Barred Why the innocent can't get out of prison

Review by Booklist Review

Stories of high-profile exonerations highlight the realities of wrongful convictions, but they are the exception. Medwed, a law professor and longtime advocate for the wrongfully convicted, presents an eye-opening look at the mechanisms in place to offer relief for the innocent. He explains the processes, purposes, and obstacles, from direct appeal to the last resort of executive pardon or clemency. These efforts vary by state, judge, and case, they often don't operate in ways the average person expects, and they often don't lead to exoneration. Even supposed silver bullets like DNA evidence don't bring guarantees. Medwed offers not only explanations and criticism, he also argues for reform, detailing suggestions for improvement throughout and advocating for the sort of internal review programs shown to be successful in North Carolina and elsewhere. Significantly, Medwed's focus is specifically on exoneration of the innocent. The legal explanations can be dense, but the illustrative cases provide context and bring humanity into the discussion. Readers interested in criminal justice will find an elucidating look at the challenges and possibilities for the wrongfully convicted.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Northeastern University law professor Medwed (Prosecution Complex) examines in this meticulous account the factors that make false convictions so difficult to overturn. Documenting wrongful convictions resulting from police misconduct, shoddy legal representation, and dubious eyewitness testimony, he notes that plea bargaining resolves 95% of criminal cases in the U.S., and describes how prosecutors--who aren't obligated to disclose much of their evidence before trial--use "information asymmetry" to convince defendants to plead guilty. Elsewhere, he details the reasons why it is hard to prove "racial bias in the jury box"; the hurdles defense attorneys face in preserving trial issues for appellate review; and the narrow restrictions placed on convicted defendants' use of the writ of error coram nobis, which "cite the existence of facts unknown at the time of the trial judgment that would affect the soundness of the conviction." Throughout, Medwed draws on harrowing case studies--including a 14-year-old persuaded by his "woeful" attorney into pleading guilty to murder, who spent eight years in prison even after another man confessed to the crime--to make clear how high the odds are stacked against innocent people once they're caught in the criminal justice system. The result is a lucid and persuasive call for change. (Sept.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Exacting examination of the challenges involved in exonerating the wrongfully convicted. Law professor Medwed, a founder of Brooklyn Law School's Second Look Program, writes with passion and expertise regarding the Kafkaesque universe of those incarcerated for serious crimes who later establish "actual innocence." While public perception focuses on scientific advances and some success stories, the author rightly sees this as an unacknowledged crisis. The system, he writes, "is stacked against the innocent, contrary to the popular belief that the post-conviction process is full of escape hatches from the prison cell." In four sections, the author fleshes out the complex legal elements at play, examining the appeals process, formal post-conviction remedies including habeas corpus petitions and the Supreme Court, and parole and executive clemency. In his sharp investigation, Medwed finds widespread procedural barriers, "the wide range of rules that govern the practice of litigation after conviction." Essentially, many wrongfully convicted individuals are barred from seeking post-trial relief due to factors ranging from the labyrinthine appeals process to the cognitive biases of judges who are asked to reexamine prior cases. Similarly, notwithstanding some embrace of a "progressive prosecution movement," including internal conviction review units, Medwed sees continued reluctance on the part of many prosecutors to unearth such miscarriages of justice. "Convictions," he writes, "have become a metric by which an individual prosecutor and an office as a whole can be assessed." The author illustrates these disheartening assertions with a variety of often shocking case studies, including some he pursued with the Second Look Project and other innocence-focused groups, and he ends each chapter with policy prescriptions. In the final chapters, Medwed proposes an evolutionary "new model" for addressing such challenging claims, in the vein of England's independent Criminal Cases Review Commission, which reviews innocence claims for the appeal process. Though legal jargon occasionally intrudes, Medwed's narrative is both informative and poignant. A disturbing, important addition to the literature on America's addiction to incarceration. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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