Innocent

Innocent graphically documents forty-two recent criminal cases to find evidence of shocking miscarriages of justice, especially in murder cases. Based upon interviews with more than 200 people and reviews of hundreds internal case files, court records, smoking-gun memoranda, and other documents, Scott Christianson gets inside the legal cases, revealing the mistakes, abuses, and underlying factors that led to miscarriages of justice, while also describing how determined prisoners, post-conviction attorneys, advocates, and journalists struggle against tremendous odds to try to win their exonerations.
The result is a powerful work that recounts the human costs of a criminal justice system gone awry, and shows us how wrongful convictions can—and do—happen everywhere.

Scott Christianson is the author of Notorious Prison: Inside the World's Most Feared Institutions and Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House (NYU Press, 1999). A longtime investigative reporter, his articles have appeared in The New York Times, the The Washington Post, The Nation, the Criminal Law Bulletin and many other publications. Since the author began this project, six of the convictions discussed in Innocent have been overturned.

Mickey Sherman,CBS News legal analyst:
This should be required reading for everyone who gives a damn about justice in this country.

Christianson succeeds in raising reasonable doubts and questions about the integrity of our criminal justice system. Written with perceptiveness and sympathy for the plight of the wrongly convicted, [Innocent] is an excellent addition to the literature on miscarriages of justice.

Innocent is an excellent recommendation to make the next time someone questions the need for further criminal justice reform.