Triple Jeopardy: A Story of Law at Its Best-And Worst
Books / Hardcover
Books › Social Science › General
ISBN: 0316692611 / Publisher: Little Brown & Co, July 1996
Tells the story of how three lawyers took up the case of an innocent man convicted and sentenced to death for deliberately setting the fire that led to his children's deaths
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On November 16, 1973, near Phoenix, Arizona, a fire swept through John Knapp's home and killed his two tiny daughters in their bedroom. Twelve days later Knapp was charged with deliberately setting the fire, and a year later he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Five times warrants were issued for his execution, and once he came within forty-eight hours of dying in the gas chamber.In this dramatic minute-by-minute case study, Roger Parloff presents a chilling account of how an indigent, uneducated man became a victim of the legal system. Gradually, however, a handful of dedicated defense lawyers discovered that Knapp's conviction was the product of every form of distortion and mistake to which a trial can be subject - sly lawyering, mistaken memory, faulty science, withheld and destroyed evidence, and, perhaps, perjury. For almost two decades they fought to reverse the injustice.This book, chronicling their struggle, is a riveting look at America's justice system at its best - and worst.
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