Daniel S.?Medwed?is university distinguished professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University School of Law. A renowned?innocence?advocate, he?is?the author?of?Prosecution Complex: America s Race to Convict and Its Impact on the Innocent. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"Remarkably clear and readable."--The Crime Report
"Excellent...A model of clarity and persuasiveness. In 12 short
chapters, [Medwed] describes how procedural barriers have been
implemented by the courts in ways that severely hinder the proof of
innocence at every stage of the judicial process."--The Nation
"Eye-opening...Readers interested in criminal justice will find an
elucidating look at the challenges and possibilities for the
wrongfully convicted."--Booklist
"Informative and poignant...[An] important addition to the
literature on America's addiction to incarceration."--Kirkus
"A lucid and persuasive call for change."--Publishers Weekly
"Barred is a stunning account of the myriad procedural roadblocks
that keep innocent people trapped in our nation's prisons. With
harrowing stories from his public-defense practice, Medwed reveals
how prosecutors, judges, and other officials revere finality and
efficiency over fairness and truth. By exposing this rampant
disregard for defendants' culpability, Barred powerfully calls into
question the justice of the entire criminal punishment system and
proposes urgent ways to mitigate its damage."--Dorothy Roberts,
author of Torn Apart
"By blending tales of real-life wrongful convictions with
straightforward explanations of legal procedures, Medwed's Barred
demystifies the mysterious path for the innocent after trial. His
clear and engaging writing style makes the topic accessible to
anyone interested in the hazards of our criminal justice system. A
must-read!"--Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
"For every innocent prisoner we've freed over the past three
decades, countless others remain behind bars. Barred brilliantly
illustrates the absurdity of this situation: how it is far too easy
to convict the innocent, and far too hard to correct those
mistakes."
--Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project
"For every newspaper photo of an innocent person exiting the prison
gates, clutching the hand of their triumphant lawyer, there are
uncountable others whom we will never allow to see that day--who
will die in prison because our laws make it so difficult to prove
their innocence in court. In Barred, Daniel S. Medwed gives us an
urgent tour of the darkest corners of our judicial system, where
persuasive evidence becomes trapped in a labyrinth of legal
procedure. Underlying Medwed's sharp legal analysis is a political
question: Is this the country we want to be?"
--Maurice Chammah, author of Let the Lord Sort Them
"In our screwed-up legal system, it's fairly easy to convict an
innocent person and send them to prison. Tragically, and as Daniel
S. Medwed explains so clearly in Barred, it is almost impossible to
get them out. Punishing the innocent is not just a problem in other
places. We do it every day in America."
--John Grisham
"Most people are by now aware that the criminal justice system,
being made up of human beings, makes mistakes. Much has been
written about one such mistake: that a scandalously large number of
innocent people get convicted and sent to prison. What many people
remain largely unaware of is that it is far easier for the
government to convict an innocent person than it is for that
innocent person to get out of prison. With Barred, we finally have
a lucid explanation of how exactly this infuriating feature of our
system persists. Medwed is one of the nation's leading scholars on
wrongful convictions and one of the nation's leading lawyers at
helping free innocent inmates. In this groundbreaking book, Medwed
brings his expertise as both a scholar and a practitioner to
illuminate how something that makes no sense happens routinely.
Anyone interested in understanding the magnitude of the chasm
between true justice and our actual criminal justice system, and in
learning how we as a society might shrink it, should read this
book."--David Dow, author of The Autobiography of an Execution
"With this insightful book, Medwed exposes the byzantine tangle of
legal rules and procedures that keep innocent people in prison.
Clear, accessible, and often astounding, Barred explains why strong
evidence of innocence doesn't matter once a trial is over, and how
our criminal system routinely sacrifices accuracy for finality. A
leading scholar and expert on innocence, Medwed is also a wonderful
educator. This book teaches us all how the wrongfully convicted are
trapped by the criminal bureaucracy, by modern appellate rules, and
by ancient Latin writs that have been around for hundreds of
years."--Alexandra Natapoff, author of Punishment Without Crime
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