by Stephen B. Bright and James Kwak
The New Press
6/20/2023, hardcover
SKU: 9781620970256
A legendary lawyer and a legal scholar reveal the structural failures that undermine justice in our criminal courts
"An urgently needed analysis of our collective failure to confront and overcome racial bias and bigotry, the abuse of power, and the multiple ways in which the death penalty's profound unfairness requires its abolition. You will discover Steve Bright's passion, brilliance, dedication, and tenacity when you read these pages." -- Bryan Stevenson, from the foreword
Glenn Ford, a Black man, spent thirty years on Louisiana's death row for a crime he did not commit. He was released in 2014--and given twenty dollars--when prosecutors admitted they did not have a case against him.
Ford's trial was a travesty. One of his court-appointed lawyers specialized in oil and gas law and had never tried a case. The other had been out of law school for only two years. They had no funds for investigation or experts. The prosecution struck all the Black prospective jurors to get the all-white jury that sentenced Ford to death.
In The Fear of Too Much Justice, legendary death penalty lawyer Stephen B. Bright and legal scholar James Kwak offer a heart-wrenching overview of how the criminal legal system fails to live up to the values of equality and justice. The book ranges from poor people squeezed for cash by private probation companies because of trivial violations to people executed in violation of the Constitution despite overwhelming evidence of intellectual disability or mental illness. They also show examples from around the country of places that are making progress toward justice.
With a foreword by Bryan Stevenson, who worked for Bright at the Southern Center for Human Rights and credits him for "[breaking] down the issues with the death penalty simply but persuasively," The Fear of Too Much Justice offers a timely, trenchant, firsthand critique of our criminal courts and points the way toward a more just future.
Reviews:
"As the face of the Southern Center for Human Rights for more than three decades, iconic civil rights attorney Steve Bright has been waist-deep in the injustice of the criminal justice system since the 1970s. With co-author James Kwak, he powerfully catalogues the system's ills, and offers insightful remedies to help us overcome the fear of too much justice." -- Marc Bookman, author of A Descending Spiral
"Steve Bright has long been one of our most passionate and sophisticated advocates for justice. In The Fear of Too Much Justice Bright and Kwak make a devastating case for the shameful state of justice in far too many of our courtrooms today." -- Marc Mauer, former executive director of The Sentencing Project and co-author of The Meaning of Life
"No one has more experience with the racism that infects our legal system than Steve Bright, and no one has worked more relentlessly to expose and eliminate it. Read this book. It will inform and infuriate you in equal measure, and equip you to join the long struggle toward justice." -- Thomas L. Dybdahl, author of When Innocence is Not Enough
About the Contributors:
Stephen B. Bright currently teaches law at Yale and Georgetown Universities. He was the long-time director of the Southern Center for Human Rights and has won multiple capital cases in the Supreme Court. A recipient of the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award, Bright has been the subject of two books, Proximity to Death and Finding Life on Death Row, and a film, Fighting for Life in the Death Belt. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
James Kwak is vice chair of the Southern Center for Human Rights, former professor of law at the University of Connecticut, author of Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality, and co-author with Simon Johnson of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You, and the New York Times bestseller 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. He is also the co-author of The Baseline Scenario, a leading blog on economics and public policy. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.