Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer

 

To most readers, Barry Scheck is known for his dedication to freeing those falsely convicted and imprisoned.  He and Neufeld, as public defenders in New York, created the first Innocence Project and have worked in the field for many years.  Although the work has been ongoing, the same problems with false eyewitness accounts, corrupted lab results, jailhouse snitches and other issues are still issues. 

'In 1999, the Innorcence Project reconstructed sixty-two cases in the United States of the sixty-seven exonerations in North America to determine what factors had been prevalent in the wrongful convictions.  Mistaken eyewitnesses were a factor in 84 percent of the convictions, snitches or informants in 21 percent, false confessions in 24 percent,  Defense lawyers fell down on the job in 27 percent; prosecutorial misconduct played a part in 42 percent, and police misconduct in 50 percent.  A third involved tainted or fraudulent science.  Among the more troubling findings is that several of these factors are more pronounced in the conviction of innocent black men.'

Although this book was disturbing to read, a more disturbing event is that I recently read a similar book by David Rudolf, another defense attorney.  Although his book is recently released (2022) and this one was written in 1999, the factors and wrongs continue on.  Although DNA tests can now quickly tell if an arrested person was involved, the tests have to be run in order to be used.  There are thousands of rape kits, for example, gathering dust on police shelves and money must be allocated in order to test them.  The system must do a better job of arresting those who truly could be guilty and convicting only those who are.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers interested in the legal system.