Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free

And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System

By: Jed S. Rakoff

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

How can we be proud of a system of justice that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? How can we applaud the Supreme Court's ever-more-limited view of its duty to combat excesses by the president?

Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a leading authority on white-collar crime, explores these and other puzzles in Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, a startling account of our broken legal system. Grounded in Rakoff's 24 years as a federal trial judge in New York in addition to the many years he worked as a federal prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer, Rakoff's assessment of our justice system illuminates some of our most urgent legal, social, and political issues: plea deals and class-action lawsuits, corporate impunity and the death penalty, the perils of eyewitness testimony and forensic science, the war on terror and the expanding reach of the executive branch. A fundamental problem, he reveals, is that the judiciary is constraining its own constitutional powers.

©2021 Jed S. Rakoff (P)2021 Kalorama

Shocking critique of the deteriorating system of justice

Absolutely outrageous how the “system” has evolved into an administrative kangaroo system that only favors the well connected and wealthy…. Also shocking is the way administrative law takes away the option of the courts from the average American. But this explains the waves of violence that is likely fueled by frustration at the inherent unfairness of the system that has developed. Why do so called crazies shoot up workplaces? It’s their only recourse in a system that is set against them and those interests. Unless this is changed, we can expect more of this frustration to boil over in the future. Judge Rakoff offers some proposals to move in a better direction but it will ultimately take the voters to push change through election of legislators that have the interests of their constituents in mind!