Black's Law: A Criminal Lawyer Reveals His Defense Strategies in Four Cliffhanger Cases

A great book. Written by a expert in communication. Each case brought you into the defense, you believe in the actions brought forward to give not only a legal defense by our constitution but to see a inocent person never is incarcerated,if that ever comes to pass. I would hope Mr. Black will write more, he is able to take a very complicated subject and break it down to a laymans understanding.

I found this non-fiction book to be as captivating a read - and frankly, much better written - than many of the fictional legal thrillers and courtroom dramas filling the bookstore shelves these days. Add to that the fact that this book offers great insight into our criminal justice system and the import role of the criminal defense attorney in it, and you have a book that is, in my opinion, a must-read. All that being said, I think that perhaps what impressed me most about this book is what is not in it - celebrity name dropping. Black is clearly set apart from some of his colleagues in the high profile defense lawyer set by his choices of cases to include in this book. Having represented a number of "household names" in cases which received considerable media attention, Black writes in his book about none of them, choosing instead cases in which he represented people outside of the public eye and who came from a variety of walks of life. He should be commended for this and his book is rendered all the more impactful by the lack of the "tabloid" element.

His skills honed in the seedy and often dangerous world of the defense of indigent clients on the wrong side of Miami, Roy Black has selected four cases from his portfolio to present to the reader in summary form. We soon see that Mr. Black is one-in-10,000 in the pursuit of his profession at the bar. We see that not only must an advocate know the law consummately, but be so facile in the world of criminal and civil procedures both in state courts and in federal, so as to anticipate and outwit both the prosecutor and the judge in the dogged defense of his client. Black's success rests in no small measure upon his consummate knowledge of human nature; he studies his clients his opponents,the witnesses, the judges and the jurypersons until he can be fairly certain of how they will respond to circumstances. He is as indefatigable in his memorization the documents of hostile witnesses as he is with case law. Each case he has chosen illustrates a different facet in the all too familiar tale of justice aborted. In the middle of racial unrest that tore Miami apart in the early 80's a police officer named Alvarez shot a black man in a crowded arcade. There were immediate riots as the populace reacted to what they saw as yet another case of police brutality. There was enormous pressure to charge Alvarez with a crime so as to avert further rioting, and state attorney general Reno called for Alvarez's head. By making sure of his jury and by calling in several experts Black demonstrated that the officer acted in self defense. He was acquitted despite the politics. The next case involves an indigent black man who undeniably had murdered innocent victims. He had been condemned to die. Black took up his appeal and showed that improper jury instructions about mitigating circumstances resulted in a wrongful sentence. The third defendant was brought to trial for murder 1. Black demonstrates that shoddy police work, perpetrated owing to jumped-conclusions based upon the location of the body, resulted in a criminal charge against a man who was involved in an accidental shooting. The last trial reveals the horrors of prosecutorial misconduct in a federal trial. In such cases the defense is not allowed discovery but only a witness list. By thorough research into the backgrounds of the witnesses against his innocent client Black discredits them as either being "bribed" by the prosecution by reduction of fines and the keeping of their ill gotten goods or caught in a web of their own making: testify and look good or recant and be tried for perjury. Again Black gets his client off, but not for long; once the feds are after you they will get you one way or another. This is in some ways the most frightening case of all. This is a gripping book if you are at all interested in trial law.

Black's book is a spell-binding account of what can and does happen in a country where truth and justice often take a back seat as "The Government" and "The Media" push through an agenda all their own. This, however, is not likely to happen on Black's watch! He presents four different and riveting cases, and he shows that hard work and masterful skills can help bring into balance the scales of justice and allow the truth to prevail. Absent in these accounts is the huge ego we're so used to seeing in attorney-authors these days. Oh yeah, he's also a darn good writer. This book was impossible to put down!!! A side-note: Pay attention to the info. about Janet Reno. I certainly have a much different view of her today