Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated

Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated Book Description

Collecting the voices and stories of the exonerees for whom life is forever framed by extraordinary injustice, this first title in the Voice of Witness Project series of oral narratives is a joint project between "McSweeney's" and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Beverly Monroe spent seven years in prison for murdering her companion of thirteen years; even though he had killed himself. Christopher Ochoa was persuaded to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit, and served twelve years of his life sentence before being freed by DNA evidence. Michael Evans and Paul Terry each served twenty-seven years in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit. They were teenagers when they entered prison and middle-aged when DNA proved their innocence.
After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence have been released from America's prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings -- inept defense lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful interrogation tactics, misidentifications, and more. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, the wrongly condemned re-enter society with nothing but scars from prison life only to struggle for survival on the outside.
The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. By all estimates, there are thousands of innocent victims in prison today. "Surviving Justice tells their unimaginable and inspiring stories.

Dave Eggers has contributed to Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated as an editor. Dave Eggers is the editor of McSweeney's and a cofounder of 826 National, a network of nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for youth, located in seven cities across the United States. He is the author of four books, including What Is the What and How We Are Hungry.

Scott Turow has contributed to Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated as a content introducer. SCOTT TUROW is the author of five worldwide bestselling novels. He recently published a work of non-fiction, "Ultimate Punishment," after serving on the Illinois commission that investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office. He lives with his family outside Chicago, where he is partner in the firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

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