Presumed Guilty

How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights

De: Erwin Chemerinsky

Narrado por: Perry Daniels

Library Journal - "Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021"

Presumed Guilty reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty.

Presumed Guilty, like the best-selling The Color of Law, is a "smoking gun" of civil rights research, a troubling history that reveals how the Supreme Court enabled racist policing and sanctioned law enforcement excesses. The fact that police are nine times more likely to kill Black men than other Americans is no accident; it is the result of an elaborate body of doctrines that allow the police and courts to presume that suspects are guilty before being charged.

Demonstrating how the prodefendant Warren Court was a brief historical aberration, Erwin Chemerinsky shows how this more liberal era ended with Nixon's presidency and the ascendance of conservative justices, whose rulings have permitted stops and frisks, limited suits to reform police departments, and even abetted the use of chokeholds. Presumed Guilty concludes that an approach to policing that continues to exalt "Dirty Harry" can be transformed only by a robust court system committed to civil rights.

©2021 Erwin Chemerinsky (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

good question how do you show prof that a officer can choke you again in the future?

I loved it this was the first book make me sit back and say hmmmmmm.

Required Reading

This book should be required reading for every single federal judge on the bench, and for everyone in public safety.

A well-written and read description of problems in the police and court systems

I would recommend this text to anyone who wants to understand the problems and prejudices existent in our legal systems in America. The work is both well written and performed, and I found that it offered a complete explanation of how our nation fails to recognize the challenges of race, class, and sex within the police investigations and how these are carried into the judicial system itself.

Hire Dave Chapelle to reread this with empathy

ABSOLUTELY RIVETING historical account that explains so much of how and why we got to where we are today, ruined by conservative courts that give police too much power. But the narrator is distilled into some robot vanilla, might as well be a bot voice. I don't know why I bother with audiobooks that aren't author narrated with emotion and empathy. Or just hire Dave Chapelle to speak it with grit and power and adlib some funny bits as a collab.

One-sided Liberal Critique

This story cites examples of desperate outcomes without explaining any causes other than racism.