Barry Scheck's Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong

In America we believe in the saying “you are innocent until proven guilty” but we the people are remarkably swift to point our fingers at someone we believe that committed the crime. This habit is frequently displayed within our criminal justice system when a crime is committed we quickly assume it has something to do with the first person we can link the crime to. We tend to naturally feel sympathy for the victim therefore; if the individual accuses one for a crime the jury has no reason not to believe the victim. Society does not bother to care if the individual did not do the crime because as long as someone was caught and accused of the wrongdoing, then we the people can proceed on with our lives knowing we punished someone for the crime

feeling as though justice was served. Allegations made by the victim towards the “criminal” make it seem as though that individual is already guilty because he or she is already on trial also not to mention, the terse amount of time inclined to the defendant in order to prove their innocence.

If that does not occur to the reader as an issue than factoring in the main problem of the topic where innocent people die because of false accusation will. In addition, this book review will include a brief review of the qualifications of the authors, overview of the subject and the quality of the book, and as well as my own personal thoughts on the book. In the novel Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right authors Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, and Jim Dwyer expose the flaws of the criminal justice system through case histories where innocent men were put behind bars and even on death row because of the miscarriages of justice. Initially, the text promotes and galvanizes progressive change in the legal

institution.
First, it is important to not only discuss the credentials of the authors, but a general overview of them in order to understand their purpose for publishing this novel.

Authors Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld founded the innocence project at a law school in New York City, which has assisted in the exoneration of an astonishing number of innocent individuals. As legal aid lawyers, they blithely engaged in conflicts that implicated

human affairs. When Peter and Barry first met Barry wanted to get Peter fired because of his lack of touch with mass culture and entertainment, with this in mind, they soon settled their differences and left Legal Aid. Shortly following after those events they became partners whom worked together in non accustomed business terms. Barry administered a legal clinic at a law school while Peter had his own private practice, in addition; they worked on cases together as well as trifle with screenplay calligraphy. Barry’s qualifications are quite monumental due to the fact he received high honors at Yale while working on political causes. Peter was a Democratic activist involved in many movements including Young Americans for Freedom; he would persevere in the ideals he believed in. In spite of Barry and Peter’s utterly different characteristics than one another, the chemistry between them were prefect which brought them back together to work for Legal Aid and help in multiple cases which they proved the innocence of people thrown in jail due to the flaws of the justice system. Uniquely, a third author contributed to the book by the name of Jim Dwyer. This individual qualifies as a valid patron to this novel because of his of astonishing accomplishments such as being announced a two time Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Daily News. A frequent amount of sources are presented by the authors throughout the structure of this book. The sources come from real cases that occurred as well as articles, journals, interviews, books, and magazines. Together with the sources the authors have gathered up to back up their proposition, Author Scheck and Neufeld have indeed participated in a majority of these cases in which they help exonerate innocent people who are convicted criminals.
In order to address the crucial importance of this book review, I shall break down my exposition on the novel into two distinctive sections. The first section I will sermonize will target my deliberation towards the contents of work, themes and subjects of the book. Likewise, the theme of the book is clear as the authors diagnose the weakness of our criminal justice system and ratify the effective difference produced by DNA identification techniques. For example the authors present a case where a man by the name of Marion Coakley was sentenced to a fifteen-year sentence with a minimum of five years before he could be granted parole due to the conviction of rape and robbery. After being convicted Coakley stood to give his input, he proclaimed that “I never seen these people before in my life. I never done anybody no harm, and I never done anybody anything” (29). After his statement he had to be dragged out of the courtroom by a crowd of officers because of his behavior which initially made him become psychotic. Author Peter and Barry were one of the select few that represented Coakley after he was wrongfully convicted. In the attempt to prove Coakley’s innocence they would need to collect DNA fingerprints from the victims and Coakley that the detectives never were able to. Through the daily grind of their work on the case they gathered information about the victims that the jury wasn’t told during the trial such as the prosecutor leaking incriminating intelligence to the victims about the defendant. Prosecutors that are displayed through the multiple cases in this book also corrupt the system of justice because they lead the victim to believe that the suspect is guilty due to the untruthful information they give to the victim. Once prints are taken from the crime scene and the individuals involved in the case Coakley’s blood was extracted from his semen to not view what his blood type was but to also view if he was a secretor or a nonsecretor. Coakley blood wasn’t taken until he was convicted which turned out that his blood type did not match the alleged blood type of the rapist. This shocking information could have been the difference of Coakley being incarcerated or free but due to the lack of time given to the defense team as well as lack of effort they were unable to reveal this information until now. Nearly two years of time Coakley served in prison before being exonerated due to the phenomenal performance of DNA fingerprint testing proved that justice had not been served