The Search For Justice

The Honourable Fred Kaufman has been a distinguished figure in Canadian law for a half century. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in mid-1920s Vienna, Kaufman escaped to England on the eve of the Second World War. In 1940, he was interned as an 'enemy alien' and sent to Canada. Released in 1942, Kaufman stayed in Canada where he went on to university and law school in Montreal. Kaufman was called to the Bar of Quebec in 1955 and practiced criminal law for eighteen years, taking part in many of the famous cases of that period. In 1960, he secured the release of a young Pierre Elliott Trudeau from prison, and in 1973, Trudeau returned the favour by personally informing Kaufman of his appointment to the Quebec Court of Appeal, where he served for eighteen years, including one as Acting Chief Justice of Quebec. Since his retirement in 1991, Kaufman has led numerous commissions and inquiries, most notably the investigation into the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin and the two-year reassessment of the Steven Truscott case. Searching for Justice is Kaufman's remarkable story in his own words. It is the tale of adversity overcome in a crucial period of Canadian legal history.

The fact that this book was even written attests to the monumental courage of the author. Norbert Schlegel recounts, in meticulous detail, the brutal murder of his own daughter at the hands of his son-in-law and his unfailing commitment to see justice done. The reader becomes privy to events that occurred, dialogue that was actually spoken, and anguish that was real and is now shared. Ultimately, one man's search for justice becomes a testament to his determination and love for his daughter.

The Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia research project (coordinated by Zubaan and supported by the International Development Research Centre) brings together, for the first time in the region, a vast body of knowledge on this important - yet silenced - subject. Six country volumes (one each on Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and two on India, as well as two standalone volumes) comprising over fifty research papers and two book-length studies, detail the histories of sexual violence and look at the systemic, institutional, societal, individual and community structures that work together to perpetuate impunity for perpetrators. The essays in this volume examine history and contemporary politics to understand the root causes of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. They look at the polarization created around ethnic and linguistic identities during the three-decades of ethnic conflict, but also scrutinize the routine violence of communities towards their own women in daily life. The authors argue that in this transitional post-war phase, Sri Lankan women must not only be treated as victims, but as agents of change. The writers highlight a hitherto unaddressed aspect of sexual violence: that of the structures that enable impunity on the part of perpetrators, be they security personnel and paramilitary forces, members of armed rebel groups, gangs, local politicians and police or ordinary citizens including close family members. They demonstrate how impunity for perpetrators is both a failure of the formal justice process and a product of individual, community and social conditions and indeed the choices that victims and families make that promote silence over truth. At the end of more than a quarter century of conflict that has left some 100,000 dead, 50,000 women-headed households struggling to survive, as well as countless victims and survivors of sexual violence, the calls for justice can no longer be ignored.

You watched The People v. O.J. Simpson. Now read the explosive inside story in this behind-the-scenes account of the trial. From June 13, 1994, to October 3, 1995, Robert Shapiro stood in the middle of a drama that held millions of Americans in thrall. In this book, the architect of the defense strategy tells the inside story of the O.J. Simpson trial from the beginning. With candor, wit, and compassion, the man who assembled the "dream team" brings to light the details of what has been called "the trial of the century," giving us revealing glimpses of the defendant and the others whose names have become so familiar: Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Marcia Clark, Judge Lance Ito, Chris Darden. Search for Justice deepens our understanding of the role and duty of a defense attorney, the "reasonable doubt" conclusion of the jury, and the place this story occupies in our culture.

What can we learn from the legal cases of Stephen Lawrence and Louise Woodward? How do the legal system and the media contribute to a collective understanding of class, nation, race and gender? In this book, Siobhan Holohan explores media representations of law and order in the context of notions of multi-culturalism and victim-centred politics. Two high profile cases - the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the US trial of the British au-pair, Louise Woodward - are examined. Holohan argues that the stories built up around Woodward and Lawrence - the organization of public discourse around a sacrificial figure - have contributed to exclusionary patterns of social order. The book offers a perceptive account of what makes some criminal legal cases prone to scrutiny and spectacle and provides a vivid illustration of the presence of power relations in legal decisions. In conclusion, the author draws on the model of the Macpherson report to propose a more inclusive form of social and legal judgement that takes into account social inequalities.

Richard Jaffe's explosive second edition of Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned affirms the vital role criminal defense lawyers play in the balance between life and death, liberty and lockup. It is a compelling journey into the legal and human drama of life or death criminal cases that often reads more like hard to imagine fiction, yet these cases are real. Quest for Justice invites readers into the courtroom and into the field with Richard Jaffe, a powerhouse Alabama defense attorney with more than four decades of experience, who has successfully defended hundreds of individuals accused of murder, including more than seventy cases where the defendant faced the death penalty, including the Olympic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in Alabama, nine people have been exonerated from death row-Jaffe represented four of them: James Willie "Bo" Cochran, Randal Padgett, Gary Drinkard, and Wesley Quick. Though every chapter reveals more alarming, gut-wrenching cases, and impediments to justice, Jaffe's unwavering determination, hope, and strategies in the courtroom yield many momentous victories for his clients and the cause of justice. In Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned, Richard Jaffe offers all audiences an accessible, page-turning perspective borne out of a life representing the damned in America's criminal justice system.

After more than twenty years in prison, Adnan Syed’s murder conviction was overturned, and he was finally set free. Rabia Chaudry’s New York Times bestseller and award-winner Adnan’s Story reveals how the case was mishandled and became the subject of Sarah Koenig’s Peabody Award-winning podcast Serial. In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan’s story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listeners. But Serial did not tell the whole story. In this compelling narrative, Rabia Chaudry presents key evidence that she maintains dismantles the State’s case: a potential new suspect, forensics indicating Hae was killed and kept somewhere for almost half a day, and documentation withheld by the State that destroys the cell phone evidence—among many other points—and she shows how fans of Serial joined a crowd-sourced investigation into a case riddled with errors and strange twists. Featuring information about Adnan’s life in prison, and weaving in his personal reflections with never-before-seen letters, Rabia’s account is “a true story about real people. Adnan’s Story adds context and humanizes it in a way that could change how you think about the case and about Serial itself” (Los Angeles Times). “Chaudry’s clear, vivid and highly readable account of the case will bring the story to life for readers unfamiliar with the podcast, and even the most devoted Serial fans will find fresh insight and a vast amount of new material. Chaudry’s legal training serves her well as she marshals her defense, but so too does the Pakistani heritage and Muslim faith she shares with Syed.” —Washington Post

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book Shortlisted for the 2021 Toronto Book Awards An Indigo Best Book of 2020 Winner of the Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book (Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence) The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men--the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur--from Toronto's queer community. In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men--Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan--from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. When the leads ran dry, the search was shut down, on paper classified as "open but suspended." By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to retrace investigators' steps, convinced there was evidence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there was a threat to the community. In early 2019, landscaper Bruce McArthur was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of eight men. There is so much more to the story than that. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, Missing from the Village recounts how a serial killer was allowed to stalk the city, how the community responded, and offers a window into the lives of these eight men and the friends and family left behind. Telling a story that goes well beyond Toronto, and back decades, Justin Ling draws on extensive interviews with those who experienced the investigation first-hand, including the detectives who eventually caught McArthur, and reveals how systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, and the structures of policing fail queer communities.