Crime Fictions - Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve

From award-winning sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve comes the first account of mass wrongful conviction in America, indicting a system purposefully designed to ensnare Black youth in order to close cases“A must-read reckoning with past and present alike.”—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Fear and Fury and Blood in the WaterWrongful convictions have long been dismissed as rare exceptions to an otherwise well-oiled criminal justice machine. But, after years spent investigating the largest criminal courthouse in the nation, Chicago’s Cook County, Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve began to uncover a far more chilling truth. Wrongful convictions are not accidental, nor anomalous: There are at least hundreds of cases indicting innocent Black youth of crimes they didn’t commit. Arresting and incarcerating kids is the point—the “evidence” is tailored to fit.In a suspenseful narrative account based on years of interviews, archival research, and the excavation of hidden documents, Gonzalez Van Cleve presents an ironclad “howdunit,” illustrating the steps that our supposed system of justice takes to “find” criminals, coerce confessions, and bury evidence.A clear pattern emerges as Lee Hester, a disabled fourteen-year-old boy, is branded a “super predator” and convicted of killing his teacher. At just seven years old, Romarr Gipson is charged with a murder that is physically impossible for him to commit. Groups of boys like the Roscett
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