I have rarely been so affected by a book. It's not sensationalist in the least - I need to make that clear. It's written by a no-nonsense, Republican, pro-death penalty former attorney general (of the state of Ohio) and his wife, but it has moved this jaded reader.
False Justice, in 250 short pages (really - it's not dense), covers more topics and astounding problems with the post-conviction (and some pre-conviction) justice system than I can cover in a review, but it'll wake you up.
Look up Dean Gillispie. He's an almost certainly innocent man who's been in prison for more than twenty years (and still is) whose situation the state of Ohio refuses to revisit. Understandably, a conviction requires real respect, or the justice system wouldn't mean so much.
But things switch too much after conviction, and the authors argue persuasively that judges and prosecutors let human nature influence their thinking too much, and get defensive and competitive about not examining old cases.
I'm torn between swapping this on my book swap site (there's a wait list for it), and forcing everyone I know to read my copy while I watch them. The book is that important. I'm also trying to get the National Forensic League (my kid's a high school debater) to create debate topics on this, since the next generation's lawyers and policy makers are disproportionately in that crowd today.
If I can't convince you to read at, will you at least read this? DNA hasn't found all the wrong convictions - all it's done is make evident a real problem in the system. Biological evidence exists for fewer than 10% of cases, and for old cases, even that's often gone or contaminated. DNA has allowed people to say for sure that the system got some set of convictions wrong, and look at what led to those convictions.
The 3 top types of unreliable evidence -
1) Scarily, eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable. And witnesses get more confident about it as time goes on, because of the failings of human memory. Confidence is not at all correlated with accuracy in fingering suspects out of lineups.
2) Confessions are incredibly unreliable. They are often done to get a plea deal, or even in prison to get parole sooner, or after more than ten hours of interrogation where the suspect can't think straight. In 25% of exonerations proven by DNA, the suspect had confessed!
3) Snitches (people who finger someone else to get a plea, or cellmates who want prison benefits) are incredibly unreliable. Surprised? Me, either. But courts totally respect their testimony.
The problems this book outlines (there are many others) still go on today - DNA hasn't changed it.
Please read this book.
False Justice, in 250 short pages (really - it's not dense), covers more topics and astounding problems with the post-conviction (and some pre-conviction) justice system than I can cover in a review, but it'll wake you up.
Look up Dean Gillispie. He's an almost certainly innocent man who's been in prison for more than twenty years (and still is) whose situation the state of Ohio refuses to revisit. Understandably, a conviction requires real respect, or the justice system wouldn't mean so much.
But things switch too much after conviction, and the authors argue persuasively that judges and prosecutors let human nature influence their thinking too much, and get defensive and competitive about not examining old cases.
I'm torn between swapping this on my book swap site (there's a wait list for it), and forcing everyone I know to read my copy while I watch them. The book is that important. I'm also trying to get the National Forensic League (my kid's a high school debater) to create debate topics on this, since the next generation's lawyers and policy makers are disproportionately in that crowd today.
If I can't convince you to read at, will you at least read this? DNA hasn't found all the wrong convictions - all it's done is make evident a real problem in the system. Biological evidence exists for fewer than 10% of cases, and for old cases, even that's often gone or contaminated. DNA has allowed people to say for sure that the system got some set of convictions wrong, and look at what led to those convictions.
The 3 top types of unreliable evidence -
1) Scarily, eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable. And witnesses get more confident about it as time goes on, because of the failings of human memory. Confidence is not at all correlated with accuracy in fingering suspects out of lineups.
2) Confessions are incredibly unreliable. They are often done to get a plea deal, or even in prison to get parole sooner, or after more than ten hours of interrogation where the suspect can't think straight. In 25% of exonerations proven by DNA, the suspect had confessed!
3) Snitches (people who finger someone else to get a plea, or cellmates who want prison benefits) are incredibly unreliable. Surprised? Me, either. But courts totally respect their testimony.
The problems this book outlines (there are many others) still go on today - DNA hasn't changed it.
Please read this book.
