Prosecutors can “indict a ham sandwich,” we hear, and laugh at the absurdity. Yet the joke captures a truth: federal prosecutors wield enormous power over us all. And the federal criminal justice system is so stacked in favor of the government that shocking numbers of innocent people have been sent to prison.
In Conviction Machine, two leading authorities combine their knowledge and experience to describe the problems within the Department of Justice and in the federal courts―and to offer solutions.
Together, Powell and Silverglate shine a light on the defects of the system: overzealous prosecutors, perjury traps, negligent judges, perverse limits on self-defense, vague and overabundant criminal statutes, insufficient requirements for criminal intent, and no accountability for prosecutors. Most important, they provide a much-needed blueprint for reforming the Department of Justice and the criminal justice system, including actions an average citizen can take to help restore justice.
“Conviction Machine is a must-read for every American who cares about personal liberty and being protected from those who should be protecting us but sometimes become oppressors rather than defenders.”
“Silverglate and Powell convincingly demonstrate that federal prosecutorial abuses are not anomalous but routine, which makes them a pressing concern for every American. None of us are safe when law enforcement officials, imbued with extraordinary power, are free to lie, entrap people, extort pleas, and suppress exculpatory evidence, without fear of being held to account. Read this book and take its warnings seriously.”
“Read this book before you talk to the feds in an investigation. If it doesn’t terrify you, read it again.”
Three Felonies a Day is the story of how citizens from all walks of life—doctors, accountants, businessmen,political activists, and others—have found themselves the targets of federal prosecutions, despite sensibly believing that they did nothing wrong, broke no laws, and harmed not a single person. From the perspective of both a legal practitioner who has represented the wrongfully-accused, and of a legal observer who has written about these trends for the past four decades, Three Felonies a Day brings home how individual liberty is threatened by zealous crusades from the Department of Justice. Even the most intelligent and informed citizen (including lawyers and judges, for that matter) cannot predict with any reasonable assurance whether a wide range of seemingly ordinary activities might be regarded by federal prosecutors as felonies.
“This brilliant book lays out the terrifying threat to human rights posed by vindictive federal prosecutions, often sold as moralistic crusades to a gullible press and public. Anyone who cares about American democracy should read this gripping and vitally important expose.”
“Whether in the book’s scathing chronicle of the destruction of Arthur Andersen, largest accounting firm in the nation, an obscure attorney, or the bizarre government case mounted against a Boston politician— to name a few—Harvey A. Silverglate brings home, unforgettably, the truth that everyone is vulnerable to the terrors wrought by out of control prosecutors...It’s a bombshell that was worth waiting for.”
“In a work that is sure to stir sharp public debate, veteran defense-attorney-turned author Harvey A. Silverglate examines the legally and politically charged issues surrounding recent federal criminal prosecutions.”
The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses
Written by two long-time friends and civil liberties advocates—one more liberal, the other more conservative—The Shadow University illuminates the attack on liberty that has dominated our nation's college campuses for nearly two decades.
This book shows how the best aspects of the 1960's—free speech, equality of rights, respect for private conscience, and a sense of undergraduate liberties and adult responsibilities—have died on our campuses. What is left of that heady decade are its worst part: self-appointed "progressives" who seek to enforce moral and political orthodoxies through abuse and coercion rather than reason. In a nation whose future depends upon an education in freedom, colleges and universities are teaching the values of censorship, self-censorship, and self-righteous abuse of power.
The Shadow University, published by The Free Press in hardcover in 1998 and, the following year, by HarperPerennial in paperback—both still in print—is yet more relevant since 9/11. Faculty members who eagerly dismantled the structures of liberty in the 1980s and 1990s have now discovered that one reaps what one sows, and that censorship is a weapon that, if tolerated, all sides may use. If the past twenty years proves anything, it is that liberty is non-partisan and an essential way of being human, morally, politically, and intellectually.
The Shadow University is an urgent call to all those concerned with liberty—liberals, conservatives, and everything in between—to join together in defense of liberty for the next generation, by restoring free speech, equality of rights, fair procedures, and respect for private conscience and individuality on our colleges and universities.
“An eye-opening and well-documented exposé about what could happen to your children when they are sent to even the best colleges in the country. Kors and Silverglate demonstrate that when these colleges, purportedly devoted to liberal education, treat students in disciplinary proceedings, they make the notorious Star Chamber seem liberal in comparison. A wake-up call for parents, students, and professors alike.”
“Unlike most critics of political correctness, Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate have no political agenda of their own to advance, except the preservation of liberty. They take seriously the obligation to defend the rights of all individuals, adversaries as well as friends. The Shadow University is a scrupulously fair, painstakingly documented account of repression on America’s campuses, where students and faculty members are regularly denied fundamental rights of speech, conscience, and due process. I never knew it was quite this bad.”