And Justice for Some

By: Wendy Murphy

Narrated by: Joyce Bean

When Wendy Murphy was a young prosecutor, she learned that the deck is stacked in favor of criminal defendants. Between their arrest and (potential) conviction, murderers, rapists, and drug dealers get more than a fair shake; they get an unfair advantage, often at the expense of their victims.

In many states, for instance, defendants can subpoena a victim's private medical and counseling files without any justification. They can threaten victims with brutal cross-examinations if they dare to testify. They can put on "dog and pony show" defenses that have nothing to do with the truth. They can even lie under oath with virtually no risk of being prosecuted for perjury.

These kinds of injustices make Murphy fighting mad. She's made it her mission to help the victims who get the least protection from our twisted legal system. And in this, her first book, she guides readers through one horror story after another about judges and lawyers who bend over backward to let the worst offenders go free.

You'll meet judges who unapologetically declare that they care more about their liberal ideology than about the pain and suffering of abuse victims; judges who let child molesters walk free because they're "too frail" to go to prison; defense attorneys who take big money from wealthy child molesters, then twist the Bill of Rights beyond recognition; and even a few prosecutors who go easy on criminals for their own selfish reasons.

Murphy's true stories will shock you, but they will also inspire you to join the fight for a more rational system. This is an important book that is sure to infuriate America's legal establishment.

©2007 Wendy Murphy (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"She offers some excellent premises by which the balance of justice can be restored to victims, often proving a logical and lucid advocate for her cause." ( Publishers Weekly)

Just an angry book by an angry woman.

The authors angry stance concerning her subject was insufferable.
The voice of the narrator was difficult to follow.
Life is full of ups and downs, possibly the author should look outside her limited life experience.

Pomp and Circumstance

While I agree with the majority of what is being set forth in this book, I found the author to be ego-inflated and repetitive. Also, it was rather tedious that her primary solution to all the problems in the judicial system seem to point towards more laws, which clearly will ultimately be either ignored or unenforced. The cases cited here are cases you will already know well (OJ Simpson, the Ramsey case) and little more can be said in reference to those cases than we have already heard ad nauseum. I did hope that this book would shed some additional light into the darkness of a severely flawed court system, but I found that more can be illuminated simply by reading the paper. Again, I think what Ms. Murphy is saying is correct- however, not revolutionary by any means.