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Product Description Awarded Digital Book World’s Best Book Published by a University Press In this unprecedented view from the trenches, prosecutor turned champion for the innocent Mark Godsey takes us inside the frailties of the human mind as they unfold in real-world wrongful convictions. 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. In Blind Injustice, 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. Yet in the end, Godsey recommends structural, procedural, and attitudinal changes aimed at restoring justice to the criminal justice system. Review "The best book I’ve read on the criminal justice system since Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. . . . This is the rare book that looks at criminal justice from the perspective of culture. And Godsey has the chops to tell it." ― Daily Kos Published On: 2017-11-26 “The book, which is in part a confessional, looks at how innocent people can become the victims of faulty eyewitness testimony, bad forensics, and a variety of blinding cognitive biases on the part of law-enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and judges, and why the system so tenaciously defends the status quo, even when it’s guilty of railroading innocent citizens. With so much attention rightly focused on racial injustice in recent years, Godsey’s book offers another important piece of the puzzle.” ― The Nation Published On: 2018-01-24 "[Mark Godsey's] book is about how his career change also changed his outlook, by showing up 'problems in the system that I, as a prosecutor, should have seen, but about which I had simply been in denial'. . . . Mr Godsey’s work is memorable because he is able to show precisely how these flaws work in action." ― The Economist "A breathless page-turner, especially for true crime readers, drawing together Godsey and his indefatigable staff as they relentlessly power through volumes and volumes of evidence in pursuit of the truth.” ― Salon Published On: 2017-09-24 “Mark Godsey, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the Ohio Innocence Project, examines the causes of wrongful convictions, from faulty eyewitness identifications to investigator tunnel vision, while drawing on a depressingly vast array of shocking examples. He graciously allows that the police, prosecutors, and judges whose ‘unreasonable and intellectually dishonest positions’ have led to unjust convictions and avoidable suffering acted not out of malice but out of the abundant capacity for human error.” - OUR FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2017 ― The Progressive Published On: 2017-12-05 “Passionate and readable, this book provides meaningful support for the Innocence movement and startling insights into the justice system while admitting the reality of systemic racism but omitting its direct discussion.” ― Library Journal Published On: 2017-11-01 "Blind Injustice is worth the read. Give a copy to your favorite prosecutor. And maybe to your neighbor." ― GAMSO - for the Defense "An excellent resourc