American Injustice
One Lawyer's Fight to Protect the Rule of Law
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- 22,99 €
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- 22,99 €
Publisher Description
From the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix’s The Staircase comes a “bracing account of abuses of power and corruption in the criminal justice system.” (The Guardian)
“A fine companion to Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and Emily Bazelon’s Charged. A stellar—and often shocking—report on a broken criminal justice system.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
In the past thirty years alone, more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners—their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years—have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period.
Renowned criminal defense and civil rights attorney David Rudolf has spent decades defending the wrongfully accused. In American Injustice, he draws from his years of experience in the American criminal legal system to shed light on the misconduct that exists at all levels of law enforcement and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake. Tracing these themes through the lens of some of his most important cases—including new details from the Michael Peterson trial made famous in The Staircase—Rudolf takes the reader inside crime scenes to examine forensic evidence left by perpetrators; revisits unsolved murders to detail how and why the true culprits were never prosecuted; reveals how confirmation bias leads police and prosecutors to employ tactics that make wrongful arrests and prosecutions more likely; and exposes how poverty and racism fundamentally distort the system.
In American Injustice, Rudolf gives a voice to those who have been the victim of wrongful accusations and shows in the starkest terms the human impact of legal wrongdoing. Effortlessly blending gripping true-crime reporting and searing observations on civil rights in America, American Injustice takes readers behind the scenes of a justice system in desperate need of reform.
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Defense attorney Rudolf debuts with a searing look at systemic failures in the U.S. justice system. He notes that over the past three decades, nearly 3,000 people were exonerated and released from prison for crimes they had not committed, and delves into the factors behind these false convictions, including racial bias; the so-called trial penalty, which incentivizes defendants to plead guilty in order to avoid the likelihood of a harsher sentence should they be convicted at trial; and a reliance on suspect testimony. Rudolf also documents shortcomings in forensic science, describing, for instance, a case in which an expert witness grossly exaggerated the statistical likelihood that two hairs found at a rape scene belonged to the defendant. Noting that a false conviction leaves the real culprit free to commit other crimes, Rudolf laments that potentially exculpatory DNA evidence is not a factor in most crimes, and claims that the cases in which he and other defense attorneys have been able to win civil settlements and official declarations of innocence for their clients are just the tip of the iceberg. Enriched by Rudolf's firsthand experience and heartfelt compassion for his clients, this is a harrowing call for change.