Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People's Justice

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Description

A half-century after Anthony Lewis' award-winning Gideon's Trumpet (Random House, 1964) chronicled the story of the Gideon v. Wainwright court case (which ensures poor defendants are provided with lawyers by the state), A Muted Trumpet picks up where he left off. Reporter Karen Houppert examines the legacy of the decision, chronicling the cases of defendants who have relied on Gideon's promise, bringing renewed attention to an essential but failing aspect of the US criminal justice system and offering insight into how it might be saved.

Reviews

"Chasing Gideon is a wonderful book, its human stories gripping, its insight into how our law is made profound."
Anthony Lewis, author of Gideon's Trumpet

"Houpperts narratives of crimes, investigations, and court proceedings are careful and engrossing, and she has an excellent command of the relevant data, which she intersperses among interviews and case histories to great effect."
Los Angeles Review of Books

"Highly recommended. Fluent and fluid, Houpperts book has all the urgency this subject demands and is a page-turner. Alternately thrilling and gut-riling, this book will grab and hold lovers of great nonfiction."
Library Journal

"A well-researched and -written investigation that shows the inadequacies in stark human terms rather than an abstraction."
Kirkus Reviews

Author Bio

Karen Houppert has written for the Washington Post Magazine, The Nation, Newsday, the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Village Voice, Salon, and many other publications. She is the author of Home Fires Burning: Married to the MilitaryFor Better or Worse and The Cure: Confronting the Last Unmentionable TabooMenstruation. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches at Johns Hopkins University and at Morgan State University.