Overview

On May 13, 1988, Stephen Roy Carr, a so-called mountain man living in Michaux State Forest in south central Pennsylvania, shot two female hikers while they were making love at a campsite near the Appalachian Trail. Rebecca Wight died at the scene. Claudia Brenner, despite five bullet wounds, survived to testify against her attacker. In this book, H.L. Pohlman reconstructs the dramatic story of this widely-publicized murder case and traces its disposition through the criminal justice system. Drawing on interviews with participants as well as court records, he closely examines competing interpretations of the evidence. Was the attack a hate crime? A sex crime? A class crime? At the same time, he shows how a broad range of substantive and procedural issues - from the rights of the accused to evaluations of potential mitigating circumstances - can influence the assessment of culpability in homicide cases. Much of Pohlman's analysis centres around two fundamental and related questions: To what extent did the adversarial system facilitate or hinder the discovery of the """"whole truth"""" in the Carr case? And was justice served? He concludes by revisiting the ongoing debate over the nature of the American criminal justice system and the legitimacy of its ultimate sanction - the death penalty.

Full Product Details

9781558491663

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Reviews

A thought-provoking account of a senseless crime. It will provide those troubled by our country's imperfect criminal justice system much to think about.--Legal Times A death-penalty trial is lent a fascinating air by its very low-profile, routine nature in Pohlman's careful, revelatory delineation of the legal process. . . . Here is a lucid narrative of a typical murder trial, written to give the average citizen a taste of how our legal process works when not turned by the media glare into a prurient sideshow.--Kirkus Reviews An unusual and provocative view of both the workings of the criminal justice system and its social context. In particular, Pohlman's probing of the cast of characters exposes the complexities of decision-making that emerge in a criminal investigation, in a prosecution of this magnitude and in the defense of a person accused of murder and facing the possibility of the death penalty.--Janet Rifkin, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Here is a lucid narrative of a typical murder trial, written to give the average citizen a taste of how our legal process works when not turned by the media glare into a prurient sideshow. -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

H. L. POHLMAN is professor of political science at Dickinson College. He is editor of Political Thought and the American Judiciary, published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

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