Just finished reading Gerry Spence's "The Smoking Gun." This very morning I finished the final chapter1. It's a page turner, a story told extremely well. Obviously, the book is slanted in favor of the Defense and the original prosecutors are shown little or no mercy. The special prosecutors are treated better and in at least one foray into what might be motivating them Spence admits that they are prosecuting because they believe that his client is responsible for the death of the victim.
Of course, Spence doesn't believe his client did it and eventually the evidence bears out his belief2. At the very least, even assuming that the evidence as laid out in the book is slanted (it is), there is clearly reasonable doubt created by the lies of the prosecutor's primary witness in combination with some forensic evidence which heavily favors the Defense. Am I being vague here? Yes, I am. Mr. Spence spent the time to write it3, go spend some time reading it. It's worth the time.
1 Which is why I'm writing about it rather than posting stories I've researched - hopefully I'll put bullets up later today.
2 Only prosecutors seem to write about cases they lost so that they can rail against a system which lets so many evil-doers escape justice - because we've all seen how 98% of defendants are found not guilty. [further snide remarks against prosecutors deleted by self-censorship]
3 As far as I can tell it wasn't ghost-written.
No comments:
Post a Comment