The American judicial system is far too often a source of injustice for the innocent rather than justice for the guilty. Despite all the alleged protections built into the trial process, a person facing criminal charges is virtually presumed guilty until proven innocent - not the reverse. Presumed Guilty is about thousands of innocent Americans who each year are convicted of serious crimes they did not commit. Many are convicted of crimes that did not even occur.Journalist Martin Yant vividly and dramatically explains the process by which American justice is miscarried, providing carefully researched details about more than 100 wrongful convictions.Yant's writing reveals both passion and frustration as he explains how most mistaken convictions could easily be avoided. "No criminal justice system is infallable," he writes, "but most errors aren't the result of carefully considered decisions that happen to be wrong." He cites examples of outrageous carelessness, investigations that conform facts to predetermined theories, the use of long-discredited investigative techniques, rampant prejudice, and the desire of police and prosecutors to "win" convictions at any price - even if evidence is fabricated to do so.Yant goes on to propose achievable solutions that would not only prevent years of imprisonment for the wrongfully convicted but also save the lives of innocent individuals who face the increasingly used death penalty. Presumed Guilty reveals not only how often the American justice system goes awry, but how easily - and how quickly - it is possible to become its victim.

Presumed Guilty: When Innocent People Are Wrongly Convicted

Politics & Social Sciences

Yant, Martin D.

Social Sciences

Prometheus

Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, author Martin Yant argued in a newspaper column that Saddam Hussein's "military machine" wasn't nearly the menace President Bush said it was. Rather than being a well-equipped and "battle-hardened" million-man Wehrmacht at the command of another Adolf Hitler, Yant suggested that the Iraqi army appeared to be a "war weary," smaller, supply-short force at the command of another Manuel Noriega. When the Persian Gulf War ended in February of 1991 in the U.S. led coalition's rout of the Iraqi army, Yant set out to write Desert Mirage to show how the Bush administration had deliberately deceived Americans into supporting the pursuit of power disguised as the pursuit of principle - at the cost of an estimated 375,000 lives. In the process, Yant shows how the "liberation" of Kuwait, whose occupation the Bush administration helped cause - either by ineptness or design - was merely a pretense for assertion of American power in the Middle East. Yant pieces together his convincing case from thousands of reports from dozens of sources that sporadically seeped through the administration's veil of deceit to reveal that the thunderously triumphant 'Desert Storm' was actually a deviously devised 'Desert Mirage' with far more foreboding causes and consequences than what the public could ever imagine.

Desert Mirage

History

Asia

Prometheus+books

Rotten to the Core: Crime, Sex & Corruption in Johnny Appleseed's Hometown

Americas

Public Eye Pubns

Rotten to the Core 2

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Public Eye Publications

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Books by Yant, Martin D.