In 1987, Miami resident Krishna Maharaj was convicted of the murders of Derrick and Duane Moo Young, a father-son team of Jamaican businessmen engaged in questionable financial dealings with Maharaj's importing company. In The Injustice System, Clive Stafford Smith revisits Maharaj's case--and reveals that the criminal trial system is perhaps even more dangerous for the innocent than the guilty.
Smith is an attorney who began investigating Maharaj's case in the mid-1990s, after an imprisoned Maharaj had spent his personal fortune on unsuccessful legal appeals. Smith is concerned by his first impression of his client; this self-disciplined, gentle and unfailingly polite man seems incapable of shooting someone over a soured business deal. As their relationship develops and the prosecution's original case unravels, Smith begins to realize his client has been convicted of two murders he did not commit. But as time draws on, funds dwindle and judges turn their backs, justice for Krishna Maharaj continues to fade into a mere fantasy.
Most Americans have a sense that our criminal trial system sorts the innocent from the guilty correctly in most cases, and when it does not, a complex system of appeals corrects the problem. As The Injustice System reveals, however, a trial system run by fallible human beings is one that breaks down--and post-conviction appeals aren't always enough to protect the innocent. It's a powerful tale and an eye-opening exposé of the pitfalls of a broken system. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket