Wrongly Charged: A Look at the Legal System

Wrongly Charged: A Look at the Legal System PDF Author: David Merkatz
Publisher: Prominent Books, LLC
ISBN: 9781942389033
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
What would you do if you were arrested and wrongly charged with a crime? It can happen in the blink of an eye. It s not supposed to happen in the United States, but it can at any time. After being advised by his attorney in 2013 that his new marketing strategy was legal, Florida locksmith David Merkatz was shocked to learn he was under criminal investigation. Then he was arrested and charged with money laundering and an organized scheme to defraud. With the flip of a switch, he was facing a 20-year prison sentence. He was terrified. Life as he knew it was over, and it happened in an instant. But David Merkatz was determined to fight back. By reading his shocking, true story, you ll learn: What to do if you re suddenly arrested How to get through the booking and arraignment process Why you should always carry a bail bondsman s card The pros and cons of accepting a plea bargain How to appeal a criminal conviction or civil judgment How to salvage your life and rebuild your reputation And many other things that can save your life as you know it today Wrongly Charged will shake you to your core. You ll question our justice system and our judicial principle of innocent until proven guilty. But you ll never again ask, Could this happen to me? because it will be strikingly clear that it can; when you least expect it.

Wrongly Charged: A Look at the Legal System

Wrongly Charged: A Look at the Legal System PDF Author: David Merkatz
Publisher: Prominent Books, LLC
ISBN: 9781942389033
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
What would you do if you were arrested and wrongly charged with a crime? It can happen in the blink of an eye. It s not supposed to happen in the United States, but it can at any time. After being advised by his attorney in 2013 that his new marketing strategy was legal, Florida locksmith David Merkatz was shocked to learn he was under criminal investigation. Then he was arrested and charged with money laundering and an organized scheme to defraud. With the flip of a switch, he was facing a 20-year prison sentence. He was terrified. Life as he knew it was over, and it happened in an instant. But David Merkatz was determined to fight back. By reading his shocking, true story, you ll learn: What to do if you re suddenly arrested How to get through the booking and arraignment process Why you should always carry a bail bondsman s card The pros and cons of accepting a plea bargain How to appeal a criminal conviction or civil judgment How to salvage your life and rebuild your reputation And many other things that can save your life as you know it today Wrongly Charged will shake you to your core. You ll question our justice system and our judicial principle of innocent until proven guilty. But you ll never again ask, Could this happen to me? because it will be strikingly clear that it can; when you least expect it.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct PDF Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Charged

Charged PDF Author: Emily Bazelon
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 039959003X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis—and charts a way out. “An important, thoughtful, and thorough examination of criminal justice in America that speaks directly to how we reduce mass incarceration.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy “This harrowing, often enraging book is a hopeful one, as well, profiling innovative new approaches and the frontline advocates who champion them.”—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • The New York Public Library • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies. In Charged, Emily Bazelon reveals how this kind of unchecked power is the underreported cause of enormous injustice—and the missing piece in the mass incarceration puzzle. Charged follows the story of two young people caught up in the criminal justice system: Kevin, a twenty-year-old in Brooklyn who picked up his friend’s gun as the cops burst in and was charged with a serious violent felony, and Noura, a teenage girl in Memphis indicted for the murder of her mother. Bazelon tracks both cases—from arrest and charging to trial and sentencing—and, with her trademark blend of deeply reported narrative, legal analysis, and investigative journalism, illustrates just how criminal prosecutions can go wrong and, more important, why they don’t have to. Bazelon also details the second chances they prosecutors can extend, if they choose, to Kevin and Noura and so many others. She follows a wave of reform-minded D.A.s who have been elected in some of our biggest cities, as well as in rural areas in every region of the country, put in office to do nothing less than reinvent how their job is done. If they succeed, they can point the country toward a different and profoundly better future.

Wrongly Convicted

Wrongly Convicted PDF Author: Saundra Davis Westervelt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813529516
Category : Criminal justice, Administration of
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The evidence that people are wrongly convicted in the American criminal justice system has been growing and is arguably a systemic problem. Westervelt and Humphrey (both in sociology, U. of North Carolina) present 14 essays that explore the causes and social characteristics of wrongful convictions, while also offering case studies and discussions of solutions to the problem. Among the topics explored are the role of informants, the reasons behind false confessions, police misconduct, racial bias , the effectiveness of counsel, and the death penalty. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Manifesting Justice

Manifesting Justice PDF Author: Valena Beety
Publisher: Citadel
ISBN: 0806541512
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Working with the Innocence Movement and Leigh Stubbs-a woman denied a fair trial largely due to her sexual orientation-a former federal prosecutor weaves Leigh's story through the broader story of a broken criminal system.

United States Attorneys' Manual

United States Attorneys' Manual PDF Author: United States. Department of Justice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Justice, Administration of
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description


Anatomy of Injustice

Anatomy of Injustice PDF Author: Raymond Bonner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948544
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner, the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twenty-three-year-old man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holt's battle to save Elmore's life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nation's ongoing, increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.

THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE

THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE PDF Author: William H. Simon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674002753
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
William Simon, a legal theorist with experience in practice, here argues that the profession's standard approach to questions of legal ethics is incoherent and implausible, insisting the critical weakness is the style of judgment.

Gideon's Trumpet

Gideon's Trumpet PDF Author: Anthony Lewis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030780528X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The classic bestseller from a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that tells the compelling true story of one man's fight for the right to legal counsel for every defendent. A history of the landmark case of Clarence Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index. The classic backlist bestseller. More than 800,000 sold since its first pub date of 1964.

Convicting the Innocent

Convicting the Innocent PDF Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060989
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.