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SURVIVING JUSTICE
Foreword
by Scott Turow
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Now
and then when
I’m asked
to say what I
think the law
is for, meaning
what use it actually
is for humans,
I answer that
law is meant to
make the little
piece of existence
that people can
actually control
more reasonable.
The universe will
continue to contain impulses to chaos
and humanity will
always be full
of folly. But
we dignify civilization
with the hope
that our communities
will operate by
standards that
most of us regard
as rational.
Which goes to
explain why we
are so peculiarly
horrified by the
notion of imprisoning
the innocent,
or even worse,
condemning a guiltless
person to death.
Law cannot go
any farther off
the tracks. Our
criminal justice
system is supposed
to err on the
side of innocence,
sifting the clearly
guilty from those
less-obviously
culpable. In the
same vein, the
death penalty,
whatever one thinks
of it, is intended,
even by its proponents,
for the so-called
“worst of
the worst”—those
cases where there
is not the slightest
ambiguity about
the moral blameworthiness
of the defendant.
Imprisoning—or
condemning—the
innocent exposes
a host of procedural
defects in our
criminal justice
system: the manner
in which confessions
are obtained and
the vulnerabilities
that prompt some
persons to confess
falsely; the reliability
of eyewitnesses;
the way investigators
sometimes predetermine
who committed
a crime; the occasional
inadequacy of
appointed counsel;
the overreaching
zeal of some prosecutors;
and, of course,
the pervasive
and distorting
effects of race.
But these mistakes
are also a sobering
reminder to everybody
who makes his
life in and around
the law about
the very limits
of the enterprise.
Justice must be
our eternal aspiration,
but we should
greet skeptically
those who ever
claim it’s
been fully achieved.
Even if we were
to do much, much
better, we would
still tragically
miss the mark
on occasion.
The accounts in this book
are not works of lofty philosophy
or jurisprudence. They are
humble first-person tales,
told in everyday terms, of
how injustice happened, one
blunder at a time. They are
moving stories of living out
that most Kafkaesque of nightmares—being
imprisoned for something you
did not do. There is a uniquely
literary aspect to that cruel
dilemma, because no one on
earth knows better than the
person wrongly imprisoned
how unjust the situation is.
Even devoted loved ones or
dedicated lawyers can never
have the same certainty as
the defendant, who knows absolutely
that he or she has done nothing
wrong. As such, these accounts
are in the end eyewitness
testimonies to the epitome
of human isolation—wronged,
separated from society and
loved ones, and trapped in
an existence defined by what
you alone know without doubt
to be a lie.
As bleak as that
is, these are
also redeeming
stories. While
it is impossible
not to be overwhelmed
by the injustices
each of these
people endured,
their tales are
also testimony
to their resilience,
and to the families
and lawyers who
often helped them
escape the prison
cell where they
did not belong.
Even the law managed
to do better in
the end. But each
story is a reminder
that freedom is
not merely a matter
of confinement,
but also the chance
to dwell with
the truth. |
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