Awards
- Joint winner for Constitution Project Constitutional Commentary Award 2011.
- Joint winner of Constitution Project Constitutional Commentary Award 2011
Overview
On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington--defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case--was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett's investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.
Full Product Details
Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.50cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.699kg
ISBN: 9780674058705
ISBN 10: 0674058704
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 04 April 2011
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Out of Print
Availability: In Print
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.
Reviews
Garrett's book is a gripping contribution to the literature of injustice, along with a galvanizing call for reform...It's the stories in his book that stick in the memory. One can only hope that they will mobilize a broad range of citizens, liberal and conservative, to demand legislative and judicial reforms ensuring that the innocent go free whether or not the constable has blundered.--Jeffrey Rosen New York Times Book Review (05/29/2011)
Author Information
Brandon L. Garrett is Roy L. and Rosamond Woodruff Morgan Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law.
