How can we be proud of a system of justice that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? How can we applaud the Supreme Court's ever-more-limited view of its duty to combat excesses by the president? The federal judge Jed S. Rakoff, a leading authority...

"From a former federal prosecutor turned champion of the wrongfully convicted, this powerful and profound book follows the stories of women reclaiming their freedom and creates a new blueprint for remaking our deeply flawed criminal legal system." -- Inside front jacket flap. Working with the Innocence Movement and Leigh Stubbs, a woman denied a fair trial largely due to her sexual orientation, a former federal prosecutor weaves Leigh's story through...

"The fall from politico to prisoner isn't necessarily long, but the landing, as Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith learned, is a hard one. In 2009, Smith pleaded guilty to a seemingly minor charge of campaign malfeasance and earned himself a year and one day in Kentucky's FCI Manchester. Mr. Smith Goes to Prison is the fish-out-of-water story of his time in the big house; of the people he met there and the things he learned: how to escape the attentions...

"A renowned investigative journalist exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America's mass incarceration crisis, and also offers a way out. The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. But in fact, it is prosecutors who have the upper hand, in a contest that is far from equal. More than anyone else, prosecutors...