Rating: 
Summary: A call for a moratorium on the DP.
Review: A powerful, moving and well-written book. Away from all the moral problems with capital punishment, the Authors are able to focus on legal issues and statistics to show the problems of executing inmates. Many of the research for this book come from The Innocence Project and from the Federal Government, in the form of published reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.In brief, this book provides a few stories and they explain how people in this country are wrongly convicted and how scientific evidence, specifically DNA Testing, can help prove their innocence. The book also looks at other sources of problems within the judicial system - Prosecutorial/police misconduct, lazy defense counsels and death-biased juries. This book provides the reader with an educated discussion on the problems of the death penalty. I highly recommend it to everyone and challenge the proponents of the death penalty to read this and look into their own souls to determine if this is a system we want to continue.
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Summary: Unjustly imprisoned
Review: Actual Innocence is a very deep and detailed book that i am sure anyone would enjoy reading. We are talking about real cases of men who were put in jail for many years, being accused of crimes that they never did. Some were even send to death row,luckly the innocence project was able to help these men by testing their DNA. Reading these stories made me mad because how can someone be left in jail for so many years when they are innocent. I learned that many of these cases occurr because of mistaken eyewitness. The victim will accuse someone else that they think is the one. I really liked the book because i lets you know many things that go on in these types of cases. The best part of all is that now there is DNA that can prove someone guilty and hopefully this injustice can end.
Rating:
Summary: A Revealing and Disturbing Book
Review: As a former prosecutor, ACTUAL INNOCENCE really disturbed me - not because I disagree with its suggestion that innocents are on death row and in prison (and have been executed) - but because IT IS STILL HAPPENING. It is impossible to argue with Scheck, Nuefiled and Dwyer's carefully documented (and very readable)conclusions - each chapter tells a new story about a convicted inmate eventually set free based on DNA evidence. Each story highlights a theme that pervades the American criminal justice system - be it race, unreliable eyewitness identifications, junk science, police misconduct, etc. - so you get a history of American legal development without even realizing it. The bottom line is that DNA evidwence is setting people free AND exposing the awful practices that have put innocent people in prison and on death row. This should make the reader consider: How many innocent people have ALREADY died in prison, or in the electric chair, before DNA testing was available. And why are state officials so reluctant to accept DNA testing in many cases? A credit to the authors is that they never resort to preachy rhetoric or sarcasm as they present the compelling facts demonstrating rampant error in the criminal justice system. As it turns out, the authors don't need to preach. The facts alone scream louder than any commentary could.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting/Uncomfortable
Review: Fascinating food for thought as 10 cases of innocence are walked through where their freedom is found through DNA testing. The pro bono civil rights organization called The Innocence Projects raises many thought provoking arguments as to whether the Death Penalty is a good thing after all. The most surprising thing to me when reading these cases, was just how long it still took to free the innocents even when undisputable proof cleared their names. Scary how much the machinations of law will go to in order to keep this under wraps.
Rating: 
Summary: BUY THE PAPERBACK
Review: I am primarily offended that the authors and Amazon publish the almost the exact same book in both hardback and paperback with different titles in order to sucker folks into buying both. Amazon outright recommends the purchase of both books - but you should only buy the paperback. It has all the text of the more expensive hardback plus one additional chapter. The book graphically displays some of the problems with the justice system; it fails, however, to examine the proponents' take on the death penalty. By failing to make such an examination, people with little or no opinion or those who are pro-death penalty will likely make changes to their political thought without the necessary logical underpinnings.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for everyone to read
Review: The book details the history of ten cases of men who served years in prison for crimes committed by others, and were eventually exonerated by DNA technology. It also touches briefly on perhaps a hundred other cases. As human interest, it is compelling. As an insight into the "system" it is chilling. How do innocent citizens get convicted of crimes they had nothing to do with? It's easier than you might think. Police rig photo line-ups to induce a witness identification, and then reinforce tentative IDs until they become positive. In court, they simply lie in order to give justice a little push in the right direction. Laboratories - dependent on police and prosecutors for business - fudge or falsify forensic tests to help out their client. Prosecutors withhold exculpatory evidence from the defense, and use testimony they know to be untrustworthy without checking it out. (The prevailing ethic seems to be that they haven't done anything wrong unless they *know* it to be false. One prosecutor used the "jailhouse confession" testimony of a witness to put a defendant on death row, even though a man put on death row by nearly identical testimony from that same witness had been exonerated and released.) Governors drag their feet in granting pardons to men whom DNA tests have conclusively proven to be innocent. (A prisoner in Oklahoma remained incarcerated for 6 years after DNA lab results had exonerated him.) Defense lawyers -- usually working for very low pay -- often don't bother to vigorously challenge prosecution witnesses. They don't investigate to verify their client's story, or to locate and present solid alibi witnesses. Many have an astonishing faith in the police and prosecutors, and suppose that their client wouldn't have been charged if he wasn't guilty. They pressure their clients to accept a plea bargain, and become so miffed at their refusal that they refuse to prepare them for the witness stand. Theatrics is poor substitute for preparation. Only a small sampling of criminal cases involve biological evidence. If it is a fair random sample, then a large number of innocent people whose convictions can never be overturned by DNA are in prison, and new ones are convicted every year. DNA exonerations are a only a window into a system afflicted with very deep rot. The book contains many common sense suggestions for improvement. At the heart of many of them is accountability. Police and prosecutors run essentially no chance of getting caught for fabricating evidence or falsifying testimony. Once convicted and in prison, the defendants are buried there. The system is presumed to have worked properly, and the possibility that the wrongdoing will ever come to light is practically nil. Even when they do get caught, thyere are no consequences to them personally. Prosecutors don't prosecute each other or bring charges against witnesses who have testified for the state. And the law gives broad civil immunity to police officers. Almost none of the police officers, perjured witnesses, or prosecutors involved in the book's cases was punished. The advent of DNA took the system by surprise, and shined an unexpected light on the rot. Officials were surprised and perhaps embarrassed, despite their pronouncements to the contrary. When a building collapses, or a hospital patient undergoes the wrong operation, or an airplane crashes, there is an investigation. People are disciplined and procedures are changed to prevent a recurrence. In the analogous disaster for the criminal justice system -- the wrongful conviction of an innocent person -- the system confidently affirms that it did everything right. We are in the golden age of DNA exonerations. The window is open to public scrutiny and the possibility of reform. But we are approaching the day when we will have exonerated all of the wrongfully imprisoned who can be exonerated by DNA -- everyone whose case evidence has not been degraded, lost, or destroyed. The word is out in the law enforcement community to be on good behavior if a new case is among that small minority where there is biological evidence. As to all others, the old rules still apply. The public is more acutely aware than it has ever been of how many innocent people are sent to prison, and of just how impervious the system is to self-correction. Once the DNA exonerations cease, that awareness will fade. The window to reform will close and the opportunity will be gone. No human system can be perfect. There will always be mistakes. But they should be honest mistakes. The system should be on guard against them, and be as willing to exonerate the innocent as it is to convict the guilty. This book is absolute must reading for everyone who believes that "justice" is not a synonym for "punishment".
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Summary: A timely evaluation of how the American Criminal Justice Sys
Review: The development of DNA technology allowed around 65 people to prove their innocence. Not just to raise some doubt about a technicality of their conviction or to find a legal loophole but to show that they were actually innocent of the crimes for which they had been charged. Now days the use of DNA has been incorporated into police investigations in most countries and it will not only prove guilt but it will enable innocent people to be removed from the list of potential suspects. This book is interesting as it gives a snap shot of how the American criminal justice system works and why wrongful convictions occur. One of the big problems is the unreliability of identification evidence. This book shows how that sort of evidence can be faulty. People will identify suspects for a range of reasons. If a crime occurs, and a person is seen in the lineup that looks familiar it is not uncommon for that person to be picked as the perpetuator. However it is easy for people to become confused and pick people who have had nothing to do with the crime. One example in the book is of the identification by a ticket seller of a person who's face was familiar as he had purchased a ticket some time prior to the crime but who in fact had been overseas at the time the crime had been committed. Another was of someone who was picked as a criminal but the reason for the selection would seem to be that he had lived in the same neighbourhood. In all these cases the victim or witness honestly believes in the guilt of the person who is misidentified. In one case mentioned in this book the DNA evidence in the end cleared the initial suspect but the victim still lives with that face in her mind as the man who raped her. Identification is not the only reason why innocent people go to jail for crimes they do not commit. The book examines cases in which authorities concoct evidence, prosecutors fail to disclose exculpatory material and defendants are represented by incompetent Attorneys. One of the sad things about this book is that on average the people who were wrongly convicted spent an average of close to ten years each in jail. Some were entitled to compensation others to nothing at all. The authors suggest that the problems that led to these injustices still exist in the system and that a certain number of people will, as a result be spending long times in prison for crimes they did not commit. The final appendix of the book is a number of suggested reforms to the legal system. The book is not written that well and has a certain amount of padding which makes for rather dull reading but despite that it is an important book in evaluating the American Criminal Justice System.
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Summary: Wake-up NOW!
Review: There are two messages in this book. The first is that there are innocent people in prison, some of whom can be and have been cleared due to the use of DNA testing. In addition to naming the degenerate prosecutors who insist on keeping the wrongly convicted in prison or on death row, the authors also name various defense attorney goofballs. The reader cannot avoid the conclusion that the states have executed innocent people and, unless changes are made, probably will again. The second message of the book is to those who most influence the development of the law, namely judges and law professors. The message is that there is something fundamentally wrong with the trial process. Scientists are proving that the trial and its procedures, rules of evidence, presumtions etc. do not produce trustworthy results. The legal profession and the law schools can be arrogantly dissmissive or they can spearhead enlightened rational changes.
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Summary: A Crucial Message
Review: There is not a more crucial time to read this book. The authors detail their work with DNA evidence in wrongful conviction cases through the Innocence Project at New York's Cardozo Law School. Typically, these are criminal cases which were tried prior to the type of DNA technology we currently possess. What this book brings to light though, is that for every conviction where actual innocence is later proven via DNA evidence, there are likely countless more situations of wrongful conviction where such evidence does not exist. Wrongful conviction is a serious problem in our criminal justice system today, as the State of Illinois demonstrates. Since reinstituting the death penalty, Illinois has executed twelve people and has released seventeen from death row due to later findings of actual innocence. Scheck's work is impressive and necessary; this book offers an excellent portrayal of it.
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Summary: Do we jail and kill innocents in America?
Review: This is a terrifying but important book that should be read by everyone with an interest in the American judicial system and a concern for justice. Regardless of your position on the death penalty or other artifacts of the tough on crime spree this country has seen over the last several decades, it's hard to see how you can object to attempts to ensure people are put behind bars only for crimes they are in fact guilty of. Scheck and Neufeld have convincingly shown there are serious flaws in our judicial system which cause many people to be convicted of crimes they did not commit. They show this primarily by use of DNA testing and explain with compelling case histories how these convictions are obtained: faulty eyewitness testimony, lying snitches, coerced confessions, racism, falsified lab results, incompetent defense attorneys, and dishonest prosecutors. It doesn't help that we have a Supreme Court that seems more interested in expediting the process than in ensuring justice. The current scandal with the Ramparts division of the LAPD is a vivid reminder of how bad matters are, even though it "only" involves lying police officers and prosecutors willing to accept "testilying". The DNA evidence can't really be argued against. My guess is that defenders of the current system will try to ignore the work done by these two and others. We know that when finally forced to do pay attention the conviction of innocents, the morally and intellectually bankrupt argument is made that the fact of overturning the convictions is proof the system works. I predict that when DNA evidence finally does start freeing even more wrongly convicted, the argument will be that things are now cleaned up and we can safely conclude the problem to be solved. Of course, it won't have been. Only those few cases where DNA evidence is available will be cleared. "Actual Innocence" closes with a series of suggestions for improving the system to decrease the number of innocent people convicted. They are sensible and it's hard to see how they could be argued against, except perhaps by saying it's too expensive to keep honest people out of prison. Or even alive, since we do have a death penalty in this country. Again, the likely prospect is that an attempt will be made to ignore the proposals. The only possible improvement I can see to this book would have been a chapter dedicated to making a case for how many innocents are routinely being convicted. Careful and conservative estimates for how often this happens based on the data available might be a key piece in discussing the subject with others. The message is there if you're awake while you read the book, but can get lost in the specific miscarriages of justice described.
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