Featured on ABA – https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/publications/criminal-justice-magazine/2022/fall/recommended-reading/
In recent times of increasing focus on the wrongly convicted, nearly all national media coverage concentrates on male exonerees. This book brings us a wealth of information on wrongly convicted women, and the incredibly unfortunate, but all too common, life circumstances that ultimately brought them into the criminal justice system, including poverty, trauma, addiction, and mental illness. We also see instances of women charged with crimes, not because of uncontrollable life’s circumstances, but more so the direct result of sexual shame, gender and sexual orientation bias, racism, hatred, domestic violence, faulty witness statements and scientific testimony, police and prosecutorial mistakes and misconduct, and egos—for example, shown by prosecutors’ lack of willingness to retest (or test for the first time) evidence already sitting in evidence rooms. Valena Beety, now an innocence litigator and author, has interwoven throughout this book stories of real women whose lives were forever fractured because of the failures of our legal system. Complete with a musical playlist and discussion questions, perfect for students, attorneys, book club enthusiasts (and everyone in between), this is a powerful and urgent read for those who believe humanity reform is sorely needed in the American legal system. To do this, we must build awareness of the real restraints to a fairer system. Reading this book, Manifesting Justice, is a critical step in the process of moving towards a legal system that ultimately will manifest justice.
