Representing the Accused

Representing the Accused
Author: Jill Paperno
Publisher: Aspatore Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780314285294

Whether you are a law clinic student making your first foray into criminal defense, a newly admitted attorney, a general practitioner, or an attorney whose practice is concentrated in criminal defense, Representing the Accused will provide you with invaluable advice as you navigate your way through a criminal case. Authored by an experienced criminal defense attorney in a large public defenders office who has personally handled thousands of criminal cases, supervised representation in thousands more, and trained scores of attorneys, this book provides insight and guidance on how to efficiently and effectively manage each step in the handling of a criminal case. In order to help you provide quality representation to your clients, this publication offers clear explanations of a criminal attorneys role at every stage, from the arrest through the conclusion of the case.

Redeeming Justice

Redeeming Justice
Author: Jarrett Adams
Publisher: Convergent Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593137817

“A moving and beautifully crafted memoir.”—SCOTT TUROW “A daring act of justified defiance.”—SHAKA SENGHOR “Nothing less than heroic.”—JOHN GRISHAM He was seventeen when an all-white jury sentenced him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now a pioneering lawyer, he recalls the journey that led to his exoneration—and inspired him to devote his life to fighting the many injustices in our legal system. Seventeen years old and facing nearly thirty years behind bars, Jarrett Adams sought to figure out the why behind his fate. Sustained by his mother and aunts who brought him back from the edge of despair through letters of prayer and encouragement, Adams became obsessed with our legal system in all its damaged glory. After studying how his constitutional rights to effective counsel had been violated, he solicited the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, an organization that exonerates the wrongfully convicted, and won his release after nearly ten years in prison. But the journey was far from over. Adams took the lessons he learned through his incarceration and worked his way through law school with the goal of helping those who, like himself, had faced our legal system at its worst. After earning his law degree, he worked with the New York Innocence Project, becoming the first exoneree ever hired by the nonprofit as a lawyer. In his first case with the Innocence Project, he argued before the same court that had convicted him a decade earlier—and won. In this illuminating story of hope and full-circle redemption, Adams draws on his life and the cases of his clients to show the racist tactics used to convict young men of color, the unique challenges facing exonerees once released, and how the lack of equal representation in our courts is a failure not only of empathy but of our collective ability to uncover the truth. Redeeming Justice is an unforgettable firsthand account of the limits—and possibilities—of our country’s system of law.

Maccarthy on Cross-examination

Maccarthy on Cross-examination
Author: Terence MacCarthy
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781590318867

Learn how to look good on cross, even when the witness is not cooperating. Learn how to manage and effectively minimize the witness's involvement, without appearing controlling, extracting, and insulting. Filled with illustrative cross examinations from actual cases, this book is your key to employing these proven techniques in your own practice. Using the three themes that run through out the book--looking good, telling a story, and using short statements--you can take control of your cross examinations and achieve the results you desire.

Street Legal

Street Legal
Author: Ken Wallentine
Publisher: American Bar Association
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2007
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781590318225

This 396-page book provides specific guidance on pre-trial criminal procedure of all sorts, and explains in understandable terms what you can do and what you can't do under 4th Amendment search and seizure law. From traffic checkpoints and forceful felony arrest, from Miranda warnings to inmate and cell searches, it's all covered in this concise reference. In addition, numerous charts and guides are included throughout the book to make this as practical a guide as possible.

Indefensible

Indefensible
Author: David Feige
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780316156233

With verve and insider know-how, a young lawyer reveals his outrageous and heartbreaking long day's journey into night court.

Gideon's Promise

Gideon's Promise
Author: Jonathan Rapping
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0807064629

A blueprint for criminal justice reform that lays the foundation for how model public defense programs should work to end mass incarceration. Combining wisdom drawn from over a dozen years as a public defender and cutting-edge research in the fields of organizational and cultural psychology, Jonathan Rapping proposes a radical cultural shift to a “fiercely client-based ethos” driven by values-based recruitment training, awakening defenders to their role in upholding an unjust status quo, and a renewed pride in the essential role of moral lawyering in a democratic society. Public defenders represent over 80% of those who interact with the court system, a disproportionate number of whom are poor, non-white citizens who rely on them to navigate the law on their behalf. More often than not, even the most well-meaning of those defenders are over-worked, under-funded, and incentivized to put the interests of judges and politicians above those of their clients in a culture that beats the passion out of talented, driven advocates, and has led to an embarrassingly low standard of justice for those who depend on the promises of Gideon v. Wainwright. However, rather than arguing for a change in rules that govern the actions of lawyers, judges, and other advocates, Rapping proposes a radical cultural shift to a “fiercely client-based ethos” driven by values-based recruitment and training, awakening defenders to their role in upholding an unjust status quo, and a renewed pride in the essential role of moral lawyering in a democratic society. Through the story of founding Gideon’s Promise and anecdotes of his time as a defender and teacher, Rapping reanimates the possibility of public defenders serving as a radical bulwark against government oppression and a megaphone to amplify the voices of those they serve.

Case of a Lifetime

Case of a Lifetime
Author: Abbe Smith
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2008-07-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 023061387X

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.

Fighting for Their Lives

Fighting for Their Lives
Author: Susannah Sheffer
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-03-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0826519121

How do attorneys who represent clients facing the death penalty cope with the stress and trauma of their work? Through conversations with twenty of the most experienced and dedicated post-conviction capital defenders in the United States, Fighting for Their Lives explores this emotional territory for the first time. What it is like for these capital defenders in their last visits or phone calls with clients who are about to be taken to the execution chamber? Or the next mornings, in their lives with their families, in their dreams and flashbacks and moments alone in the car? What is it like to do this work year after year? (These attorneys had, on average, spent nineteen years doing capital defense.) Through vivid interviews amplified by the author's responses and commentary, these attorneys reveal aspects of their internal experience that they have never talked about until now. How do capital defenders manage the weight of the responsibility they carry? To what extent do they experience symptoms of trauma in the aftermath of losing a client to execution or as a result of the cumulative effects of engaging in capital defense work? What motivates them, and what do they draw upon, in order to keep engaging in such emotionally demanding work? Have they considered practicing other types of law? What can we learn from capital defenders not only about the deep and long-term effects of the death penalty but also about broader human questions of hope, effectiveness, success, failure, strength, fragility, and perseverance?