Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
True crime

JUNK SCIENCE

M. Chris Fabricant

And the American Criminal Justice System

Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant presents an insider's journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo.

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, "forensic scientists" have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Judges and juries put their faith in "expert witnesses" and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are on death row today, condemned by junk science.

In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant's clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the "science" that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City, Fabricant takes the reader on a journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo.

At turns gripping, enraging, and moving, Junk Science is a meticulously researched insider's perspective of the American criminal justice system. Previously untold stories of wrongful executions, corrupt prosecutors, and quackery masquerading as science animate Fabricant's astonishing true-crime narrative. The book also features a full-color photo insert that illustrates the junk science explored by the author.

M. CHRIS FABRICANT is the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation and one of the nation's leading experts on forensic sciences and the criminal justice system. Fabricant is featured in the Netflix documentary The Innocence Files and his public commentary has been published in virtually every major media outlet. A former public defender and clinical law professor, Fabricant brings to his writing over two decades of experience ranging from litigating death penalty cases in the Deep South to misdemeanors in the South Bronx. Born in New York City and raised in Sedona, Arizona, Fabricant has lived in Brooklyn since graduating from George Washington University Law School in 1997.

Available products
Book Published 2022-04-05 by Akashic Books - Brooklyn (USA)

Comments

We think that science in the courtroom always serves justice - well, think again! This fascinating book by Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant shows how junk science in our criminal justice system is used to convict the innocent. Forget CSI and what you think of science in the courtroom, this eye-opening book from the front line of the battle for true justice could not be more urgent.

No one in America will ever know the number of innocent people convicted, sent to prison, and even executed because of the flood of rotten forensics and bogus scientific opinions presented to juries. In this intriguing and beautifully crafted book, Innocence Project lawyer M. Chris Fabricant illustrates how wrongful convictions occur, and he makes it obvious how they could be prevented.

This j'accuse provides a broader look at a deeply disturbing aspect of a criminal justice system already considered racist and biased by many... The endemic injustices Fabricant lays bare will likely shake even advocates of robust law and order approaches.

Fact by fact, case by case, scandal by scandal, M. Chris Fabricant expertly dissects some of the grossest failures of challenged forensic science techniques, providing a hard-nosed insider's tour of a fifty-year legal war to improve the US criminal justice system. Junk Science is for anyone wanting to go behind the headlines of wrongful convictions, who hungers to probe their root causes, and who is fighting to win criminal justice reform, inside and out of the system. Fabricant writes here like a combatant with a duty to bear witness, burning to teach an adversarial system how to come to terms with scientific truth and to show the monstrous toll of its failures.

Eye-opening, endlessly engaging, and equally infuriating - this book is a must-read.

Readers - especially those fond of TV detectives and their infallible crime labs - will be flabbergasted by [Fabricant's] list of forensic techniques long used by labs, including the FBI's, and proclaimed by highly paid 'expert witnesses' that, when investigated by competent researchers, turn out to be unreliable or worthless... A brilliant rebuttal of junk science in the courtroom.

Junk Science is a powerful exposé of a broken criminal legal system, deeply researched and moving. A must- read for anyone interested in the role unreliable evidence plays in maintaining the status quo.