Case of a LifetimeCase of a Lifetime
For fans of Law and Order and investigative news programs like 20/20, Case of a Lifetime is a chilling look at what really determines a person's innocence.
A recent study estimates that thousands of innocent people are wrongfully imprisoned each year in the United States. Some are exonerated through DNA evidence, but many more languish in prison because their convictions were based on faulty eyewitness accounts and no DNA is available. Prominent criminal lawyer and law professor Abbe Smith weaves together real life cases to show what it is like to champion the rights of the accused. Smith describes the moral and ethical dilemmas of representing the guilty and the weighty burden of fighting for the innocent, including the victorious story of how she helped free a woman wrongly imprisoned for nearly three decades.
For fans of Law and Order and investigative news programs like 20/20, Case of a Lifetime is a chilling look at what really determines a person's innocence.
Case of a Lifetime is the story of one lawyer's efforts to vindicate a woman wrongly imprisoned for twenty-eight years because of mistaken identification. In a deeply personal voice - one full of insight and wit - Professor of Law Abbe Smith shares her journey from law student to seasoned criminal lawyer through her decades-long defense of this innocent client. Interweaving other real-life cases, she offers an unusually honest look at the motivations and challenges, joy and heartbreak, ethics and "morality" of criminal defense.
Notwithstanding the bedrock principle that a person accused of crime is "presumed innocent," Case of a Lifetime illustrates the weighty burden of fighting for both the innocent and the not so innocent. It is a moving and unsettling look at how the system really works.
A noted criminal lawyer describes her role as a champion of the rights of the accused in a criminal case, discussing the ethical dilemmas of representing the guilty, the burden of fighting for the innocent, and her own career of attempting to right the wrongs of the American criminal justice system by freeing wrongfully convicted individuals. 15,000 first printing.
A criminal lawyer describes her role as a champion of the rights of the accused in a criminal case, discussing the ethical dilemmas of representing the guilty, the burden of fighting for the innocent, and her own career of attempting to right the wrongs of the American criminal justice system by freeing wrongfully convicted individuals.
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- New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008/07/22
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