A firsthand, eye-opening story of a prosecutor that exposes the devastating criminal punishment system.
Through these revelatory and captivating scenes from the courtroom, Laura Coates explores the tension between the idealism of the law and the reality of working within the parameters of our flawed legal system, exposing the chasm between what is right and what is lawful..
She also witnessed how others in the system either abused power or were abused by it--for example, when an undocumented witness was arrested by ICE, when a white colleague taught Coates how to unfairly interrogate a young Black defendant, or when a judge victim-blamed a young sexual assault survivor based on her courtroom attire.
How the court system seems to be the one place where minorities are overrepresented, an unrelenting parade of Black and Brown defendants in numbers that belie their percentage in the population and overfill American prisons.
On the front lines of our legal system, Coates saw how Black communities are policed differently
Black cases are prosecuted differently
Black defendants are judged differently.
She and her colleagues face seemingly impossible situations as they teeter between what is right and what is just.
Through Coates\'s experiences, we see that no matter how fair you try to fight, being Black, a woman, and a mother are identities often at odds in the justice system.
But she quickly realized that even with the best intentions, the pursuit of justice creates injustice.
Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist When Laura Coates joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor, she wanted to advocate for the most vulnerable among us. --Ibram X.
Laura Coates bleeds for justice on the page.
A firsthand, eye-opening story of a prosecutor that exposes the devastating criminal punishment system
