Anatomy of Injustice, Raymond Bonner
Anatomy of Injustice, Raymond Bonner
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Anatomy of Injustice
A Murder Case Gone Wrong

Author: Raymond Bonner

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 11 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/21/2012

Categories: Nonfiction, Law, Criminal Law


Synopsis

From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner comes the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twentythreeyearold man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victims body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. After attending the University of Texas School of Law, Holt was eager to help the disenfranchised and voicelessshe herself had been a childhood victim of abuse. It required little scrutiny for Holt to discern that Elmores case reeked of injusticeplagued by incompetent courtappointed defense attorneys, a virulent prosecution, and evidence that was both misplaced and contaminated . It was the cause of a lifetime for the spirited, hardworking lawyer. Holt would spend more than a decade fighting on Elmores behalf. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holts battle to save Elmores life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. He reviews police work, evidence gathering, jury selection, work of courtappointed lawyers, latitude of judges, iniquities in the law, prison informants, and the appeals process. Throughout, the actions and motivations of both unlikely heroes and shameful villains in our justice system are vividly revealed. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nations ongoing and increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.

About Raymond Bonner

Raymond Bonner earned his JD from Stanford and subsequently worked for Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen Litigation Group and the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. In the course of his career as a journalist, he has been a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize, and a staff writer at the New Yorker. He is also the recipient of the Overseas Press Club Award and the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. His previous books include Weakness and Deceit: US Policy and El Salvador.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on February 10, 2012

I read it in two nights. It blew me away. ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE is about the murder of an elderly white woman in Greenwood, South Carolina in 1982. The crime is described in harrowing detail. The police arrested a simpleminded black man named Edward Lee Elmore and he was tried, convicted, and sentenc......more

Goodreads review by Eric_W on July 12, 2014

I remember sitting in school in 7th grade, counting down the seconds to the execution of Caryl Chessman. I was not one of those who cheered when the clock struck the hour. I think even at that age, I was uncomfortable with the whole idea of the state killing someone. Today I’m against capital punish......more

Goodreads review by Darcia on June 06, 2014

I read a lot about the injustices of our "justice" system, so I did not expect to be all that surprised by the details in this book. I was, in fact, shocked. The enormity of corruption and prejudice, from the police to the lawyers (both prosecution and so-called defense) and right to the judge, is j......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on April 30, 2015

In these days, when police brutality, inequality, and reactions to them are tearing our country apart, this book is especially relevant. The focus is the courts, not the police, but in telling the story of the miscarriage of justice perpetrated against Edward Elmore, a retarded African American man......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on January 14, 2022

So good! Living in Greenwood myself, so much of the book is familiar to me. It added some history to some of the locations I already know. This book challenges you to view our legal system in a whole other way.......more