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Podcast: New Books in Politics and Polemics
Episode: Stephen Bright and James Kwak, "The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts" (The New Press, 2023)
Description: Glenn Ford, a Black man, spent thirty years on Louisiana’s death row for a crime he did not commit. He was released in 2014—and given twenty dollars—when prosecutors admitted they did not have a case against him.Ford’s trial was a travesty. One of his court-appointed lawyers specialized in oil and gas law and had never tried a case. The other had been out of law school for only two years. They had no funds for investigation or experts. The prosecution struck all the Black prospective jurors to get the all-white jury that sentenced Ford to...