November 15, 2021
A former federal prosecutor depicts a judicial system compromised by racism and ineptitude. "The pride I felt working for the DOJ was immeasurable, but the bureaucracy was unbearable." So writes Coates, now a CNN senior legal analyst, of her early work in the federal government, investigating voting rights issues consistently hampered by lobbyists and corrupt elected officials. She enlisted for a four-year term as a litigator with a variety of cases, large and small, on the docket. An early one posed a moral quandary: A crime victim who came forward was found to be in the country illegally. "Turn him in. It will make you look good to the office," one colleague advised. She did not, but neither did she warn her witness that immigration was on the way to the courthouse to arrest and then deport him, a decision that, she writes, will haunt her forever. In another case, a White supervisor stepped far over the line of racist caricature to mansplain to her, a Black woman, how to interrogate Black suspects. Another: An elderly Black woman, on the stand as the victim of a crime, requested that the young Black man who was on trial for committing it be given clemency. "I know young men like him," she told the judge. "They were twenty once too...and likely as dumb as this young boy seemed to act that night." Anecdote after anecdote builds to a moving conclusion: "Justice is an ecosystem, as complex as it is interconnected with those at its helm and at its mercy." Coates also clearly demonstrates how our sense of justice is conditioned by who we are. A White suburbanite will likely have a different definition of it than a Black man who is sure that a random police stop could end in violence. Sobering reading and an eloquent case for reform for a more equitable distribution of justice.
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Starred review from December 1, 2021
In this eye-opening work, Coates (law, George Washington Univ.), a former federal prosecutor, confronts the many injustices in the American legal system, particularly for non-white people and women. Coates takes readers through her experiences as a prosecutor, including the time when a white male colleague relished showing her his over-the-top interrogation of a Black youth; another time when a witness in a court case was deported even as Coates attempted to stop the process; and cases of victim-shaming of women in courtrooms based on attire. Coates originally became a prosecutor to right the wrongs she saw happening in communities across the United States, but she describes coming to realize throughout her tenure that the "pursuit of justice creates injustice." Now a law professor and CNN legal analyst, Coates invites readers to examine their own actions as the nation grapples with reforming the. legal system, where non-white people are overrepresented and unfairly treated in criminal courts and prisons. Her engaging narrative has a personal touch that will hold readers' interest from start to finish. VERDICT Readers will appreciate Coates's much-needed fresh perspective of the inner workings of the prosecutorial system, and the book's heartfelt storytelling. Consider as a critical addition to collections focused on criminal law, discrimination, and racism.--Mattie Cook, Flat River Community Lib., MI
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2021
In fictionalized courtroom dramas, the prosecutor is often stereotyped as a rigid ideologue, there to deliver justice through an iron-clad combination of witness intimidation, withering questions, and wily summations. In actual courtrooms, however, lawyers representing the government are rarely so one-dimensional. First as a voting rights attorney in the Civil Rights Division and then as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice, Coates has bucked clich�s. She is that rarity, a Black female prosecutor, Ivy League-educated, and, perhaps most important, a mother of two children. So when another mother sits in the courtroom witnessing her only son being sentenced, Coates sympathizes. Or when a pre-teen rape victim is openly disdained by a hypercritical judge, Coates is outraged. Currently a senior legal analyst for CNN, Coates reveals how motherhood and her experiences as an African American have deepened her sensitivity to issues of fairness and empathy, impartiality and legality. The result is a personal, heartfelt, eloquent, and sobering examination of the nexus of justice and humanity.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 6, 2021
CNN legal analyst Coates debuts with a revealing account of her time as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. Reflecting on the tension between her commitment to upholding the law and her perspective as a Black woman, Coates highlights cases that exposed fault lines within the criminal justice system. These include a prosecutor and a defense attorney colluding to pressure a young Black defendant into becoming an informant, a judge disbelieving an abuse victim’s testimony because of the way she was dressed in court, and Coates’s obligation to report a crime victim’s “outstanding immigration issue,” knowing that it would likely lead to his deportation. She also tells the story of an elderly Black woman requesting in her victim impact statement that the young Black man who stole her car not be sent to jail for a mistake her children could have made when they were young. In another poignant example, the parent of a man who was murdered in a petty dispute pleads with the judge not to give the defendants a life sentence because “there has been enough loss already.” Though she makes a persuasive case that racial discrimination is baked into the criminal justice system, Coates doesn’t outline specific reforms. Still, this is a troubling and well informed report from the front lines of the U.S. justice system.