CrimProf Blog

Prosecutor's Quest to Exonerate an Innocent Man. . .

in a novel due out in January '08, that is.  Read about how San Mateo County Deputy District Attorney Al Giannini and bestselling crime writer John Lescroart are partners in crime writing, here from the San Jose Mercury News. . . [Michele Berry]

Reader's Corner: John Grisham's "Innocent Man"

From NPR.org: An obituary in The New York Times led writer John Grisham to the subject of his new book -- and first work of nonfiction -- The Innocent Man. It's a tale of the wrongful conviction, near-execution, exoneration and tragic death of Ron Williamson -- a small-town sports hero from Oklahoma whose life didn't turn out the way he expected. "Never in my most creative moment could I have come up with a story like this," Grisham says. Here's an excerpt and commentary from NPR. . . I haven't read it yet, but my Co-blogger Godsey can hardly put it down. [Michele Berry]

Reader's Corner: "Reflective Glass" by William G. Hathorn

"Reflective Glass" is a new book by death row inmate G. Wilford Hathorn. The book is a collection of fifteen essays that deal with life on Texas' death row from a prisoner's perspective. The essays describe many aspects of death row life: the pain of losing friends through execution, the medical treatment of prisoners, the monotony of living in a tiny cell, and the interaction with guards. More from Death Penalty Information Center. . . [Michele Berry]

LSU CrimProf Green's New Book

LSU CrimProf Stuart Green has a new book, entitled Lying, Cheating, and Stealing : A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime.  Here's the amazon.com description:

The picture of crime that dominates the popular imagination is one of unambiguous wrondoing--manifestly harmful acts that are clearly worthy of condemnation. The accompanying picture of the criminal--the thief, the murderer--is a picture of society's failures--to be cast out and re-integrated through a process of punishment and penance. Our understanding of white-collar crime, by contrast, is pervaded by moral and imaginative ambiguity. Such crimes are often commited by society's success stories, by the rich and the powerful, and frequently have no visible victim at their root. The problem of marrying these disparate pictures has led to a confusion of the boundaries of white-collar cime. How is it possible to distinguish criminal fraud from mere lawful "puffing," tax evasion from "tax avoidance," obstruction of justice from "zealous advocacy," insider trading from "savvy investing," bribery from "log rolling," and extortion from "hard bargaining"? How should we, as scholars and students, lawyers and judges, law enforcement officials and the general public, distinguish the lawful from the unlawful, the civil from the criminal?

In the first in-depth study of its kind, Stuart Green exposes the ambiguities and uncertainties that pervade the white-collar crimes, and offers an approach to their solution. Drawing on recent cases involving such figures as Martha Stewart, Bill Clinton, Tom DeLay, Scooter Libby, Jeffrey Archer, Enron's Andrew Fastow and Kenneth Lay, HealthSouth's Richard Scrushy, Yukos Oil's Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, Green weaves together what at first appear to be disparate threads in the criminal code, revealing a complex and fascinating web of moral insights about the nature of guilt and innocence, and what, fundamentally, constitutes conduct worthy of punishment by criminal sanction.  Green argues that white-collar crime is best understood through a framework of everyday moral concepts that include not only lying, cheating, and stealing, but also coerction, exploitation, disloyalty, promise-breaking, disobedience, and other forms of deception. In the process, he reveals the essentially moral fabric underlying the legal category of white-collar crime.   [Mark Godsey]

Penn Prof Publishes Novel

Kermit Roosevelt, assistant professor at Penn Law, has published In the Shadow of the Law.  A prominent story line is how a pro bono death penalty case affects attorneys in a large corporate firm.  The book has earned rave reviews.  Publishers Weekly said, "Most of all it's the vividness and complexity of the characters—drawn with the precision and authority of a winning legal argument—that heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice."  See reviews and buy book here.  [Mark Godsey]

David Harris, Good Cops

Toledo Crimprof David Harris has published Good Cops: The Case for Preventive Policing (The New Press).  There is an associated website, www.goodcops.net. Praise for the book comes from such people as Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who says: “In this important book, David Harris shows how modern police forces can make us safer from crime and terrorism.” William Bratton says: “This book should be read by everyone in law enforcement and every citizen who cares about the future of our country.”  [Jack Chin]

Canadian Therapeutic Jurisprudence Manual for Judges

One of the most successful ideas to come out of my university is therapeutic jurisprudence, pioneered by David Wexler. (Can you possibly guess what the students nicknamed him?)  TJ is defined as follows: "Therapeutic Jurisprudence concentrates on the law's impact on emotional life and psychological well-being. It is a perspective that regards the law (rules of law, legal procedures, and roles of legal actors) itself as a social force that often produces therapeutic or anti-therapeutic consequences. It does not suggest that therapeutic concerns are more important than other consequences or factors, but it does suggest that the law's role as a potential therapeutic agent should be recognized and systematically studied."  A number of judicial systems around the world have found this approach compelling; one of them is Canada, which, according to this press release, is trying to integrate TJ into its processes: "Canada's National Judicial Institute(NJI) has just published an important judicial problem solving/therapeutic jurisprudence manual. It is short, meaty, very readable, and ought to be of great value internationally. The manual is available online and , according to the publisher, non- commercial reproduction is encouraged. To access it, go to the NJI's website at http://www.nji.ca and click on 'education' and then 'publications', and finally on the title of the manual itself, Judging for the 21st Century: A Problem-solving Approach." For more information, here's the website of the International Network on Therapeutic Jurisprudence. [Jack Chin]

New Book on Overcriminalization

See the review at Crime and Federalism of Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, published by the Cato Institute, with chapters from Utah CrimProf Erik Luna and Cato's Timothy Lynch among others. [Jack Chin]

Book Club: Murder and the Reasonable Man

Check out GW CrimProf Cynthia Lee's NYU Press book Murder and the Reasonable Man. Wayne State Dean Frank Wu calls the book "Provocative and persuasive. In this well-written and meticulously documented book, Cynthia Lee demonstrates how the law has defined 'reasonableness' in criminal law to favor men against women, straight men against gay men, and whites against blacks. Lee's synthesis of many seemingly different examples, with thoughtful responses to the various objections that might be raised, is legal scholarship that can make a difference in our social practices. This is a serious and compelling book that should lead to reform."  Link to NYU Press site here, link to her SSRN author page here. [Jack Chin]