(Part 2) Best criminal procedure law books according to redditors

I'm reposting a comment I made below, because voting YES on 62 and NO on 66 is incredibly important to me. You should also know that if they both pass, the prop with the most YES votes becomes law.

It really just makes sense to get rid of capital punishment and I really feel like there's an angle that works for everybody.

1. For me, the most important reason why I think we should abolish the death penalty is that we have executed innocent people. 156 people have been exonerated from death row since the 70s. Here is a searchable list. We will never know exactly how many innocent people we've put to death, but we do know of some (like Cameron Todd Willingham, Carlos DeLuna, and Troy Davis). We should not be taking lives into our own hands with an accuracy rate of less than 100%, because death is a bell you can't unring.
   
   
2. The death penalty is expensive. In California, we have spent $308 million dollars per execution since it was reinstated in the 1970s.
   
   
3. Multiple studies have shown that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent. That justification for it is now out the window.
   
   
4. This could probably be a post of its own, but the death penalty is racist. A study showed (and more have backed it up) that a black defendant is four times more likely to be condemned to death than a white defendant when the "degree of severity" of the crimes are the same. That is, equally "grisly" murders. The race of the victim also matters--as of October 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim black, compared with 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims.
   
   
5. People from a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be sentenced to death. Many defendants who receive the death penalty are represented by a likely overworked public defender, and a study at Columbia University found that 68% of all death penalty cases were reversed on appeal, with inadequate defense as one of the main reasons requiring reversal.
   
   
6. The appeals process and execution is a source of continued pain for the families of victims. They feel that they can't move on from their loss because they are continually dragged back into court, and forced to relive their trauma. Many family members have spoken out against capital punishment, and a collection of their stories is published here, Dignity Denied: The Experience of Murder Victim Family Members Who Oppose the Death Penalty. So, now the death penalty is hurting innocent people, and we can no longer use "justice for the families" as a justification.
   
   
7. Wardens, executioners, COs, and prison chaplains have all reported suffering from PTSD from being forced to participate in state-sanctioned murder. Their stories have been chronicled in books such as Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain and Death At Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner. Now, even more innocent people are being harmed by this practice. No civilians job should include killing another person.
   
   In summary, death sentences are handed out in an unjust manner, often without guilt being proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The condemned then sit on death row for decades. They move through the appeals process, which costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars, and is traumatic for the victims' families. It takes an average of three appeals to have a conviction overturned--how many innocents fall through the cracks? Everyone involved in the process of finally "flipping the switch" is at risk for mental distress. And sometimes we fuck up in a huge way, and take an innocent life.
   
   So who exactly are we still doing this for, if it's not a deterrent, and the families don't want it? Are we just some angry crowd out for blood and revenge? I can't think of a single way in which capital punishment is not an abysmal failure, and we can do better.
   
   

My cousin is a professor and she just wrote a book on this.

A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor

> would you feel comfortable having your real name attached to your participation here?

I presume the NSA knows I participate here and that is plenty. My a priori is ~.6 that I am on some type of "this person is on record as potentially a troublemaker" list, and not only because of participating here. On the other hand towards how many people and how closely can they attend?

I can still fly with no interference. And I know from the personal reports of fellow citizens (N = 3) that there are people on the airport no-fly lists and special screening lists that are on those lists purely because of security agency incompetence. There is only so much they can do.

So I think the proper criteria here is not "can you outrun the bear?" (you cannot outrun a bear). But you definitely don't want to be a slow guy when there is a hungry bear on the loose. (there are hungry bears on the loose.)

I would never post on reddit with my real name nor post doxxable data regarding my real life. If anybody knows of a HOWTO for staying away from the top of the various shit lists without being a craven parrot I would be very interested in seeing it. For some odd reason there is no publication such as "The NOLO guide to staying out of Gitmo." If they published one I would buy it. The NOLO Criminal Law Handbook is great but they don't cover thought crime.

I suppose buying such items dings your citizen credit score but I have no desire for a perfect citizen credit score.

If you want something a little more dense, but accurate, I really enjoyed this in law school: Understanding Criminal Procedure: Volume One, Investigation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0769862985/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_JpINub1B1S272 . Good luck!

Chester Porter QC has two books which I'd highly recommend

1. the Gentle Art of Persuasion. Great advocacy tips for writing, speaking.
   
   
2. The Conviction of the Innocent: How The Law Can Let Us Down. It's a really good look at mistrials, the chamberlain inquest, and hoe the right to a fair trial is important to protect.
   
   
   Also highly recommend The Law of Superheroes because it's funny and insightful.
   

> If a cop ever tried to stop and frisk me, I will sue them so fast their head would spin.

And your case would be thrown out so quickly your head would spin. See Terry v. Ohio. Maybe you should use that extra money of yours to purchase a basic book on criminal procedure. Here's a recommendation.

>I want the courtroom proceedings (in Chicago, IL) to be as realistic as possible.

Outlines for Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, which are separate classes in law school.

http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/pdf/20150722022446_large.pdf

http://www.lexisnexis.com/supp/lawschool/resources/barbri/criminal-procedure-2l.pdf

Super condensed outlines:

https://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Law-Quickstudy-Barcharts-Inc/dp/1423233085/

https://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Procedure-Quickstudy-Law-Barcharts/dp/1423233093

https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Barcharts-Quickstudy-Law-Inc-ebook/dp/B07GBNF3N6/

Things to understand. Grand juries. Voir dire. Mens rea. "Elements" of a crime. Evidence...how police gather it can have a huge impact on whether it makes it into the trial and the result...Google "Fruit of the poisoned tree." Jury instructions. Reasonable doubt. Whether the jury has the option for a lesser charge. Role of the jury ("fact finders") vs. role or the judge (interpreter of the law).

Real criminal trials might takes years if you include all the pre-trial motions. The actual trial itself is likely rather boring. Few actual attorneys have ever taken part in a murder trial, although criminal law and criminal procedure are required classes in law school. Anyway, there's a lot of room for sensationalism in anything legal-related. Audiences are used to it.

Is this it?

The Five Types of Legal Argument is a good primer on what types of arguments are used in the courts that generate case law. Chemerinsky's Constitutional Law is an excellent resource for constitutional law, which is some of the more interesting stuff. The Nine is an easy read and a good introduction to the personalities and major decisions of the Rehnquist court and early Roberts court. Dressler's Understanding Criminal Law is another good one; it explains the general architecture of criminal law and its development. Those might be available at libraries near you. If there's a law library in your area, you can always grab a legal encyclopedia (like American Jurisprudence 2d. or Corpus Juris Secondum) and a Black's Law Dictionary and flip around until you find something interesting. And as others have mentioned, BarBri is a good resource.

whatcha think about this? http://www.amazon.com/Criminal-Law-Handbook-Rights-Survive/dp/141332178X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458095430&sr=8-1&keywords=your+rights+law

http://www.amazon.com/The-Process-Is-Punishment-Handling/dp/0871542536

And

http://www.amazon.com/Prosecution-Principles-Clinical-Handbook-American/dp/0314184449


These are both AMAZING books told from the opposite side. Read them both, and you will be very informed and quite a lawyer if you take the lessons to heart.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN//1502521199/downandoutint-20

Illustrated guide to crim pro. Really neat.

https://www.amazon.com/Research-Methods-Criminology-Criminal-Justice/dp/1284113019

Needs to be 4th edition

Willing to pay $5 Paypal.
PDF or Ibooks

Something like this? http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1590318226?pc_redir=1410499689&robot_redir=1

Ronald Cotton's case is very important. I use it in my wrongful conviction textbook, which you can find here: http://www.amazon.com/Wrongful-Convictions-Cases-Materials-Edition/dp/160042158X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1369031387&sr=8-2&keywords=wrongful+conviction

> humans are led by their emotions and forget why civilized nations have a system of checks and balances in their justice system

You have an excellent point. There is a fabulous book, Ordinary Injustice, which talks, among other things, about how emotion makes it impossible for us to think clearly about the most horrific of crimes, even within the justice system.

When a crime becomes high-profile, conviction rates go through the roof. Circumstantial evidence that would never slide in an ordinary case puts innocent people away for the rest of their lives. That book is the reason I stopped supporting the death penalty, not because I have anything morally against killing murderers, but because the false conviction rates in capital punishment cases is unacceptably large.

Here is a fascinating 2004 article that demonstrates this point quite nicely for anyone else interested.

Although no legal system is free from human emotion, we must take particular care with vigilante justice. We have to acknowledge that we are flawed and in cases of extreme emotion, our own judgment is not to be trusted.

Edit: Can we get a preview function, please? I hate editing every post 10 seconds after I make it.

This would be very wrong. Cruel and unusual punishment. Torture. A thousand-year sentence in 8 hours does nothing for us that other forms of torture available to us don't already do.

I can see the appeal for people who think the purpose of prison is to make people feel punished. This would do the trick. I think the main benefits we get as a society from having prisons are to incapacitate dangerous psychopaths (keep them away from us), and to rehabilitate people when possible. The rest of what we spend on prisons is a pointless, cruel waste of money.

For more of this line of thinking, check out this book by a Public Policy professor here. (I don't benefit in any way from that book and I don't know the author personally. I just like it.)

Suggested reading material: In Defense of Flogging, by Peter Moskos.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004X85FIW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Actually, I derive my knowledge of grand juries and their proceedings from these books:

http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/cpr/mrpc/mcpr.authcheckdam.pdf

https://courts.arkansas.gov/rules-and-administrative-orders/rules-of-criminal-procedure

http://www.amazon.com/Cengage-Advantage-Books-Criminal-Procedure/dp/1285062922

http://www.lexisnexis.com/store/catalog/booktemplate/productdetail.jsp?pageName=relatedProducts&skuId=SKU7565&catId=359&prodId=7565

http://www.lexisnexis.com/store/catalog/booktemplate/productdetail.jsp?pageName=relatedProducts&skuId=sku-us-bundle-20915-epub&catId=132&prodId=prod-us-bundle-20915-epub

But thank you for your assertion that the economist and wikipedia know more than I do.