No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System.

• Author: Beilke, Dustin
• Position: Review

No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System by David Cole The New Press. 218 pages. $25.00.

It has been thirty-five years since Anthony Lewis wrote Gideon's Trumpet, the celebrated book about Clarence Earl Gideon, a man who was accused of robbing a pool hall in Florida and was easily convicted because he didn't have the money to hire a lawyer. Gideon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to representation, and the justices ruled in his favor in 1963. Lewis's book about this case is routinely taught in law schools. "What is not taught, however," writes David Cole in No Equal Justice, "is our utter failure to realize the promise represented by Gideon's case."

Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, has written a damning analysis of the American criminal justice system. He explains how the judicial process is stacked against people of color, especially black males. With pinpoint accuracy and an eye for telling detail, Cole shows how nonwhites are disproportionately targeted for arrest, offered little recourse for their defense, given only token opportunity for redress through the appeals process, underrepresented on juries, overrepresented on Death Row, and shunted aside by the Supreme Court.

The injustices are so stark and their effects so dire, Cole contends, that to level the playing field it might be justifiable to reduce the rights enjoyed by the wealthy.

For many observers, the O.J. Simpson murder trial was proof that the criminal justice system is skewed in favor of defendants, that killers and other criminals are able to escape punishment by exploiting a system set up to protect the falsely accused. But Cole shows that most people, regardless of race, are not able to afford a "Dream Team" of highly paid attorneys with the time and resources to press relentlessly for loopholes. Most defendants have to accept the legal assistance of public defenders who may be simultaneously defending dozens of clients. Some will be assigned attorneys who are not even criminal lawyers.

"The poor person facing criminal charges," Cole notes, "not only has no choice in the matter but has no right to be represented by a lawyer experienced in his kind of case, in criminal law generally, or even in trial work. For all practical purposes, he has only the right to be represented by an individual admitted to the bar.... Too often, assistance of counsel for the poor...