What About the Guilty?

The administration of criminal justice is in the hands of human beings; hence errors occur, and despite the extreme safeguards provided by American law innocent men are occasionally convicted. In Not Guilty (Doubleday, $3.75) the late Judge Jerome Frank and his daughter Barbara describe thirty-six actual cases. Eighteen of these are set forth in some detail; eighteen others are summarized too briefly to be meaningful. In a concluding chapter Judge Frank comments on the weaknesses of judicial trials.

As the authors have chosen cases in which the authorities subsequently recognized the innocence of the convicted men, the impression given may be false. That impression is that these miscarriages of justice are due to fantastic combinations of circumstances which would baffle any legal system. The falsely accused man usually bears a striking resemblance to the true culprit, was in the general vicinity of the crime when it took place, and for some reason is unable to account persuasively for what he was doing at the time.

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C. Dickerman Williams

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The administration of criminal justice is in the hands of human beings; hence errors occur, and despite the extreme safeguards provided by American law innocent men are occasionally convicted. In Not Guilty (Doubleday, $3.75) the late Judge Jerome Frank and his daughter Barbara describe thirty-six actual cases. Eighteen of these are set forth in some detail; eighteen others are summarized too briefly to be meaningful. In a concluding chapter Judge Frank comments on the weaknesses of judicial trials.

As the authors have chosen cases in which the authorities subsequently recognized the innocence of the convicted men, the impression given may be false. That impression is that these miscarriages of justice are due to fantastic combinations of circumstances which would baffle any legal system. The falsely accused man usually bears a striking resemblance to the true culprit, was in the general vicinity of the crime when it took place, and for some reason is unable to account persuasively for what he was doing at the time.