Sometimes self-righteous, sometimes merciless: an unforgettable account of the state's power against individuals who might...
A primer on the criminal-justice system from the defense attorney’s vantage point.
Police and prosecutors in rural Lincoln County, Oregon, accused Sandra Jones and her 15-year-old son Mike of murdering a neighbor during 1985. Spence (The Making of a Country Lawyer, 1996, etc.), who represented the defendants pro bono, was skeptical that either Sandra or her son pulled the trigger of the weapon used to kill a small-time real-estate developer who had been feuding with them over whether a road that cut across their property should be considered off limits to public traffic. Why did law enforcement authorities believe the seemingly dubious eyewitness account of the dead man’s wife, he wondered, rather than the conflicting account of Sandra Jones? Spence decided to chronicle the case more than a decade after its resolution to educate the general populace about the workings of the criminal-justice system. Unsurprisingly, the text is seldom dispassionate, and the author never sheds his advocate’s persona. Throughout his detailed account, he skewers police investigators, forensic scientists, prosecutors, judges, and journalists for insensitivity, incompetence, or venality; the rest do not generally get an opportunity to present their version. Working in tandem with local defense lawyers, Spence eventually helped both defendants win their freedom. In that sense, the case he has chosen is not representative, because most defendants, innocent or guilty, are neither acquitted nor have convictions overturned on appeal. Furthermore, it lacks DNA evidence and other features that would have educated readers about the role of new technology. Still, no single case is ever typical in all aspects, and Spence’s choice of one of his own sensational trials allows him to explain unambiguously what he was thinking as he employed certain tactics and rejected others.
Sometimes self-righteous, sometimes merciless: an unforgettable account of the state's power against individuals who might be innocent.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4696-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Gut-wrenching account of a brutal 1988 rape/murder in Louisville, Ky., and the miscarriage of justice that resulted when killer's prosecution was botched. Louisville Courier-Journal feature writer Hill begins with the disappearance of Brenda Schaefer in September 1988. Her family and the police suspected that her fiancÇ, Mel Ignatow, was responsible, but no physical evidence linked him to the possible crime. After 16 months, Mary Ann Shore-Inlow, Ignatow's mistress, confessed to having been coerced into helping him bury Schaefer's body and led authorities to it. The FBI hastily set up a wiretap in which Shore- Inlow was to initiate a conversation about the burial, but the results were ambiguous and poorly recorded. The arrest was made despite these complications, but the jury refused to convict Ignatow based solely on Shore-Inlow's testimony. Community outrage prompted the authorities to retry the case on federal charges of perjury (since he could not be tried twice for murder). In the interim, Ignatow's house had been sold, and the new inhabitants discovered graphic photographs of the crime hidden under the carpet. This evidence was used to force him to plead guilty to the federal charges, and he received the maximum penalty: eight years and one month, of which he will serve five—about the same that Shore-Inlow received for her plea bargain. The author relates this tragic tale with an overly obsessive attention to detail (even providing the high school background of the rug installers who discovered the photographs) that prompts the uneasy feeling Hill is stalking rather than researching the story—an effect most pronounced when he details the type, color, and size of the socks and underwear worn by the victim on the day she was murdered. Effectively executed, but a repulsive story nonetheless.
Pub Date: July 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-12910-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
A crime journalist's painfully honest attempt to come to terms with his son's downward spiral into a life of drugs and criminal activity. Stowers, an Edgar winner for Careless Whispers (not reviewed), documents the gradual metamorphosis of his son Anson from a withdrawn teenager into a drug addict who in 1988 brutally murders his ex-wife in a fit of rage. In quasi-confessional style, a professional who has reported on the tragedies of many other families seeks to understand when, in his own son's life, the point of no return was passed. Stowers delves into the early years of his career, when he spent long hours at the office and relocated several times. The tensions caused by his devotion to work take their toll on his first two marriages, which end in bitter divorces, and on his sons, Anson and Ashley. As a teenager, Anson begins to run away for days at a time; eventually he is arrested for breaking into a house and stealing food. His father enrolls him in a drug rehabilitation program, but Anson's problems with both drugs and the law escalate. His first imprisonment comes when he steals his father's car and robs a store in Louisiana; released early and still severely addicted to drugs, Anson beats, stabs, and strangles his ex-wife, Annette; pleading guilty, he returns to prisonthis time for at least two decades. As Stowers struggles with this painful past, he seems to have missed the uncomfortable irony inherent in using a book to sort out his feelings about a tormented son whose problem was in large part that his father was too wrapped up in writing books. Compelling, but morally troubling. (10 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: July 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-7868-6091-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
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