by Publishers Weekly, Race to Incarcerate documents the enormous financial and human toll of the "get tough" movement, and argues for more humane—and productive—alternatives.

Marc Mauer is executive director of The Sentencing Project. He has served as a consultant to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Institute of Corrections, and the American Bar Association. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area. The Sentencing Project is a national organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes criminal justice reform and the development of alternatives to incarceration.

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Fried Baloney Sandwiches

Beyond Fear

Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier. In "Beyond Fear," Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion.With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits.Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for.

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Impress your dinner guests with this:
Recipe From the Movie, Burnt

Execution

Execution: The Guillotine, the Pendulum, the Thousand Cuts, the Spanish Donkey, and 66 Other Ways of Putting Someone to Death, by Geoffrey Abbott. From the preparation of the victim to the disposal of the body, Execution is everything you ever wanted to know about capital punishment-and a lot you never thought to ask. Cave of Roses: A rare Swedish method of execution in which the victim was confined to a cave full of snakes and poisonous reptiles. Bastinado: Involved the victims being caned gently and rhythmically with a lightweight stick on the soles of the feet until the mental collapse and eventual death of the victim. Sewn in an Animal's Belly: A living person is sewn into the belly of an animal and left to die. The Spanish Donkey: This method of torture consisted of seating a victim on top of a wall that resembled an inverted V with weights attached to the ankles, the weights being slowly increased until the victim's body split in two. Including death by cannibalism, a thousand cuts, and more, Execution is an insightful and interesting look at the grim and gritty history of sanctioned death.

The Mammoth Book of Famous Trials

The Mammoth Book of Famous Trials, by Roger Wilkes (Editor). A collection of 35 of the most famous trials of the 20th century. Recorded by the people who were there, some of the contributors include Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Brian Masters, and Damon Runyon. Among the cases included in this book are the following: The longest on record in the United States — of the deadly duo Bianchi and Buono for the dozen Hillside Stranglings; Brady and Hindley — the iconic case of multiple-child murder; the media frenzy surrounding Bruno Hauptmann's alleged murder of the infant son of Charles Lindberg; O.J. Simpson's trial of the 1990s; the 1968 trial of eleven-year-old Mary Bell who was convicted for killing two little boys; the trial of Oscar Wilde; and the nine-month trial of Charles Manson.

The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons

The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons, by Elizabeth Hull. In the 2004 presidential election, 4,686,539 Americans—a population greater than the city of Los Angeles—were barred from the polls. In a country that has extended suffrage to virtually every other class of citizen, ex-felons are the sole segment of our population deemed unworthy to exercise what the Supreme Court has called "the right preservative of all other rights," the right to vote. The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons provides a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and far-reaching sociological and political consequences of denying ex-felons the right to vote. Readers learn state practices in Florida and Ohio during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections; arguments that have been used in court houses, legislatures, and the press to justify such practices; and attempts to reverse legislation through state and federal governments. In a timely appendix to the 2004 election, Elizabeth Hull makes her case that the battle for civil rights will not be won unless ex-felons, who have fulfilled their obligations to society, are restored the same rights afforded all other American citizens.

Debating the Death Penalty

Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts on Both Sides Make Their Best Case, by Hugo Adam Bedau and Paul G. Cassell. When news breaks that a convicted murderer, released from prison, has killed again, or that an innocent person has escaped the death chamber in light of new DNA evidence, arguments about capital punishment inevitably heat up. Few controversies continue to stir as much emotion as this one, and public confusion is often the result. This volume brings together seven experts--judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and philosophers--to debate the death penalty in a spirit of open inquiry and civil discussion. Here, as the contributors present their reasons for or against capital punishment, the multiple facets of the issue are revealed in clear and thought-provoking detail. Is the death penalty a viable deterrent to future crimes? Does the imposition of lesser penalties, such as life imprisonment, truly serve justice in cases of the worst offences? Does the legal system discriminate against poor or minority defendants? Is the possibility of executing innocent persons sufficient grounds for abolition? In confronting such questions and making their arguments, the contributors marshal an impressive array of evidence, both statistical and from their own experiences working on death penalty cases. The book also includes the text of Governor George Ryan's March 2002 speech in which he explained why he had commuted the sentences of all prisoners on Illinois's death row. By representing the viewpoints of experts who face the vexing questions about capital punishment on a daily basis, Debating the Death Penalty makes a vital contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the moral and legal problems underlying this controversy.

Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe

Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide Between America and Europe, by James Q. Whitman. Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of transgressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices.

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated, by Dave Eggers and Lola Vollen, editors. Beverly Monroe spent seven years in prison for murdering her companion of thirteen years; in fact, he had killed himself. Christopher Ochoa was persuaded to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit, and served twelve years of his life sentence before he was freed by DNA evidence. Michael Evans and Paul Terry each spent twenty-seven years in prison for a brutal rape and murder they did not commit. They were teenagers when they entered prison; they were middle-aged men when DNA proved their innocence. After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence—including 120 from death row—have been released from America’s prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings—inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside.

The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others—thousands by all estimates—who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way.

Dreams of Justice: Mysteries as Social Documents

Dreams of Justice: Mysteries as Social Documents, by Dick Adler. Dick Adler reviews mysteries and thrillers every other week in his Crime Watch column for the Chicago Tribune. He is the co-author, with the late Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, of Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's Education On Death Row. Anthony Lewis in the New York Times Book Review called it "a compelling and important book," and Jonathan Kirsch in the Los Angeles Times said, "Some of the most fascinating passages are the dozen or so case histories of the men and women themselves, the stuff of hard-boiled detective fiction come to life." Adler has also written Sleeping with Moscow, an account of the Richard Miller FBI espionage case. His mystery novel, The Mozart Code, was published in May, 1999, as an electronic book and was a Frankfurt eBook Award nominee in 2000.

Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality

Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality, by Laurence Tancredi. In many areas of modern life rapid developments in science are overwhelming established norms. Brain biology, through DNA testing and advanced brain imaging techniques, has given medical scientists new insights into the functioning of the human mind. This erosion of long-standing beliefs has many implications for understanding and treating what society considers to be aberrant or immoral behavior. What medical science is indicating is that the focus of our emphasis on mental processes--particularly free will and intentionality--is shifting to recognition of the important role the physical brain plays on human thought and behavior. In Hardwired Behavior the author argues that social morality begins in the brain, for without the brain there would be no concept of morality. Individual responsibility, therefore, must be reconsidered in the light of biological brain processes. The question of whether new scientific findings destroy the relevance of free will, placing it in the context of biological forces that may operate outside the conscious control of the actor, is one of intense debate. Hardwired Behavior takes this question and moves it into the open by clearly detailing neuroscience discoveries and explaining how the ancient precepts of "morality" that have guided mankind throughout its history must now be seen through the new lens of brain biology.

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The Military's Combat Canines

Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth

Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth, by John Hubner. A powerful, bracing and deeply spiritual look at intensely, troubled youth, Last Chance in Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates. While reporting on the juvenile court system, journalist John Hubner kept hearing about a facility in Texas that ran the most aggressive–and one of the most successful–treatment programs for violent young offenders in America. How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas, famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation of violent and troubled youth?

Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates, recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as children. The key moment comes when the young offenders reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the long road to redemption.

Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to inflict on others the violence that they themselves have suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet ultimately full of hope.

Crime and Criminology

Crime and Criminology, by Sue Titus Reid. This time-tested text continues to gives students a broad context in which to study the history, theories, and responses to crime and criminology, using a unique blend of both social science and legal research. The only criminology text to include legal case excerpts to demonstrate the role of the courts in the reformation of the criminal justice system, this book gives readers a solid understanding of the integral relationship between the law and theories of criminal behavior. Current topics are explored beyond the headlines, examining the implications of our governing theories and policies.

A History of Crime and Criminal Justice in America

A History of Crime and Criminal Justice in America, by Willard M Oliver, Jr. and James F. Hilgenberg. This new text provides an overview of the origin and development of the American criminal justice system from the arrival of the first settlers during the Colonial period into the twenty first century. Each chapter begins with an overview of the political, economic, social and cultural forces that shaped society within each time period. Following the overview, the history of ordinary crime as well as extraordinary high profile criminal acts is examined. This text uses the discussion of historical context and crime as a foundation to describe and analyze the development and impact of police, law, courts, corrections, and juvenile justice.