Marked for Life
One Man's Fight for Justice from the Inside
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An empowering memoir of courage and hope in the face of injustice—and the basis for the ABC television show, For Life—Marked for Life is the true story of Isaac Wright Jr.’s battle to win his freedom after being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, and a critical indictment of America’s judicial system.
“If I waited around for someone to save me, I’d be waiting my whole life. Unless I took the reins of this thing myself, I was going to die in prison. If that was my destiny, then I was going to die fighting. The desperation of that equation kept me up most nights. I would never find a gladiator. So I had to become him.”
In the summer of 1989, Isaac Wright Jr. was a 28-year-old independent music producer, who’d struck out on his own and became one of hip hop’s early success stories. With his dance crew Uptown Express, Wright won recognition on Star Search, toured with Run-DMC, and transitioned into management, co-founding his wife Sunshine’s music group, The Cover Girls. They’d settled in the New Jersey suburbs to raise their six-year-old daughter, never imagining that Wright would fall victim to gross police misconduct and a corrupt district attorney.
Accused of being a drug “kingpin” and incarcerated in Somerset County while the prosecutor and police built their case of lies against him, Wright realized he would get no help from any defense attorneys—white men uninterested in uncovering the truth or in proving the innocence of a black man. Pressured to take a plea deal offer of 20 years behind bars, Wright chose to take the law into his own hands by educating himself in the legal system so he could represent himself in court.
Studying statutes and cases in the jail’s law library, Wright became an adept legal mind. But despite acquiring knowledge that he put to use in defending his fellow inmates, he lost his trial and was sentenced to Trenton State Prison for life, plus 70 years in 1991. For the next five years, Wright would continue learning law, become a paralegal with the prison’s Inmate Legal Association, and appeal his case. Threatened by corrupt correction officers and convicts, his family falling apart, Wright fought for his life with every legal means at his disposal, eventually uncovering the smoking gun that unraveled the conspiracy perpetrated by law enforcement officials against him.
Marked for Life is not just the story of how Isaac Wright Jr. won his freedom. It is the story of how he found his true calling as a gladiator fighting on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized communities victimized by an unjust system of law.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wright recounts in this gripping memoir how his wrongful imprisonment led to his law career. In 1989, Wright was a music producer in New Jersey when he was targeted by Somerset County prosecutor Nicholas Bissell (who would later be convicted of embezzlement and tax fraud, and killed himself in a standoff with U.S. marshals) and charged as a drug kingpin, despite evidence pointing to the contrary. Wright explains how detectives and prosecutors used "institutional extortion" to offer people in his circle lessened sentences if they helped perpetuate the lies that led to his eventual incarceration. Portrayed negatively in the courtroom and by the media and saddled with an indifferent court-appointed lawyer, Wright used the prison law library to educate himself on his case and became an expert advocate for himself and many of his fellow inmates. In addition to the mechanics of the justice system, Wright viscerally details the unjust conditions inside prisons and humanizes inmates who often lack the resources to adequately defend themselves. Representing himself at his postconviction relief hearing in 1996, Wright got a detective to confess to police misconduct in the case; after his conviction was overturned, Wright earned his law degree and is currently a practicing attorney. Shot through with hard-earned wisdom and resilience, this is a powerful portrait of overcoming immeasurable odds.
Customer Reviews
Marked For Life
This book is profoundly important to our culture and should be mandatory reading. All people especially black and brown people need to know and understand how there in a systematic lack of justice in this country for us. The more you know. I applaud Issac for staying his ground and not taking a plea deal. I could go on. I want my teenage grandsons to read this book.