Description: The public is eager to give prosecutors ever greater powers to put criminals behind bars. In our adversarial system, all too often the only person standing between a defendant's freedom or jail, or the death penalty, is the criminal defense lawyer. Roy Black reveals the legal strategies, no-holds-barred tactics, and courtroom psychology he has used to make sure his clients exploit every protection allowed by the law.

Black's account of these cases brings alive the life and death struggles in our judicial system. In Alvarez, Black must convince a jury to put aside poisonous pretrial publicity, the threat of riot, and almost universal pressure for a conviction in order to keep a young police officer out of jail. In Knight, Black confronts issues of class and race as he works in federal appeals courts to save an insane killer sentenced to death because of the incompetence of his first lawyers. In Hicks, Black must convince a jury that the police conducted a sloppy investigation in order to prove the innocence of a client who's his own worst enemy. And in De La Mata, Black must overcome the immense powers of the federal government in defending a former bank president caught in the crosshairs of a prosecutor waging his own relentless war on drugs.

Please Wait