<i>The pursuit of justice creates injustice</i>

Laura Coares worked as a federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington for four years. As a Black woman who knew the inequities in the system especially against Black men, she began the job with the hope that she could bring more justice to the most vulnerable. She quickly learned that the system would not easily be fixed.

In her book Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness, she looks at several cases in her time at the Justice Department. She discusses several different cases showing not only how the pursuit of justice can affect the victim negatively but the collateral damage it can have eg a man who is picked up by ICE at the court house after a 20 year-old-old deportation warrant is discovered when he agrees to testify against the man who stole his car and the Black mother who tries to have the sentences reduced on the men who killed her son because, as she tries to explain, young men do dumb things but they shouldn’t have their lives ruined because of it.

Coates accepts that being Black doesn’t necessarily mean innocence but racism has an effect on how defendants are treated as in the case of a man charged with an offence who insists that, despite having the same name as the suspect, it isn’t him. No one believes him but the ridicule he receives from everyone including the judge makes Coates decide to at least look into it especially after she learns no one seems to have seen a picture of the actual suspect. Turns out he looks nothing like the man arrested.

The story is interspersed with details of her own life as she and her husband, Dale, start a family, her fears when she is told tests show her baby might have spina bifida, and the difficulties of balancing her work with being a mother to two small children. She also tells the story of when a White colleague decides to mansplain to her about how to interrogate a Black suspect.

The cases in this book are all tragic and some are hard to very read about like the young girl testifying against her stepfather who has been sexually abusing her since prepubescence, a fact her mother was aware of, only to have the female judge find against her because of the clothes she wore to court. But they all give insights to a system that is not only complex but fallible.

Despite the subject matter, I found Just Pursuits an engossing read due in great extent to Coates’ writing style. Unlike many nonfiction books which tend to be dry often pedantic tomes meant for those who work within the system, Coates makes it more personal, recreating conversations with victims, families etc, giving the book the flow of a novel. That is not to say the book isn’t an important and serious look at the subject matter - it is that -biut one that those with little or no experience with the system can read and understand that law doesn’t always equal justice.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review</i>