American injustice : inside stories from the underbelly of the criminal justice system
(Book)

Includes index.

In the past thirty years alone, more than 2,800 innocent American prisoners ? their combined sentences surpassing 25,000 years ? have been exonerated and freed after being condemned for crimes they did not commit. Terrifyingly, this number represents only a fraction of the actual number of persons wrongfully accused and convicted over the same period. Criminal defense and civil rights attorney David Rudolf has spent decades defending the wrongfully accused. In American Injustice, he draws from his years of experience in the American criminal legal system to shed light on the misconduct that exists at all levels of law enforcement and the tragic consequences that follow in its wake. Tracing these themes through the lens of some of his most important cases, Rudolf takes the reader inside crime scenes to examine forensic evidence left by perpetrators; revisits unsolved murders to detail how and why the true culprits were never prosecuted; reveals how confirmation bias leads police and prosecutors to employ tactics that make wrongful arrests and prosecutions more likely; and exposes how poverty and racism fundamentally distort the system.