Guilty
Subtitle: The Collapse of Criminal Justice
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: Random House
Published: January 23, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780679438670
Subjects: Criminal law; Legal profession; Civil Procedure; Law; Criminal Justice Administration; Legal System; USA; Law reform; Adversary system (Law); Law / General; Criminal Law - General; Administration of criminal jus; Criminal justice, Administrati; Criminal justice, Administration of; United States
First sentence: On Christmas Eve 1968, ten-year-old Pamela Powers was attending an event with her family at the Des Moines, Iowa, YMCA.
Description: Rothwax takes us inside his courtroom and tells tales of justice gone awry that only a seasoned judge could disclose. We are in his chambers as he does battle with lawyers more interested in their personal ambitions than justice. We are at a judicial conference where Rothwax stumps fifty appeals court judges, who admit they don't understand the Supreme Court's latest search-and-seizure rulings. We are in the courtroom, where Rothwax must sit patiently and allow lawyers to willfully obfuscate the truth.

According to Rothwax, America is fast becoming a nation of bad laws, in which criminals and defense attorneys hide behind a morass of poorly conceived statutes, procedures, and rulings that prevent courts from resolving the paramount question at hand: Did the accused commit the crime? In trial after maddening trial, Rothwax sees the truth sacrificed at the altar of an increasingly areane process designed to protect the rights of criminals.