Research Catalog

Title

Surviving justice : America's wrongfully convicted and exonerated / edited by Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers ; managing editor, Colin Dabkowski ; production manager, Christopher Ying ; general editors, Noria Jablonski [and others] ; interviews and reporting completed by students at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Neil Berman [and others] ; additional reporting by, Dominic Luxford [and others].

Publication

San Francisco : McSweeney's, [2005], ©2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Vollen, Lola.
• Eggers, Dave.

Description

xii, 497 pages : illustrations; 21 cm.

Summary

"After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence - including 120 from death row - have been released from America's prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings - inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside." "The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others - thousands by all estimates - who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spell-binding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Voice of witness

Uniform Title

Voice of witness.

Subject

• Judicial error > United States > Personal narratives
• False imprisonment > United States > Personal narratives

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 491).

Contents

Foreword / Scott Turow -- I. Christopher Ochoa : my life is a broken puzzle -- II. Juan Roberto Melendez : my mama didn't raise no killers -- III. Gary Gauger : I stepped into a dream -- IV. James Newsome : I am the expert -- V. Calvin Willis : thank God for DNA -- VI. John Stoll : if a five-year-old says you did it, you did it -- VII. Beverly Monroe : now I question everything -- VIII. Michael Evans and Paul Terry : sheep amongst wolves -- IX. David Pope : I'm still twenty-four -- X. Joseph Amrine : I'm a dead man walking -- XI. Peter Rose : family man -- XII. Kevin Green : bad things happen to good people -- XIII. Exoneree roundtable : people don't know how lucky they are to have their liberty -- App. A. Criminal confessions and interrogations -- App. B. Rape victim interrogation -- App. C. Massachusetts compensation law -- App. D. State by state compensation laws -- App. E. Reform recommendations.

ISBN

• 1932416234
• 9781932416237

LCCN

99931539103

OCLC

• 62295019
• ocm62295019\
• SCSB-5436735

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries