Barry Scheck

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, once lawyers with the Bronx Legal Aid Society, co-founded The Innocence Project, which seeks post-conviction release through DNA testing. They are among the most prominent civil rights attorneys in the U.S. Jim Dwyer is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News and author of several other books.

I have to reveal that I know Jim Dwyer, he is the brother-in-law of one of my good friends, I've read many of his other books and I have really liked them all, so I may be a bit biased in my review of his books.

If you are a fan of the podcast Serial or the TV show Law and Order or if you wonder about fairness of the criminal justice system in the US, this is a must read. While the information contained in this book may not help free Adnan Syed, it shows how many people are convicted with faulty evidence and unreliable eyewitness testimony.

Each chapter takes on a different broken part of the justice system, from eye witnesses, to jailhouse, snitches, faulty lab evidence, police misconduct, confessions, lazy attorneys etc... Its terrifying to think of how many people are wrongfully convicted of crimes and how long it takes to get them cleared in this country. And the even scarier part is that there aren't systems in place to punish those who withhold evidence, force confessions, or give false testimony...most of those people aren't charged, convicted or punished in any way. There are very few safeguards.

Once convicted of a crime its almost impossible to get back out. Some systems refuse to allow DNA testing after a conviction leaving innocent people in prison and even more startling are the times when DNA proves the person is innocent and the state won't allow them to be freed saying they must have been guilty in some way. The facts according to the authors are that there are thousands more that could be freed with DNA testing. Although science is not the stop gap for flaws in any criminal justice system, the authors very convincingly argue that it would be a beneficial start.

The stories in this book are accessible and easy to follow but not preachy. If you have any interest in the law or justice this is a must read.… (more)

I hope I go to neither heaven nor hell. I wish that at the time of my death that I could go to sleep and never wake up and never have a bad dream.

These are the words of Ron Williamson, a man who served eleven years of a death sentence for a brutal rape and murder that he didn't commit. One of 47 people profiled in The Innocents, all wrongly convicted of brutal crimes, and all cleared by post-conviction DNA testing, Williamson's words speak to the terrible scars left by these miscarriages of justice.

Each profile includes a photograph by Taryn Simon, usually at some significant location like the scene of the crime or the arrest; commentary on the case by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, whose organization The Innocence Project has played such a crucial role in winning each individual's exoneration; and a brief statement from the wrongfully convicted man or woman.

This is a sobering book, not because it highlights mistakes within our criminal justice system, but because it makes a powerful statement about the nature of those mistakes. Many of the innocents are African-American, some of them are developmentally or psychologically disabled, and almost all of them are poor. The class biases of the legal system, in which unequal access to good counsel and technology help to facilitate wrongful convictions, as well as the fundamentally flawed nature of the identification process, quickly become apparent to the reader.

I was horrified to discover that so many of the cases profiled here were NOT the result of good-faith mistakes, but the product of deliberate and willful indifference on the part of investigators and prosecutors, who ignored or suppressed any evidence that did not fit their (incorrect) theories of the crime. Take the case of Tim Durham, sentenced to 3,220 years in prison for the rape of an eleven-year-old girl, despite the fact that he had 11 alibi witnesses who could place him at a shooting competition at the time of the crime. Or Marvin Anderson, who served 15 years of a 210-year sentence, despite the fact that the real perpetrator confessed five years after his conviction.

Finally, I was particularly struck, while reading The Innocents, by the fact that almost every one of these cases involved the brutal rape of a woman or child. I found myself, as a woman, trying to imagine being the victim of such a heinous crime, of enduring the trauma of testifying about it in public, only to discover years later that my attacker was not who I thought it was. And then I found myself trying to imagine being falsely accused of such a crime, of pleading my innocence to the indifferent or hostile powers-that-be, of being imprisoned for a crime I didn't commit, of being freed years later, and dumped out into the world with no assistance.

There were two sets of crimes here, and as I perused this powerful collection of photographs and stories, I kept thinking that these men were the victims of both crimes. Yes, they were railroaded by a legal system that was stacked against them. But they were also ensnared by a culture that permits widespread violence against women. I find that heartbreaking.… (more)