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The Solution to an Injustice in Trials

Author: Sinclair Banks

Publisher: Sinclair Banks

Published: 2019-03-01

Total Pages: 690

ISBN-13: 0578462206

This 664 page law and logic book contains the most comprehensive and detailed description of the composition of argument ad hominem ever published, revealing this form of argument to be a far broader fallacy than was previously known. Like perjury, argument ad hominem can deceive juries and cause unjust trial verdicts. There is, fortunately, already a criminal law against perjury, but, unfortunately, there is currently no law that expressly prohibits argument ad hominem in trials. The book includes the text of a proposed criminal law that expressly prohibits argument ad hominem in trials, and shows the necessity of such a law to counter effectively this quite common form of injustice in jury trials. For more description of the book's content and to view the dust jacket please visit sinclairbanks.com/author.

Unfair

Author: Adam Benforado

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0770437788

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Unfair succinctly and persuasively recounts cutting-edge research testifying to the faulty and inaccurate procedures that underpin virtually all aspects of our criminal justice system, illustrating many with case studies.”—The Boston Globe A child is gunned down by a police officer; an investigator ignores critical clues in a case; an innocent man confesses to a crime he did not commit; a jury acquits a killer. The evidence is all around us: Our system of justice is fundamentally broken. But it’s not for the reasons we tend to think, as law professor Adam Benforado argues in this eye-opening, galvanizing book. Even if the system operated exactly as it was designed to, we would still end up with wrongful convictions, trampled rights, and unequal treatment. This is because the roots of injustice lie not inside the dark hearts of racist police officers or dishonest prosecutors, but within the minds of each and every one of us. This is difficult to accept. Our nation is founded on the idea that the law is impartial, that legal cases are won or lost on the basis of evidence, careful reasoning and nuanced argument. But they may, in fact, turn on the camera angle of a defendant’s taped confession, the number of photos in a mug shot book, or a simple word choice during a cross-examination. In Unfair, Benforado shines a light on this troubling new field of research, showing, for example, that people with certain facial features receive longer sentences and that judges are far more likely to grant parole first thing in the morning. Over the last two decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have uncovered many cognitive forces that operate beyond our conscious awareness. Until we address these hidden biases head-on, Benforado argues, the social inequality we see now will only widen, as powerful players and institutions find ways to exploit the weaknesses of our legal system. Weaving together historical examples, scientific studies, and compelling court cases—from the border collie put on trial in Kentucky to the five teenagers who falsely confessed in the Central Park Jogger case—Benforado shows how our judicial processes fail to uphold our values and protect society’s weakest members. With clarity and passion, he lays out the scope of the legal system’s dysfunction and proposes a wealth of practical reforms that could prevent injustice and help us achieve true fairness and equality before the law.

Broken Scales

Author: Joel Cohen

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9781634258104

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However rare, some injustices are "objectively" determined, often through DNA evidence, which allows us to squarely establish innocence despite a conviction. But the stories selected for this book represent a cross-section: some are such that (almost) every reader will see and acknowledge the wrong, and some interviews may leave the readers scratching his head, wondering "what was the author thinking?" By speaking with those impacted by injustices that occurred over the last 60 years--during the 1950s at the height of McCarthyism, the 1980s in Louisiana and New York when race played a large a role in how justice was dispensed and how the media portrayed the participants, the aftermath of 9/11 when many were prepared to believe the worst, and the time shortly before the Supreme Court decided that marriage could be granted to same-sex couples--this book requires readers to look at injustice in the context of our times. The stories told by the participants themselves give the reader insight into the challenges of dispensing, and even commenting on, justice. The author asks difficult questions: Is there an injustice when the game seems to have been played fairly, but the System still got it wrong? Is it an injustice when a jury, properly charged with the evidence fairly presented, convicts the wrong man? Or when people, so passionate in their own point of view, use over-the-top tactics to persuade others of their position? These interviews add to the important--and what must be ongoing--conversation about injustice in America

Ordinary Injustice

Author: Amy Bach

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-09

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780805074475

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From an award-winning lawyer-reporter, a radically new explanation for America’s failing justice system The stories of grave injustice are all too familiar: the lawyer who sleeps through a trial, the false confessions, the convictions of the innocent. Less visible is the chronic injustice meted out daily by a profoundly defective system. In a sweeping investigation that moves from small-town Georgia to upstate New York, from Chicago to Mississippi, Amy Bach reveals a judicial process so deeply compromised that it constitutes a menace to the people it is designed to serve. Here is the public defender who pleads most of his clients guilty; the judge who sets outrageous bail for negligible crimes; the prosecutor who brings almost no cases to trial; the court that works together to achieve a wrong verdict. Going beyond the usual explanations of bad apples and meager funding, Bach identifies an assembly-line approach that rewards shoddiness and sacrifices defendants to keep the court calendar moving, and she exposes the collusion between judge, prosecutor, and defense that puts the interests of the system above the obligation to the people. It is time, Bach argues, to institute a new method of checks and balances that will make injustice visible—the first and necessary step to any reform. Full of gripping human stories, sharp analyses, and a crusader’s sense of urgency, Ordinary Injustice is a major reassessment of the health of the nation’s courtrooms.

Injustice for All

Author: Chris W Surprenant

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1000750523

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American criminal justice is a dysfunctional mess. Cops are too violent, the punishments are too punitive, and the so-called Land of the Free imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Understanding why means focusing on color—not only on black or white (which already has been studied extensively), but also on green. The problem is that nearly everyone involved in criminal justice—including district attorneys, elected judges, the police, voters, and politicians—faces bad incentives. Local towns often would rather send people to prison on someone else’s dime than pay for more effective policing themselves. Local police forces can enrich themselves by turning into warrior cops who steal from innocent civilians. Voters have very little incentive to understand the basic facts about crime or how to fix it—and vote accordingly. And politicians have every incentive to cater to voters’ worst biases. Injustice for All systematically diagnoses why and where American criminal justice goes wrong, and offers functional proposals for reform. By changing who pays for what, how people are appointed, how people are punished, and which things are criminalized, we can make the US a country which guarantees justice for all. Key Features: Shows how bad incentives, not "bad apples," cause the dysfunction in American criminal justice Focuses not only on overincarceration, but on overcriminalization and other failures of the criminal justice system Provides a philosophical and practical defense of reducing the scope of what’s considered criminal activity Crosses ideological lines, highlighting both the weaknesses and strengths of liberal, conservative, and libertarian agendas Fully integrates tools from philosophy and social science, making this stand out from the many philosophy books on punishment, on the one hand, and the solely empirical studies from sociology and criminal science, on the other Avoids disciplinary jargon, broadening the book’s suitability for students and researchers in many different fields and for an interested general readership Offers plausible reforms that realign specific incentives with the public good.

Usual Cruelty

Author: Alec Karakatsanis

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1620975289

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From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums. He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional. Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings—an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Author: Martin Luther King

Publisher: HarperOne

Published: 2025-01-14

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780063425811

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A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins. With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience. This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

Socrates On Trial

Author: Nigel Tubbs

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1350053724

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Named by Rowan Williams as one of his Books of the Year (2021) in the New Statesman. Socrates On Trial tells of Socrates's return to a modern city that is plagued by prejudice, privilege and populism. On resuming his questioning in the agora he is arrested, interrogated by his prosecutors, questioned by his Judge, and confessed to by his inquisitor. On a Festival Day, he explores a new model for the just city --a city based not on mastery but on learning --before offering a new apology to the court that will, once again, decide his fate. This new/old Socrates offers the city a renewed vision of justice by reconceptualizing the meaning and significance of thinking and education. From the force of Socratic questioning, he unfolds a different logic of truth, freedom, and justice. His conversations exert a gravitational force that draws key cultural elements of the city -- property, wealth, money, family, essence, gendered and racialized identities, production, distribution and consumption -- into its educational orbit. At stake here is the vulnerability of modern democracy to authoritarian leaders and their sponsors. Influenced by sophisticated propaganda people's frustration with democracy is channeled into visceral anger on the one hand, and into disillusioned scepticism and cynicism on the other. Belief in truth and education collapses in exhaustion and fatigue, caught in the headlights of seemingly irresolvable and petrifying rational paradoxes that block all paths to social justice. Socrates On Trial, describing the return of Socrates to the modern city, heralds a new education for such a city.

Crook County

Author: Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2016-05-24

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0804799202

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Winner of the 2017 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award, sponsored by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Winner of the 2017 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, sponsored by the American Sociological Association's Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Winner of the 2017 Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, sponsored by the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Culture Section. Honorable Mention in the 2017 Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Race, Class, and Gender. NAACP Image Award Nominee for an Outstanding Literary Work from a debut author. Winner of the 2017 Prose Award for Excellence in Social Sciences and the 2017 Prose Category Award for Law and Legal Studies, sponsored by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers. Silver Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (Current Events/Social Issues category). Americans are slowly waking up to the dire effects of racial profiling, police brutality, and mass incarceration, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities of color. The criminal courts are the crucial gateway between police action on the street and the processing of primarily black and Latino defendants into jails and prisons. And yet the courts, often portrayed as sacred, impartial institutions, have remained shrouded in secrecy, with the majority of Americans kept in the dark about how they function internally. Crook County bursts open the courthouse doors and enters the hallways, courtrooms, judges' chambers, and attorneys' offices to reveal a world of punishment determined by race, not offense. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve spent ten years working in and investigating the largest criminal courthouse in the country, Chicago–Cook County, and based on over 1,000 hours of observation, she takes readers inside our so-called halls of justice to witness the types of everyday racial abuses that fester within the courts, often in plain sight. We watch white courtroom professionals classify and deliberate on the fates of mostly black and Latino defendants while racial abuse and due process violations are encouraged and even seen as justified. Judges fall asleep on the bench. Prosecutors hang out like frat boys in the judges' chambers while the fates of defendants hang in the balance. Public defenders make choices about which defendants they will try to "save" and which they will sacrifice. Sheriff's officers cruelly mock and abuse defendants' family members. Delve deeper into Crook County with related media and instructor resources at www.sup.org/crookcountyresources. Crook County's powerful and at times devastating narratives reveal startling truths about a legal culture steeped in racial abuse. Defendants find themselves thrust into a pernicious legal world where courtroom actors live and breathe racism while simultaneously committing themselves to a colorblind ideal. Gonzalez Van Cleve urges all citizens to take a closer look at the way we do justice in America and to hold our arbiters of justice accountable to the highest standards of equality.

Political Trials in Theory and History

Author: Jens Meierhenrich

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-02-27

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1108107656

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From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones? Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they matter.