New Book
An Atlantic Book of the Year and finalist for the Orwell Prize: a riveting true crime tale from the defense attorney who inspired John Grisham’s The Chamber. Legendary criminal defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith has devoted his career to helping save penniless defendants from a justice system whose goal is not so much to find the right man as to get a conviction. Miami, 1986. Kris Maharaj is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his ex–business partner, Derrick Moo Young, and Derrick’s son, Duane. Suspecting Kris may be innocent, as he claims, Stafford Smith begins his own investigation, which takes him from Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas to Colombia in search of the real killer. Interweaving the author’s inspiring personal story with a spellbinding page-turner, The Injustice System exposes our broken legal process—and drops a bombshell that should reopen a long-closed case.
About the Author:
After graduating from Columbia Law School in New York, Clive spent nine years as a lawyer with the Southern Center for Human Rights, working on death penalty cases and other civil rights issues. In 1993, Clive moved to New Orleans and set up the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, a non-profit law office specializing in the representation of poor people facing capital charges. To date, Clive has helped secure the release of 69 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay (including every British prisoner), and still acts for 15 more. This is a phenomenal number – far more than any other lawyer or law firm – and demonstrates Clive’s peerless ability in his field. More recently, Clive has turned a strategic eye to other secret detention sites, including Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and the British island of Diego Garcia. He currently lives in London. Clive was ranked 6th on the 2009 list of Britain’s Most Powerful Lawyers (The Times, July 2009) and ranked 3rd on the 2009 “High Profile” British lawyer list (The Lawyer, September 2009).
Clive Stafford Smith TED Talk: My father, mental illness and the death penalty
“True stories of wrongful convictions are by their nature utterly compelling, but most Americans don’t believe them. How can our vaunted system break down so miserably? In The Injustice System, Clive Stafford Smith details a spectacular example of a bogus conviction, and the many lives ruined by it. It is a superbly written account of only one case, but one of thousands.” —John Grisham
“An empowering read for anyone who cares about the human implementation of justice.” —Colin Firth
