Review by Booklist Review
Former Washington, D.C., public defender Dybdahl takes on the Brady Rule, linking its evolution to the case of the brutal 1984 murder of a D.C. woman, Catherine Fuller. The 1963 Brady Rule requires prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence to the defense, even if it harms their case. Its boundaries and expectations, however, were not clear, and Dybdahl traces Brady's development. Dybdahl also goes in-depth on the Fuller case and those swept into it to clearly show how Brady violations impact real lives. For decades the defense strategies, appeals, and requests for new trials of the convicted were impacted by withheld evidence. In 2017, Fuller was the last case the Supreme Court heard on the Brady Rule, to no effect. Convincingly arguing that the Brady Rule, with its on-going difficulties, has failed, Dybdahl points to the success of state-level laws that more explicitly require sharing among prosecutors and defense. Though best suited for those interested in criminal law, this is a readable, frustrating, yet hopeful examination of an imperfect rule and what may come next.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The devastating impact of a prosecutor's failure to disclose information favorable to the defense's case is mapped in this persuasive analysis by former public defender Dybdahl. Surveying the history of the legal doctrine known as the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose such information, Dybdahl recounts the case of John Leo Brady, who received a death sentence after prosecutors withheld his accomplice's statement admitting he committed the murder alone. Brady's attorneys eventually discovered the statement and the Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that "the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused on request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment." Dybdahl thoroughly examines how the Brady rule was weakened by a series of judicial rulings and by police and prosecutors' use of "coercive interrogation tactics" and "false promises of leniency" in order to elicit witness statements against defendants. He also explains that the justice system's "abiding love of finality" encourages judges to rule that withheld information wasn't "material" to the defense, and therefore not in violation of the Brady rule. Copious statistics and heart-wrenching case studies of false convictions back up Dybdahl's argument for more vigorous enforcement of the rule: "If we want pretrial proceedings and guilty pleas to be fair, if we want juries to reach just verdicts, disclosing all the available, relevant evidence can only help reach that goal." This is an open-and-shut case. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A former public defender examines the checkered history of the ruling that holds that all prosecutorial evidence must be made available to the defense in court cases. The Brady rule takes its name from a tangled case in which John Leo Brady recruited an accomplice to steal a car to use as a getaway vehicle for a planned bank robbery. The accomplice killed the car's owner. The prosecuting attorney filed his confession away, and in the end, Brady was sentenced to death. The case went before the Supreme Court in 1963, and even though Justice William O. Douglas opined that "the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused on request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment," the court did not overturn the conviction. While Brady languished in jail, courts across the country wrestled with what Dybdahl considers a "poorly reasoned" decision that left many terms open to interpretation. He notes that violations of the Brady rule "helped to convict…1,056 innocent people" between 1989 and 2019. Not surprisingly, most were people of color. The author looks closely at a case of rape and murder in which, despite both eyewitness accounts and later confessions, the crime was pinned on Black teenagers as a supposed gang initiation. That case was manipulated by a prosecutor on the make, hopeful that his victory in court, won by withholding evidence, would advance him and his legal and political ambitions. While the case was "the last trial of his short legal career," little changed in the use of the Brady rule--which, of course, hinges on the supposition that the prosecution won't destroy evidence contrary to its argument. Weighing against reform, Dybdahl writes in support of a broader and vigorously enforced standard, is the court's "love of finality," which disinclines it to revisit supposedly settled cases. The book includes a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean. A convincing argument for a judicial overhaul in support of fair trials. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
