Case of a Lifetime: A Criminal Defense Lawyer's Story
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.77 (525 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0230605281 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-03-24 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Elizabeth M. Opalka said Especially Meaningful for Experienced, but Frustrated, Lawyers in All Fields. I just finished reading Case of a Lifetime: A Criminal Defense Lawyer's Story, by Abbe Smith. As a tax attorney for the past ten years, I was surprised by how much I could identify with the book's description of issues that criminal defense lawyers typically face. Like criminal defense lawyers, I fight the government, but in the form of the IRS and state tax departments. Although my clients don't face prison sentences, they do face large tax bills and penalties. I am often in the position of having to urge clients to agree to financial settlements rather than go to court, even when they have a good case. The system can be troubling. BLS Carmel said Rating related to the cohesiveness of the book. If a potential reader believes that only guilty people are in jail and that our court system is fair, they should read this book. It does a good narrative job of laying that myth to rest. Would give it more stars on that point.As a piece of narrative, I found it less satisfying, once we got past the actual facts of the injustice. I believed that this child, then woman, then old woman, was an innocent who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong associates. I learned entirely too much about Ms. Smith's feeling of guilt, although I did think that it was a good thing that she hung in all those years in a quest for reli. Patsy was my childhood friend who vanished one night with her father and fled from Maryland to North Carolina Around the age of 12 I remember sitting on the curb with Patsy in front of her house in Wheaton, MD one afternoon and the next day she was gone and I was haunted for many years of wondering how she was. I did find out latter that her father left her Mother & took her and Eddie to North Carolina, but never really learned the details. I just missed my friend. When I saw the article of the story of Patsy Kelly and a current picture of her I did not recognize it was my old friend until I saw the picture of her when she was young. I was in absolute shock and horror for what happened to her. She was tomboy and wasn't interested in playin
Prominent criminal lawyer and law professor Abbe Smith weaves together real life cases to show what it is like to champion the rights of the accused. Some are exonerated through DNA evidence, but many more languish in prison because their convictions were based on faulty eyewitness accounts and no DNA is available. Smith describes the moral and ethical dilemmas of representing the guilty and the weighty burden of fighting for the innocent, including the victorious story of how she helped free a woman wrongly imprisoned for nearly three decades.For fans of Law and Order and investigative news programs like 20/20, Case of a Lifetime is a chilling look at what really determines a person's innocence.. A recent study estimates that thousands of innocent people are wrongfully impr
She began her career as a public defender and has been a criminal lawyer for more than 25 years. She lives in Washington, D.C.. Abbe Smith is the Co-Director of the Criminal Justice Clinic and Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School
Douglas Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Unaffected, unpretentious to an amazing degree. A real feminist book--as well as a defender story.” Barbara Babcock, Judge John Crown Professor of Law, Emerita, Stanford University Law School“Less a story of law than of two extraordinary people. Abbe Smith tells the story of Patsy Kelly Jarrett, who spent 28 years in prison for a crime she did not commit--and tells her own story. “A moving and important book. Case of a Lifetime offers a disconcerting look at the realities that determine why some people walk free and others spend their lives in prison.” Boston Globe“The book's strength is Smith's openness about her life as a criminal defense attorney and her sophisticated thinking about the moral and ethical dilemmas criminal lawyers routinely navigate, such as how to represent the guilty, how far to go to ensure their clients' freedom and the ultimate ques