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Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right Paperback – December 2, 2003

by Barry Scheck (Author), Peter Neufeld (Author), Jim Dwyer (Author)

4.4 98 ratings

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Here are the stories of innocent men and women—and the system that put them away under the guise of justice. Now updated with new information, Actual Innocence sheds light on “a system that tolerates lying prosecutors, slumbering defense attorneys and sloppy investigators” (Salt Lake Tribune)—revealing the shocking flaws that can derail the legal process and the ways that DNA testing has often shattered so-called solid evidence that condemned American citizens to death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A troubling portrayal of the criminal justice system from within its well-guarded walls.” —New York Times“Required reading for anyone who believes that only the guilty are put to death…A catalog of appalling miscarriages of justice.” —Washington Post"[A] chilling look at judicial corruption and incompetence.” —New York Daily News“Should be required reading for...our justice system.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

About the Author

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, once lawyers with the Bronx Legal Aid Society, co-founded The Innocence Project, which seeks post-conviction release through DNA testing. They are among the most prominent civil rights attorneys in the U.S.

Jim Dwyer is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News and author of several other books.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

An Innocence Project

Trapped in a wilderness of wrong places, Inmate 85A6097 howled, body and soul. His skin erupted. His teeth rotted. His feet grew warts too big for his shoes. His lungs flooded with pneumonia. His scalp dried to sand, his hemorrhoids burned so hot that only a surgeon's knife could cool them. He was often cranky and defiant with the prison staff, so whatever time he did not pass at sick call or in a hospital usually was spent in a disciplinary program.

Marion Coakley had been a young man when he entered prison to serve a fifteen-year sentence for rape, and everyone who met him agreed that he was a simple soul and a difficult convict. "Marion is mentally retarded and a very angry individual," wrote a prison psychologist, one of many to use those words after meeting Coakley. "He has little insight into his behavior." The one bright note in his record was sounded by a prison teacher, who said that even though Marion understood little, he tried hard. She awarded him a certificate of merit for successfully memorizing the multiplication tables from zero to nine. He was thirty-two years old.

At ten minutes to five on September 3, 1987, Marion rose from the cafeteria table in the Fishkill penitentiary where he had been resolutely chewing every last bite. He was alone. Moments before, his unit had been ordered to leave the dining area. It was two years to the week since he had arrived in prison, and he certainly knew the rules required him to leave the table promptly when ordered. But Marion continued munching until he was good and ready.

He pushed back his chair and strolled over to a trash can to dump his tray. At the doorway, Corrections Officer T. Hodge waited.

"When the unit officer calls your unit to leave the mess hall, you have to leave," said Hodge.

"I wasn't finished," said Coakley.

"Doesn't matter, you had your time to eat," said Hodge. "When you're called, you're supposed to leave."

"I'm a man," roared Coakley. "I'll leave when I am done eating. And nobody's gonna tell me what to do!"

A supervisor, a corrections sergeant, walked over to serve as a human blanket on the fuss. The inmates ate in shifts, and a new cohort was waiting at the doors. The officers wanted to move Coakley out of the way quickly and quietly, before any sympathetic rumble could gather force.

"I ain't gonna leave till I'm finished," yelled Coakley, whirling his arms. "Now I'm finished, so I'm leaving."

"Please keep your arms at your side," said the sergeant.

"I ain't doing nothing, finishing my dinner," said Coakley, palms up, a shrug that did not mean surrender.

"This is a direct order: Keep your arms at your side," said the sergeant. Coakley dropped his arms.

"Give me your ID card," said Officer Hodge.

"Don't have it," said Coakley, an automatic infraction.

Another sergeant arrived, and the three officers quickly pinioned Coakley's arms to his side and rushed him away. He was put under immediate "keep-lock," an on-the-spot discipline administered to prisoners who pose threats to the order of the institution. He was confined to Cell 20.

As soon as the door closed behind the guards, Marion knew what he was facing, because already he had passed four months under keep-lock and related disciplines. He would lose his commissary privileges, his phone call privileges, and his package privileges. Visitors, too, most likely. He would not be allowed to leave his cell for much of the day because he would have no prison job to go to.

"This ain't right," he screamed. "This ain't right."

Then he did to his cell what his body had done to him during his two years of confinement. He slowly, solitarily wrecked the place.

The bedding was first to go. He hated the bed that owned too much of his nights and days. "I do not like to laying up doing noetin," he had written a few months earlier, asking to be released from an earlier keep-lock regimen. Now he hurled the mattress and blanket to the floor. He slammed the bed frame into the door, pounding away until it fractured. With a bar broken from the bed, he pulverized the sink. And with anything he could grab--paper, pillowcases, clothes--he stuffed the toilet bowl, where he had bled from his tortured hemorrhoids.

A small group of corrections officers gathered outside the cell, listening to the destruction. They saw water flowing under the door from the clogged toilet and busted plumbing. When the racket had settled for a minute, one of the guards shouted at Coakley to knock it off.

Marion responded by using the bed frame to batter the metal screen of the observation window in the door. The window screen buckled at the assault; then the glass shattered, flying into the courtyard of the cell block. "I want to see the warden," howled Coakley. "I don't belong here."

Spent, he collapsed in the flooded cell. Three hours after the start of his one-man, one-cell rampage, he was coaxed out by a prison chaplain. Marion was escorted to an empty cell, where he whistled and shrieked into the block. No one could sleep. The next morning, a prison psychiatrist was called to assess the inmate. A man could lose it one night, but Marion Coakley's overall record was dreadful. From the day he shuffled his manacled feet into the prison system's reception center, Coakley showed "persistently negative adjustment" and had "performed less than satisfactorily in work placement." He refused to "accept staff direction," and showed "limited intelligence, little insight into his problems and current dilemma." He had been kept on antipsychotic medicine. The measure of its futility could be seen in the remains of Cell 20.

Less than twenty-four hours after Marion Coakley destroyed a very sturdy cell with his bare hands, the psychiatrist with the Department of Corrections concluded, unsurprisingly, that Marion Coakley remained an angry man. The Fishkill psychiatrist had the solution: Make him another prison's problem. "Psychiatrist recommended immediate placement in a more structured and secure environment," stated an evaluation written by the staff after the night of destruction. "Subject transferred at direction of the first deputy superintendent."

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley (December 2, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0451209826
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0451209825
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.52 x 0.96 x 8.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #496,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #248 in Criminal Procedure Law
- #383 in Law Enforcement (Books)
- #511 in Law Enforcement Politics

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Heidi G.(readinggrrl)

Justice is sometimes deaf dumb and blind

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2015

Verified Purchase

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, once lawyers with the Bronx Legal Aid Society, co-founded The Innocence Project, which seeks post-conviction release through DNA testing. They are among the most prominent civil rights attorneys in the U.S. Jim Dwyer is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News and author of several other books.

I have to reveal that I know Jim Dwyer, he is the brother-in-law of one of my good friends, I've read many of his other books and I have really liked them all, so I may be a bit biased in my review of his books.

If you are a fan of the podcast Serial or the TV show Law and Order or if you wonder about fairness of the criminal justice system in the US, this is a must read. While the information contained in this book may not help free Adnan Syed, it shows how many people are convicted with faulty evidence and unreliable eyewitness testimony.

Each chapter takes on a different broken part of the justice system, from eye witnesses, to jailhouse, snitches, faulty lab evidence, police misconduct, confessions, lazy attorneys etc... Its terrifying to think of how many people are wrongfully convicted of crimes and how long it takes to get them cleared in this country. And the even scarier part is that there aren't systems in place to punish those who withhold evidence, force confessions, or give false testimony...most of those people aren't charged, convicted or punished in any way. There are very few safeguards.

Once convicted of a crime its almost impossible to get back out. Some systems refuse to allow DNA testing after a conviction leaving innocent people in prison and even more startling are the times when DNA proves the person is innocent and the state won't allow them to be freed saying they must have been guilty in some way. The facts according to the authors are that there are thousands more that could be freed with DNA testing. Although science is not the stop gap for flaws in any criminal justice system, the authors very convincingly argue that it would be a beneficial start.

The stories in this book are accessible and easy to follow but not preachy. If you have any interest in the law or justice this is a must read.

4 people found this helpful

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Dani Moreau

A Must Read

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2007

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If you are at all involved in the criminal justice system or simply like watching Law & Order, this book is a MUST read. The authors are the founders of the Innocence Project, which strives to exonerate the wrongly convicted. Each chapter examines aspects of "what went wrong" in the convictions of people who are completely innocent. The authors also give detailed accounts of people they have helped to exonerate. As a soon-to-be law school graduate, this book is truly an eye-opener, and will certainly guide me in my future career. It's shocking at how easily the innocent can be (and have been) convicted of heinous crimes, and at how difficult it is for them to gain even a chance to prove their innocence.

Again, this book is a must read. It's a quick read, but will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression.

4 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

He loved it so much he read it the first day ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017

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I sent this and a similar book to a man in jail. He loved it so much he read it the first day he got it. I was pleased. He has since read it again. I selected it because it is on the reading list for a GMU law course on appeals and such for those already convicted and in jail. It is used for lawyers who represent them. Excellent choice.

5 people found this helpful

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Cassandra

Interesting Topics if you're into the subject

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2023

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I bought this book as a required reading for one of my college courses as a forensic science major. We focused on a few chapters regarding ethics in the field, which lead to some good class discussions. I would not chose this book to read on my own since I am not usually into reading nonfiction, but if you're interested in the topic, some of the ethical dilemmas faced in this book are quite interesting. For those who may not know as much about the criminal justice system inside and out of the courtroom, these topics will be enlightening and a bit terrifying as you read about a few of the cases in which justice through a fair trail fails to be met.

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2008

Verified Purchase

This is a compelling study and points out how easy it is to circumvent the law. The cases cited and other cases won probably represent the tip of the iceberg of the real number of wrongful convictions, most of which will not have the possibility of exonerating DNA evidence. America has become a country with the "rule of man" rather than the "rule of law", a sad reflection on the justice system.

4 people found this helpful

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olivia criscuolo

WHAT THE HECK.

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2020

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what the heck is this.

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Wallace Webster

A Book on What it Takes to Correct Miscarriages of Justice

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2014

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Handbook of the Innocence Project. Too many prisoners in this country have been wrongfully convicted and languish in our prisons for years. Some have even been wrongfully put to death. This books shows how to right these injustices. Recommended

3 people found this helpful

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Shoshanah Epstein

Depressing but true

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2008

Verified Purchase

Easy read, if you don't know how the criminal justice system "really" works, this is an excellent introduction. I'm in law school so already pretty familiar with the injustice that happens in our system. The book clearly demonstrates some of the many things that can go wrong through actual stories.

One person found this helpful

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Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make it Right Paperback – December 2, 2003

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