Would You Like to Submit a Book Review?

We would love to hear from you! Take a look at the guidelines we have set up by clicking here.

Justice Failed: How “Legal Ethics” Kept Me in Prison for 26 Years

Details
Published: 26 September 2017

berl falbaum simplelistsBerl Falbaum is a friend of Proving Innocence, having attended several of our board meetings. He has just written a book, working with the man whom the book is about, Alton Logan. It is, again, a tragic story of our failed justice system. The book has received praise from the likes of Maurice Possley, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and Rob Warden, Executive Director Emeritus, of the Center on Wrongful Conviction at Northwestern University. Possley says,

justicefailedcover1The story of the wrongful conviction of Alton Logan in Chicago stands out as perhaps one of the most unusual and cruel stories in the history of American jurisprudence.

And Rob Warden states:

This is a superb book about a tragedy in which legal ethics stood perversely in the way of justice... 

We encourage you to read Justice Failed: How “Legal Ethics” Kept Me in Prison for 26 Years, published by Counterpoint Press and available at local book stores, Amazon.com, Indiebound, B&N.com and other outlets.

Comments

Anatomy of Injustice

Details
Published: 29 June 2014

If wrongful convictions and the death penalty concern you, Anatomy of Injustice – A Murder Case Gone Wrong is required reading.  Author Raymond Bonner displays gifted storytelling and keen insight into the frailties of the U.S. criminal justice system.  He uses the wrongful conviction and capital case of Edward Lee Elmore to do so. 

The setting is South Carolina.

Edward Lee Elmore – a black man with limited mental capacity – was convicted in 1982 of the murder of Dorothy Lee Edwards, a well-to-do white woman.  After three trials, Elmore’s conviction was upheld and he was sentenced to death.

In many ways Edward Elmore’s story is a classic case of wrongful conviction.  It involves the usual factors – poor defense counsel, lousy police investigation, snitch testimony, and prosecutorial misconduct.  The injustice dealt Mr. Elmore was facilitated by a climate of racial prejudice.  And the condemned man’s only hope was defense attorney Diana Holt, who wrestled with personal demons as she doggedly fought for justice in America’s courts.

Comments

Read more: Anatomy of Injustice

The Detroit – West Memphis Connection

Details
Published: 18 January 2014

 

Submit to FacebookSubmit to Google PlusSubmit to TwitterSubmit to LinkedIn
In his autobiographical book, Life After Death, Damien Echols tells a gripping tale about growing up in poverty and suffering the unbelievable nightmare of 18 years on death row.  Echols is one of the “West Memphis Three” – three teenagers who were wrongfully convicted in 1993 of the murder of three children in West Memphis, Arkansas.  As we read Echols’ account of this horrific tragedy caused by failures of the criminal justice system, we found ourselves thinking about a similar tragedy that has befallen a young boy in Detroit.Damien Echols - Life After Death

 

Documentaries have been made on the West Memphis Three’s high profile case, but you may not have heard of Davontae Sanford.  All four youth were victimized by police and prosecutors who failed to conduct a real investigation, rushed to judgment, and convicted without actual evidence. 

 

Comments

Read this book review in its entirety...The Detroit – West Memphis Connection

Proving His Innocence: Peter Pringle's "About Time"

Details
Published: 15 October 2012
Surviving Ireland's Death Row

Law and justice are not always one and the same. On the 27 November 1980, Peter Pringle waited in an Irish court to hear the following words: 

Peter Pringle, for the crime of capital murder the law prescribes only one penalty, and that penalty is death.
 
The problem was that Peter did not commit this crime. Facing a sentence of death by hanging, Peter sought the inner strength and determination to survive. When his sentence was changed to forty years without remission he set out to prove his innocence. 
 
Fifteen years later, he is finally a free man. This is his story.
 
Submit to FacebookSubmit to Google PlusSubmit to TwitterSubmit to LinkedIn
Comments

Convicting the Innocent

Details
Published: 23 November 2011
Submit to FacebookSubmit to Google PlusSubmit to TwitterSubmit to LinkedIn
Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong is one of only three or four books that provide readers with an overview of the entire wrongful conviction problem in the United States. Two are more than a decade old, and one focuses on how the problem was studied by a citizen’s commission in one state. That would seem to make Convicting the Innocent a book to read by default if you want to understand how false convictions happen. Even if there were more competition, Convicting the Innocent would stand out as a highly readable and important study. The subtitle hits the bull’s-eye. This book makes it clear just how wrongful convictions occur. It opens a window on the problem by examining 250 cases where there is virtually no doubt that entirely innocent people spent decades in prison for serious crimes they did not commit.
 
There is no doubt about the innocence of Jeff Descovik, Ronald Jones, Habib Abdal, Gary Dotson, David Gary, Earl Washington, Jr., Kennedy Brewer, Frank Lee Smith, Ronald Cotton, Darryl Hunt—and 240 additional cases that inform Garrett’s book—because they were officially exonerated when their DNA profiles absolutely did not match DNA evidence related to the crime. Other facts confirm that the exonerees were not involved. In almost half of the cases, the “other facts” included linking DNA profiles to the actual killer or rapist.

Brandon Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, has worked closely with the Innocence Project and has published law journal articles on pieces of the wrongful conviction puzzle. He has drawn on his unparalleled knowledge of these cases to provide an information-packed and often eye-opening account of what went wrong. Along the way he lists simple statistics (counts and percentages) that help one understand the proportionate size of the issue at hand. The big question he asks is: Do the relatively few wrongful convictions described in the book reflect systematic failures that run through every state and local criminal justice system?

Directions for Submissions

Details
Published: 08 April 2009

How to Submit Articles and Book Reviews

Below are some guidelines for submissions. Anyone desiring to submit an article or a web link, must first write This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. requesting to be given "author" permissions.

Please know that not every article will necessarily be accepted. We reserve the right to edit your submission, but will not publish it until we have sent the changes to you and have your permission. We have some thoughts that may help your article get published and offer them to you as guidance.

No vulgarity of any kind, unless it is part of a quote and necessary to the story or for accuracy.

We all know that there is a problem with our criminal justice system and that is why we are here. However, we are not inclined to publish articles which make sweeping generalizations, such as portraying all prosecutors or police as corrupt. That simply is not true and would lower our credibility.

We will post more guidance as we learn from experience.

First, please register on our site. Rather than going into detail about who you are and us having to transfer this information to our database, if you register, you can give us all the information you want and we will have it in a format we can access in the future.

After registering, please log in to our site and then select the Register/Login menu one more time and a Users Menu will appear on your left.

Select "Submit an Article".

Make sure you select the Section, Learning, and the appropriate Category, such as Book Reviews.

Please include the following with your submission in the provided fields:

Metadata. These are like key words will help search engines find your article, as well as promote our site.

Key words. Key words help others to find your article when they are on our site and do a search. It also helps when a user selects "Related articles."

If you submit more than one article, it is important to submit your name as author in the exact same way, so that all your articles will be listed under a single author and not one under Bill Branham and one under William Branham.

We look forward to contributions from a wide range of people and perspectives. We wish you the best as we work together to correct and prevent wrongful convictions.

Comments