It is absolutely on target to be concerned over the wrongly convicted. There are a mountain of such cases, they are a disgrace to our criminal justice system, and there are many cases where DNA evidence is not available.

Most prosecutors are responsible and follow the law. But too many do not, and the wrongful conviction of innocent defendants, sometimes by prosecutors who bend the law (often by hiding evidence)to gain those convictions, is a plague on the American criminal justice system.

There is significant documentation of such improper convictions, in a series by Maurice Possley in the Chicago Tribune, in a study by Columbia Law School, in the book “In Spite of Innocence,” and in the marvelous work of Barry Scheck and his colleagues in the Innocence Project.

Too many prosecutors abuse their power, and they almost always get away with it. They almost always fiercely resist any objective review of their performance. And, even if a conviction is overturned and the judge specifically says there was “prosecutorial abuse,” they are rarely censured and never punished (Prosecutor Nifong being the huge and encouraging exception).

My fury over this issue led to my second novel, “A Good Conviction,” which tells the story of a young man wrongfully convicted in a high profile Central Park murder, brought about by a prosecutor who knew the defendant was actually innocent and hid the exculpatory evidence that would have led to a not guilty verdict.

Several prosecutors and criminal appeals attorneys helped me with the legal aspects of a Brady appeal in New York State, and all of them agreed that what I portrayed in my story was both realistic and all too possible.

Steve Cohen, the former federal prosecutor who was so instrumental in the infamous Palladium case (he’s now Chief of Staff to Attorney General Cuomo), read my book and told me at dinner that it was the most powerful case against bad prosecutors that he had ever read, more compelling even than John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man.”

Dan Slepian, network producer of many crime and legal news shows, says … “Having spent countless hours working with detectives, courts, attorneys, and wrongly convicted inmates I was most impressed with how well researched and accurate your narrative was. You really nailed it. In addition, it was a great read.”

Judge (ret.) Leslie Crocker Snyder, former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, first sex crimes prosecutor in the U.S., says … “A Good Conviction is a well written, well paced, and fascinating tale of prosecutorial abuse in the Manhattan DA’s office. Makes one wonder how many other times something like this has occurred and just how high the abuse is actually sanctioned.”

Michael Radelet, one of the authors of In Spite of Innocence, a study of over 400 cases of persons wrongly convicted of crimes carrying the death penalty says … “A Good Conviction is an unusually gripping story of an erroneous conviction and the passionate fight to correct that injustice. Weinstein’s account of what a bad prosecutor does to Joshua Blake provides a frightening and realistic parallel to many of the true life cases we documented in our study.”

You can find “A Good Conviction” at amazon.com …

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Conviction-Lewis-M-Weinstein/dp/1595941622/ref=sr_1_1/103-7341421-1865416?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180587686&sr=8-1

LEW WEINSTEIN