Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Final Argument


This is the 2nd book I have read recently about getting a convicted black man off death row in Florida; the other was The Guardians by John Grisham. Grisham's book was about a small organization that specialized in getting innocent people out of jail. This book by Clifford Irving is about a former public prosecutor, Ted Jaffe, who has gone corporate and inadvertently finds out that a witness in a case he prosecuted 12 years ago lied about the convicted man's confession of murder. As he digs in, Jaffe becomes convinced that the police detective in charge of the case perjured himself as well. And just to complicate matters, the murdered man was the husband of a woman Jaffe was having an affair with. But Jaffe becomes obsessed with getting a new hearing with this evidence, even though he is not supported by his current law partners, is facing a crisis with a drug addicted son at home, and the man sentenced to die hates him and doesn't want him as his lawyer. I found this a slow read for the first two thirds of the book and truly had to push myself to finish it. As it turns out, winning is going to cost him a lot. Kirkus offers a generally positive review. I would recommend Grisham's book over this one if you want to dip into the whole thorny area of black men being convicted of crimes they don't commit and the prejudices against them in the legal system.

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