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18 reviews for:
Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right
Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck
4.09 AVERAGE
18 reviews for:
Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right
Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck
4.09 AVERAGE
Very intriguing and heartbreaking. This goes to show you that no system is ever going to be completely just. It's also good to remind yourself that you shouldn't judge people just based on what others are saying about them.
The information presented in this book is incredibe. Scheck et al run through the basics of about a dozen cases of wrongful imprisonment where innocent men wound up in prison, usually on death row, and were later exonerated by DNA evidence through the work of the Innocence Project - some spending more than a decade behind bars for crimes demonstably committed by others. Unfortunately, the writing is really bad. Timelines are sloppy, metaphors are unintentionally hilarious, and much of the book reads like a closing statement on Law and Order. The same information presented by a Tracy Kidder-level writer would be truly mind-blowing. But it's still well worth it - if you advocate the use of capital punishment, you should know how flawed the system is.
The use of actual cases to define the process of how DNA profiling was developed and utilized especially for exonerations I wrongful conviction cases was very interesting. This book explains the evolution of DNA and ties to four cases which led to exonerations. Worth the time if you follow wrongful conviction cases and how evidence based investigation is applied.
There are a lot better books about Innocence Projects than this. The prose is at once too floral and too dry. The structure makes the details of each case blend together. For a casual reader, I'd recommend Just Mercy instead.
Weak eye witnesses, false confessions, pseudo science, jail house snitches, fraudulent evidence, inept defense, malicious prosecution, racial prejudice, emotional blindness..... just a few of factors that come into play with innocent people being sent to prison and death row in the USA. And it doesn't help that politicians have defunded defense for the guilty and that people in general want 'someone to pay', who cares if the person is actually the one who committed the crime?
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
A great book. The co-authors talking about themselves in the third person was a little distracting to me at first, but I quickly got used to it. I think the biggest takeaway I had from this book is that most DNA exonerations are over now (they freed innocent people who had been convicted before advanced DNA testing) but there are still so many ways innocent people can be unjustly convicted. Exonerating DNA evidence doesn't exist in every case - for many if not most of the innocent people profiled in this book, if the DNA evidence hadn't existed to prove their innocence, they would have been executed or stayed in jail forever due to convictions based on things like false snitch testimony, coerced false confessions, junk forensic science, police and/or prosecutor malfeasance, and much more. The innocents freed in this book are the lucky ones, set free after years (often decades!) of unjust imprisonment. Doubtless there are many innocents still imprisoned who barring a miracle have no hope of justice. I already knew our 'justice' system is incredibly flawed, racist,and broken, but this book makes it incredibly stark.