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Barred
- Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison
- Narrated by: Jason Arnold
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
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Barred
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Summary
A groundbreaking exposé of how our legal system makes it nearly impossible to overturn wrongful convictions
Thousands of innocent people are behind bars in the United States. But proving their innocence and winning their release is nearly impossible.
In Barred, legal scholar Daniel S. Medwed argues that our justice system’s stringent procedural rules are largely to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Those rules guarantee criminal defendants just one opportunity to appeal their convictions directly to a higher court. Afterward, the wrongfully convicted can pursue only a few narrow remedies. Even when there is strong evidence of a miscarriage of justice, rigid guidelines, bias, and deference toward lower courts all too often prevent exoneration.
Offering clear explanations of legal procedures alongside heart-wrenching stories of their devastating impact, Barred exposes how the system is stacked against the innocent—and makes a powerful call for change.
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Critic reviews
“In our screwed-up legal system, it’s fairly easy to convict an innocent person and send them to prison. Tragically, and as Daniel S. Medwed explains so clearly in Barred, it is almost impossible to get them out. Punishing the innocent is not just a problem in other places. We do it every day in America.”—John Grisham
“By blending tales of real-life wrongful convictions with straightforward explanations of legal procedures, Medwed’s Barred demystifies the mysterious path for the innocent after trial. His clear and engaging writing style makes the topic accessible to anyone interested in the hazards of our criminal justice system. A must-read!”—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
“For every innocent prisoner we’ve freed over the past three decades, countless others remain behind bars. Barred brilliantly illustrates the absurdity of this situation: how it is far too easy to convict the innocent, and far too hard to correct those mistakes.”—Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project
What listeners say about Barred
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Jack Coles
- 26-11-23
At times repetitive, but solid on topic.
This book was really as you would expect it to read. A catalogue of issues around incarceration for innocent people.
The audio performance was pretty monotone, but in general it was gripping enough through some of the true crime elements. For me, the litany of examples of miscarriages of justice probably took away from the central aims of the book. Typically, someone was arrested and sentenced, and all of the basic levers one would hope to pull to be released were not possible. It was after a few examples this theme became embedded in an unhelpful way.
The information around the law was very interesting, and not too technical. I especially enjoyed the plea bargaining history, which as a Brit I have never really understood.
It does seem the US has an ‘innocence problem’, and the book details some interesting ways to alleviate these issues. I think the repetitive nature seemed to come from tackling each aspect of law which keeps people who’ve done no wrong in jail, rather than the fundamental idea of innocence claims being rejected.
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