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Title: Actual Innocence : Five Days to Execution, and Other Dispatches From the Wrongly Convicted by Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer, Barry Scheck ISBN: 0-385-49341-X Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Do we jail and kill innocents in America?
Comment: This is a terrifying but important book that should be read by everyone with an interest in the American judicial system and a concern for justice. Regardless of your position on the death penalty or other artifacts of the tough on crime spree this country has seen over the last several decades, it's hard to see how you can object to attempts to ensure people are put behind bars only for crimes they are in fact guilty of.
Scheck and Neufeld have convincingly shown there are serious flaws in our judicial system which cause many people to be convicted of crimes they did not commit. They show this primarily by use of DNA testing and explain with compelling case histories how these convictions are obtained: faulty eyewitness testimony, lying snitches, coerced confessions, racism, falsified lab results, incompetent defense attorneys, and dishonest prosecutors. It doesn't help that we have a Supreme Court that seems more interested in expediting the process than in ensuring justice.
The current scandal with the Ramparts division of the LAPD is a vivid reminder of how bad matters are, even though it "only" involves lying police officers and prosecutors willing to accept "testilying".
The DNA evidence can't really be argued against. My guess is that defenders of the current system will try to ignore the work done by these two and others. We know that when finally forced to do pay attention the conviction of innocents, the morally and intellectually bankrupt argument is made that the fact of overturning the convictions is proof the system works. I predict that when DNA evidence finally does start freeing even more wrongly convicted, the argument will be that things are now cleaned up and we can safely conclude the problem to be solved. Of course, it won't have been. Only those few cases where DNA evidence is available will be cleared.
"Actual Innocence" closes with a series of suggestions for improving the system to decrease the number of innocent people convicted. They are sensible and it's hard to see how they could be argued against, except perhaps by saying it's too expensive to keep honest people out of prison. Or even alive, since we do have a death penalty in this country. Again, the likely prospect is that an attempt will be made to ignore the proposals.
The only possible improvement I can see to this book would have been a chapter dedicated to making a case for how many innocents are routinely being convicted. Careful and conservative estimates for how often this happens based on the data available might be a key piece in discussing the subject with others. The message is there if you're awake while you read the book, but can get lost in the specific miscarriages of justice described.
Rating: 5
Summary: A call for a moratorium on the DP.
Comment: A powerful, moving and well-written book. Away from all the moral problems with capital punishment, the Authors are able to focus on legal issues and statistics to show the problems of executing inmates. Many of the research for this book come from The Innocence Project and from the Federal Government, in the form of published reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
In brief, this book provides a few stories and they explain how people in this country are wrongly convicted and how scientific evidence, specifically DNA Testing, can help prove their innocence.
The book also looks at other sources of problems within the judicial system - Prosecutorial/police misconduct, lazy defense counsels and death-biased juries.
This book provides the reader with an educated discussion on the problems of the death penalty. I highly recommend it to everyone and challenge the proponents of the death penalty to read this and look into their own souls to determine if this is a system we want to continue.
Rating: 5
Summary: Unjustly imprisoned
Comment: Actual Innocence is a very deep and detailed book that i am sure anyone would enjoy reading. We are talking about real cases of men who were put in jail for many years, being accused of crimes that they never did. Some were even send to death row,luckly the innocence project was able to help these men by testing their DNA. Reading these stories made me mad because how can someone be left in jail for so many years when they are innocent. I learned that many of these cases occurr because of mistaken eyewitness. The victim will accuse someone else that they think is the one. I really liked the book because i lets you know many things that go on in these types of cases. The best part of all is that now there is DNA that can prove someone guilty and hopefully this injustice can end.
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Title: Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right by Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck ISBN: 0451203658 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: 06 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: The Innocents by Taryn Simon, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck ISBN: 1884167187 Publisher: Umbrage Editions Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice by Saundra D. Westervelt, Saundra D. Westervelt, John A. Humphrey, Michael L. Radelet ISBN: 0813529522 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases by Michael L. Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau, Constance E. Putnam ISBN: 1555531970 Publisher: Northeastern University Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions by Stanley Cohen ISBN: 0786712589 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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