Blind Injustice, Mark Godsey
Blind Injustice, Mark Godsey
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Blind Injustice
A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions

Author: Mark Godsey

Narrator: BJ Harrison

Unabridged: 11 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/30/2019

Synopsis

Drawing upon stories from his own career, Godsey shares how innate psychological flaws in judges, police, lawyers, and juries coupled with a "tough on crime" environment can cause investigations to go awry, leading to the convictions of innocent people.

Godsey explores distinct psychological human weaknesses inherent in the criminal justice system—confirmation bias, memory malleability, cognitive dissonance, bureaucratic denial, dehumanization, and others—and illustrates each with stories from his time as a hard-nosed prosecutor and then as an attorney for the Ohio Innocence Project.

He also lays bare the criminal justice system's internal political pressures. How does the fact that judges, sheriffs, and prosecutors are elected officials influence how they view cases? How can defense attorneys support clients when many are overworked and underpaid? And how do juries overcome bias leading them to believe that police and expert witnesses know more than they do about what evidence means?

This book sheds a harsh light on the unintentional yet routine injustices committed by those charged with upholding justice.

About Mark Godsey

Mark Godsey is Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. He was an award-winning federal prosecutor in New York City before becoming a leading attorney and activist for the wrongfully convicted. Godsey is the cofounder of the Ohio Innocence Project, which has freed from prison twenty-eight innocent people who collectively served more than 525 years for crimes they did not commit. Godsey frequently appears on national television and in national print media, including People, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Dateline NBC, and Forensic Files, among others. In 2017, his career was profiled in Time.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Janet on July 31, 2018

Having witnessed judicial corruption first-hand as a juror in the trial of Irish mob boss Whitey Bulger, I was compelled to write my own book about the trial and what I discovered after (The Truth Be Damned, 2018) Since the publication of The Truth Be Damned, I have received many letters from inmates......more

Goodreads review by Kate on December 27, 2021

An Innocence Project lawyer who previously worked as a prosecutor reviews the many unethical practices that lead to wrongful convictions. This is a very interesting, quick read (224 pages). He discusses the psychology behind false confessions and incorrect eyewitness testimony; the lack of science b......more

Goodreads review by Rachael on October 22, 2024

Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions by Mark Godsey Mark Godsey's Blind Injustice is a compelling exploration of the dark underbelly of the criminal justice system, where the innocent can be ensnared in a web of psychological biases and syst......more

Goodreads review by Brett on January 21, 2023

As one of the millions of people who binged Netflix’s 2015 docu-series, Making a Murderer, but who came into it already primed to rage due to my ideological leanings, “Balkoanization,” (reading Radley Balko in The Washington Post) and skepticism of police greatly enhanced by Ferguson the year prior......more

Goodreads review by Joanna on February 07, 2020

This was an interesting read, though I had hoped it would add to my knowledge of wrongful convictions in a way which it did not. So I think this book is definitely more suited for people with limited knowledge, not someone who works in this field as I do. However, this book did provide a terrifying......more

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