Marked for life One man's fight for justice from the inside

Wright recounts in this gripping memoir how his wrongful imprisonment led to his law career. In 1989, Wright was a music producer in New Jersey when he was targeted by Somerset County prosecutor Nicholas Bissell (who would later be convicted of embezzlement and tax fraud, and killed himself in a standoff with U.S. marshals) and charged as a drug kingpin, despite evidence pointing to the contrary. Wright explains how detectives and prosecutors used "institutional extortion" to offer people in his circle lessened sentences if they helped perpetuate the lies that led to his eventual incarceration. Portrayed negatively in the courtroom and by the media and saddled with an indifferent court-appointed lawyer, Wright used the prison law library to educate himself on his case and became an expert advocate for himself and many of his fellow inmates. In addition to the mechanics of the justice system, Wright viscerally details the unjust conditions inside prisons and humanizes inmates who often lack the resources to adequately defend themselves. Representing himself at his postconviction relief hearing in 1996, Wright got a detective to confess to police misconduct in the case; after his conviction was overturned, Wright earned his law degree and is currently a practicing attorney. Shot through with hard-earned wisdom and resilience, this is a powerful portrait of overcoming immeasurable odds. (Nov.)

Gritty account of a music producer's wrongful conviction for drug trafficking and his eventual legal triumph. Wright's overlong yet engrossing memoir (co-written with Sternfeld) encompasses a sharp exposé of mass incarceration and the quest for legal self-discovery, and the author shows how his success as a hip-hop promoter attracted the attention of a corrupt New Jersey prosecutor and his police minions. "I was at a nexus of all these people, the nucleus of the well-off, the famous, and the local hustlers," he writes. "It put me on the radar of a joint drug unit that Middlesex County formed with neighboring Somerset County." After acquaintances were pressured to implicate him, Wright was arrested in 1989 and convicted two years later under an ill-conceived "kingpin law," which the author describes as "a conspiracy law with a laughably low burden of proof….As written, the statute gave a life sentence to someone for having a conversation that no one had to prove ever happened." Yet the discovery of the prison law library gave him an unexpected new direction for dealing with his plight: "Educating myself in the law was my form of resistance." This began with the seemingly reckless decision to represent himself. "Acting as your own lawyer, especially in a case this serious and complex, was close to unheard of," he writes. At the notorious Trenton State Prison, Wright joined the Inmate Legal Association, worked on his own appeals, and won respect by providing aid to other inmates and forcing change in the abysmal treatment of mentally ill prisoners. In a dramatic climax, Wright chronicles how he elicited a courtroom admission of police malfeasance, which collapsed the case against him. Though the prose is sometimes repetitive, the author discusses the intricacies of his legal journey in clear, forceful terms, and the case's complexities and Wright's fight for justice (the prosecutor was eventually himself convicted) maintain suspense. A startling, disturbing narrative that shows the continuing social costs of wrongful conviction and the drug war. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.