Clive Stafford Smith
Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America
‘Humane and entertaining … a quintessentially British account mixing wry humour with irony and understatement.’ The Guardian
Clive Stafford Smith works to release innocent prisoners from death row jails. Through the story of Kris Maharaj, who was wrongly found guilty of murder, he argues that the American justice system is actually designed to ignore innocence. His conclusions will appall and, hopefully, act as a wake-up call to those who condone legislation that threatens basic human rights. At the same time, the personal story he tells, demonstrates that determination can challenge the institutions that surreptitiously threaten freedom.
Clive Stafford Smith is the founder and Director of Reprieve. He oversees Reprieve’s casework programme, as well as the direct representation of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay and on death row as a Louisiana licensed attorney at law. In 2000 he was awarded an OBE for ‘humanitarian services’. He was made a Rowntree Visionary and Echoing Green Fellow in 2005 and was previously a Soros Senior Fellow. He is the author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side, Bad Men: Guantanomo Bay and the Secret Prisoners and Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America.
“A laconic and sardonic first-person account, acutely observed and at times blackly humorous, of what Guantanamo Bay is actually like.” Geoffrey Robertson QC (New Statesman)
“A measured and uniquely informed account of systemic brutality and blind folly on an epic scale, of the tragic perversion of America’s judicial system, and of the licensing of torture throughout the world by those who imagine themselves opposed to it.” John le Carré
Promoted by Bristol Festival of Ideas
in collaboration with St George’s Bristol.