Barred
Why the Innocent Can't Get Out of Prison
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking exposé of how our legal system makes it nearly impossible to overturn wrongful convictions
Thousands of innocent people are behind bars in the United States. But proving their innocence and winning their release is nearly impossible.
In Barred, legal scholar Daniel S. Medwed argues that our justice system’s stringent procedural rules are largely to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Those rules guarantee criminal defendants just one opportunity to appeal their convictions directly to a higher court. Afterward, the wrongfully convicted can pursue only a few narrow remedies. Even when there is strong evidence of a miscarriage of justice, rigid guidelines, bias, and deference toward lower courts all too often prevent exoneration.
Offering clear explanations of legal procedures alongside heart-wrenching stories of their devastating impact, Barred exposes how the system is stacked against the innocent and makes a powerful call for change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Northeastern University law professor Medwed (Prosecution Complex) examines in this meticulous account the factors that make false convictions so difficult to overturn. Documenting wrongful convictions resulting from police misconduct, shoddy legal representation, and dubious eyewitness testimony, he notes that plea bargaining resolves 95% of criminal cases in the U.S., and describes how prosecutors—who aren't obligated to disclose much of their evidence before trial—use "information asymmetry" to convince defendants to plead guilty. Elsewhere, he details the reasons why it is hard to prove "racial bias in the jury box"; the hurdles defense attorneys face in preserving trial issues for appellate review; and the narrow restrictions placed on convicted defendants' use of the writ of error coram nobis, which "cite the existence of facts unknown at the time of the trial judgment that would affect the soundness of the conviction." Throughout, Medwed draws on harrowing case studies—including a 14-year-old persuaded by his "woeful" attorney into pleading guilty to murder, who spent eight years in prison even after another man confessed to the crime—to make clear how high the odds are stacked against innocent people once they're caught in the criminal justice system. The result is a lucid and persuasive call for change.
