Just Pursuit
A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness
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4.7 • 16 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This instant New York Times bestseller offers “a firsthand, eye-opening story of a prosecutor that exposes the devastating criminal punishment system” (Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of How to Be an Antiracist) in this “compelling collection of engaging, well-written, keenly observed vignettes from [Laura Coates’s] years as a lawyer with the US Department of Justice” (The New York Times Book Review).
When Laura Coates joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor, she wanted to advocate for the most vulnerable among us. But she quickly realized that even with the best intentions, “the pursuit of justice creates injustice.”
Coates’s experiences show that no matter how fair you try to fight, being Black, a woman, and a mother are identities often at odds in the justice system. She and her colleagues face seemingly impossible situations as they teeter between what is right and what is just.
On the front lines of our legal system, Coates saw how Black communities are policed differently; Black cases are prosecuted differently; Black defendants are judged differently. How the court system seems to be the one place where minorities are overrepresented, an unrelenting parade of Black and Brown defendants in numbers that belie their percentage in the population and overfill American prisons. She also witnessed how others in the system either abused power or were abused by it—for example, when an undocumented witness was arrested by ICE, when a white colleague taught Coates how to unfairly interrogate a young Black defendant, or when a judge victim-blamed a young sexual assault survivor based on her courtroom attire.
Through these “searing, eye-opening” (People) scenes from the courtroom, Laura Coates explores the tension between the idealism of the law and the reality of working within the parameters of our flawed legal system, exposing the chasm between what is right and what is lawful.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
CNN legal analyst Coates debuts with a revealing account of her time as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Reflecting on the tension between her commitment to upholding the law and her perspective as a Black woman, Coates highlights cases that exposed fault lines within the criminal justice system. These include a prosecutor and a defense attorney colluding to pressure a young Black defendant into becoming an informant, a judge disbelieving an abuse victim's testimony because of the way she was dressed in court, and Coates's obligation to report a crime victim's "outstanding immigration issue," knowing that it would likely lead to his deportation. She also tells the story of an elderly Black woman requesting in her victim impact statement that the young Black man who stole her car not be sent to jail for a mistake her children could have made when they were young. In another poignant example, the parent of a man who was murdered in a petty dispute pleads with the judge not to give the defendants a life sentence because "there has been enough loss already." Though she makes a persuasive case that racial discrimination is baked into the criminal justice system, Coates doesn't outline specific reforms. Still, this is a troubling and well informed report from the front lines of the U.S. justice system.
Customer Reviews
Just Pursuit
I enjoyed the style of the book, broken down into vignettes of different experiences.