An "Atlantic" Book of the Year and finalist for the Orwell Prize: a riveting true crime tale from the defense attorney who inspired John Grisham's "The Chamber"
Legendary criminal defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith has devoted his career to helping save penniless defendants from a justice system whose goal is not so much to find the right man as to get a conviction.
Miami, 1986. Kris Maharaj is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his ex-business partner, Derrick Moo Young, and Derrick's son, Duane. Suspecting Kris may be innocent, as he claims, Stafford Smith begins his own investigation, which takes him from Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas to Colombia in search of the real killer. Interweaving the author's inspiring personal story with a spellbinding page-turner, "The Injustice""System" exposes our broken legal process--and drops a bombshell that should reopen a long-closed case.

Shortlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize. THE STORY CONTINUES: TWO NEW CHAPTERS FOR THE PAPERBACK EDITION In 1986, Kris Maharaj, a British businessman living in Miami, was arrested for the brutal murder of two ex-business associates. His lawyer did not present a strong alibi; Kris was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. It wasn't until a young lawyer working for nothing, Clive Stafford Smith, took on his case that strong evidence began to emerge that the state of Florida had got the wrong man on Death Row. So far, so good - except that, as Stafford Smith argues here so compellingly, the American justice system is actually designed to ignore innocence. Twenty-six years later, Maharaj is still in jail. Step by step, Stafford Smith untangles the Maharaj case and the system that makes disasters like this inevitable. His conclusions will act as a wake-up call for those who condone legislation which threatens basic human rights and, at the same time, the personal story he tells demonstrates that determination can challenge the institutions that surreptitiously threaten our freedom.

Explosively personal account by a British lawyer who defends Death Row prisoners and Guantanamo Bay detainees. Clive Stafford Smith is the 46-year-old human-rights lawyer who has famously - some would say notoriously - spent more than twenty years in the United States representing prisoners on Death Row. His clients include many detainees in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and he established the London-based charity Reprieve, developed to defending human rights in 1999. His book is quite simply, devastating, and many will laugh and cry reading it: laugh in disbelief, and cry in despair at the utter inhumanity and lack of imagination wrapped up in hypocrisy so enormous that it beggars understanding. Yet even in the face of insurmountable odds, Clive Stafford Smith remains an optimist. Few could maintain his capacity for work and his commitment to his clients if he allowed frustration or despair to divert him. His experiences, graphically recounted in this book, have enabled him to shine a bright, unblinking light into the darkest corners of illegality that are being justified by governments in the name of the War on Terror.