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PRESUMED GUILTY

Name: PRESUMED GUILTY
Author: Jose Baez
ISBN: 978-193785638-0

CASEY ANTHONY: THE INSIDE STORY

by Jose Baez and Peter Golenbock ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 2012

The author’s determination to complete a case that at times drove him to despair and brought him to the edge of bankruptcy...

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A celebrated criminal lawyer's tell-all memoir about the tumultuous years he spent defending supposed Florida "baby killer" Casey Anthony.

Anthony hired Baez in 2008 to defend her against allegations of child neglect of her daughter, Caylee. At the time, Baez, assisted in this memoir by Golenbock (Glory in the Fall: The Greatest Moments in World Series History, 2010, etc.), was just a "rookie lawyer" who had only been admitted to the Florida bar in 2005. What seemed like "just another case" quickly emerged as a possible murder trial. Complicating matters was the fact that investigators caught Anthony telling elaborate, and ultimately untrue, stories about her life that made references to a host of imaginary friends and acquaintances. Consequently, on the basis of unsubstantiated evidence Baez believes Orlando police leaked to the media, the legal system sought to convict the young mother “in the court of public opinion.” Using her apparent untrustworthiness as its point of departure, the prosecution proceeded to build a case against Anthony based on appearances rather than truth. It claimed that Anthony had done nothing but party for a month before finally admitting that her daughter was missing; that the smell inside Casey's car came from human remains rather than the decaying pizza remnants actually found in the vehicle; and that hair discovered in the trunk came from Caylee's dead body. Sensing that the case was not as simple as the prosecution had made it seem, Baez slowly gained Anthony's trust and pursued hunches that she was not only innocent, but also the victim of sexual abuse.

The author’s determination to complete a case that at times drove him to despair and brought him to the edge of bankruptcy is admirable, but the meticulous detail occasionally verges on excruciating.

Pub Date: July 3, 2012

ISBN: 978-193785638-0

Page Count: 423

Publisher: BenBella

Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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MY STORY

by Elizabeth Smart with Chris Stewart ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2013

Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered...

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The inspirational and ultimately redemptive story of a teenage girl’s descent into hell, framed as a parable of faith.

The disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in 2002 made national headlines, turning an entire country into a search party; it seemed like something of a miracle when she reappeared, rescued almost by happenstance, nine months later. As the author suggests, it was something of a mystery that her ordeal lasted that long, since there were many times when she was close to being discovered. Her captors, a self-proclaimed religious prophet whose sacraments included alcohol, pornography and promiscuous sex, and his wife and accomplice, jealous of this “second wife” he had taken, weren’t exactly criminal masterminds. In fact, his master plan was for similar kidnappings to give him seven wives in all, though Elizabeth’s abduction was the only successful one. She didn’t write her account for another nine years, at which point she had a more mature perspective on the ordeal, and with what one suspects was considerable assistance from co-author Stewart, who helps frame her story and fill in some gaps. Though the account thankfully spares readers the graphic details, Smart tells of the abuse and degradation she suffered, of the fear for her family’s safety that kept her from escaping and of the faith that fueled her determination to survive. “Anyone who suggests that I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome by developing any feelings of sympathy for my captors simply has no idea what was going on inside my head,” she writes. “I never once—not for a single moment—developed a shred of affection or empathy for either of them….The only thing there ever was was fear.”

Smart hopes that sharing her story might help heal the scars of others, though the book is focused on what she suffered rather than how she recovered.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-250-04015-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | TRUE CRIME

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LUCKY

by Alice Sebold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1999

Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will...

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A stunningly crafted and unsparing account of the author’s rape as a college freshman and what it took to win her case in court.

In 1981, Sebold was brutally raped on her college campus, at Syracuse University. Sebold, a New York Times Magazinecontributor, now in her 30s, reconstructs the rape and the year following in which her assailant was brought to trial and found guilty. When, months after the rape, she confided in her fiction professor, Tobias Wolff, he advised: “Try, if you can, to remember everything.” Sebold heeded his words, and the result is a memoir that reads like detective fiction, replete with police jargon, economical characterization, and film-like scene construction. Part of Sebold’s ironic luck, besides the fact that she wasn’t killed, was that she was a virgin prior to the rape, she was wearing bulky clothing, and her rapist beat her, leaving unmistakable evidence of violence. Sebold casts a cool eye on these facts: “The cosmetics of rape are central to proving any case.” Sebold critiques the sexism and misconceptions surrounding rape with neither rhetoric nor apology; she lets her experience speak for itself. Her family, her friends, her campus community are all shaken by the brutality she survived, yet Sebold finds herself feeling more affinity with police officers she meets, as it was “in [their] world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.” Just when Sebold believes she might surface from this world, a close friend is raped and the haunting continues. The last section, “Aftermath,” has an unavoidable tacked-on-at-the-end feel, as Sebold crams over a decade’s worth of coping and healing into a short chapter.

Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will inspire and challenge.