When Innocence Is Not Enough explores the Brady Rule established by a Supreme Court Decision in 1963, which says that in a criminal case, the prosecution must share evidence with the defense that is favorable to their client. The rule was meant to encourage fair play by protecting defendants' rights and ensuring that justice was the State's goal-- rather than winning. We are not living up to that ideal in reality. In the last thirty years, 44% of exonerations followed Brady violations. Key evidence was withheld that could have helped the defendants' cases.

First, the author tells the details of the Brady case and its unlikely rise to the Supreme Court. Then he traces impactful changes to the rule's efficacy while weaving through the details of a specific case to show the impact of the Brady rule on a human level. So let's talk legal precedent first and then get into his (literal) case study.

The initial Brady decision did not sail forward uncontested. The author shares how its interpretation has shifted with the Supreme Court's membership, increasingly narrow in its application and with more convoluted definitions. In the Youngblood v. Arizona decision, the Supreme Court considered an expansion of Brady that would have included the State's need to appropriately preserve (physical) evidence that could be favorable to the defense down the road. The Supreme Court decided it's only a Brady violation if the police act in bad faith, and negligence is not a concern for a fair process. Basically, they didn't want the police to be "burdened" by having to care for all evidence to that degree. In the Bagley case, they ruled that evidence need only be shared with the defense if it has a "reasonable probability" of swaying the outcome of the trial in the defendant's favor. With this approach, the prosecutor decides if the Brady Rule applies before sharing anything. By its very nature, the lack of oversight requires implicit trust in a prosecutor's judgment because there's no way to know if they have information they aren't sharing.

These decisions not only favor the prosecution in the original trial but also make it harder for a defendant to appeal using Brady if they are made aware of suppressed evidence after the fact-- they have to prove not just that evidence was withheld but that it had a "reasonable probability" of changing the outcome way back when the original trial occurred, a purely subjective determination. Even when courts go through the motions of hearing a Brady appeal, there's rarely any consequence. A prosecutor may be told they erred, but not with any expectation of punishment. And a defendant may be told that evidence was withheld, but it wouldn't have impacted their case. Therefore, the result stands. This reality factors into a prosecutor's mental calculus, and they may do the work of a judge beforehand, anticipating a favorable outcome to justify not sharing evidence.

To illustrate how our legal system is beleaguered by the false promise of Brady, Dybdahl tells of a 1984 murder in Washington, D.C. where the homicide detectives made some assumptions early on that shaped their approach to the case. For one, they distrusted the Black community where the murder happened and felt they were withholding information to protect one of their own... rather than considering that no one in the community knew anything to share. Second, they were convinced a gang was responsible. A moniker of a go-go crew that went to concerts together was assumed to be that of a vicious group terrorizing the neighborhood. Many young men were pulled in and charged as members of the supposed gang, and detectives put pressure on them to confirm the narrative they wanted to hear and name more names. Young people are more likely to falsely confess under coercive interrogation. Some states have put legal protections in place that police can't lie to teenagers to get them to confess, but it's not common practice and it certainly wasn't in the 80s when the crime in question occurred. All of this snowballed into a case where everything shared in court pointed to this one version of events, the only defense a blanket denial.

When evidence was found to the contrary, it was ignored by the detectives and prosecutor by virtue of the fact it didn't fit the story they'd already committed to. That, along with a fierce desire to win such a high-profile case, encouraged the prosecutor not to share any such evidence with the defense under the Brady rule. The defendants were left with "only" their alibis as defense, something juries are likely to mistrust. Most ended up convicted for the brutal murder, and it took over a decade for a journalist to start digging into any alternative theories. Thus started a lengthy appeal process that went all the way to The Supreme Court. Don't get your hopes up.

The author doesn't leave us with this bleak picture alone. He considers where changes are being made and what more needs to be done to protect defendants' rights where the Brady Rule has failed. Dybdahl notes that federal judges skew towards former prosecutors, and this trend is likely to be similar in lower courts. With the Brady rule defined so loosely, it gives space for judges to decide by some internal mechanism what's right. Their political leanings, previous experiences, etc. will have a vast impact because there's space for it. Because of this, the author argues the current system is not the solution because judges and prosecutors are content. External pressures will be needed to bring about change. He shares where legislative steps have been taken, particularly in the states of Texas and North Carolina. The goal is open-file discovery, meaning everything is shared with the defense before trial and even before plea bargaining. That takes the power out of prosecutors' hands to decide what could be beneficial or damaging to their own ends. It should result in the outcome intended by Brady of transparency and less competitive mistrust between prosecution and defense attorneys.

Though true crime is an aspect of this book in a way, it isn't about shock and awe in the typical sense. The horror comes from the legal history of it all-- how many innocent people have suffered and continue to do so at the hands of our judicial system. This is an area where I think I need to continue to educate myself and find out the rules in my state, but this was a valuable first step. The author's writing is clear, making a snarled situation into something approachable and impactful for his readers. Thank you to The New Press for my copy to read and review!

This is an interesting book on the Brady Rule. It covers the birth of the rule & how it was designed to ensure due process. With the Brady Rule, prosectors cannot suppress evidence from the defense. Unfortunately, the system does not always work in the best interest of the defendant. In the book, the author covers cases were the Brady Rule was used erroneous by prosectors. This book shedded some light on fraudulent practices that are used by defectives. It was eye-opening yet sad.

As a federal criminal litigator myself who has been on both sides of the courtroom and as someone who enjoys reading criminal and legal nonfiction in my free time as well, I was thrilled for the opportunity to read and review this. Thomas expertly pinpoints the failed promise of the Brady rule in only a way someone who has defended innocent people can. I’m definitely going to grab a physical copy of this one and recommend it to others in the field. Thank you to New Press, Thomas, and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

When Innocence is Not Enough tells the history of the Brady rule while zooming in on an egregious violation in the Catherine Fuller murder case and making the case for open file disclosure. I requested this ARC because with the recent Adnan Syed conviction reversal, I’ve become more interested in the wrongful conviction genre of true crime. Thomas L. Dybdahl goes through many case examples, with both positive and negative outcomes for the accused, showing that often the courts prioritize finality over justice. This book is a good jumping off point for those interested in wrongful convictions. I was googling names while reading to get more information about cases, entire books could probably be written about each of them. The author does a good job of balancing the devastating stories of wrongful conviction with ideas for how the justice system could be improved beyond Brady.

Thanks to the New Press and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Innocence is Note Enough tells two narratives. It details the Catherine Fuller murder case in DC in the 1980s and how police were so committed to a narrative that they ignored evidence and convicted multiple innocent people. Simultaneously, the book walks through the creation of Brady and how courts have slowly limited its power, resulting in more wrongful convictions. Dybdahl shows that a few groups are trying to preserve Brady's power and reforms could succeed in ensuring justice is more fair.

The book was an enlightening read on Brady and its limits. The Catherine Fuller case did not focus on Brady until the end of the narrative, since the prosecution needed to withhold information first, but it works well as an informative narrative about how police and prosecutors can trap themselves into a story and ignore evidence leading them to the truth. I had never heard of the case (I now know that some people know it from The Confession Tapes on Netflix) but it was such a clear miscarriage of justice to try to rope so many young people into the criminal justice system with little evidence against any of them. The courts are so committed to uphold the institutions of the prosecutors office and the adversarial system that they are less concerned with innocent people crushed under their weight. While in some parts the book felt somewhat surface level, it covered a lot of history of criminal procedure concisely and gave clear avenues for further research and resources. But for someone wanting to get oriented in this area of the law or wanting to learn more about injustices in the criminal justice system, the book will be a good choice.

Absolutely fascinating. I really got a lot from this in depth investigation of a particular aspect of the legal system and what it says more generally about society. The original case which is covered in such depth in this book is deeply troubling and the author does a wonderful job of explaining it and bringing the context to bear.

Compelling Arguments Need Better Documentation. This is another of those nonfiction tales that uses a singular case as its overall narrative structure, but also looks to several other cases and events related to the overall thesis of the text. The overarching case is a brutal murder out of 1980s Washington DC where several black kids where wrongfully convicted of a murder they could not have committed, and where police and prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence that resulted in these kids spending decades behind bars. Dybdahl then expands out to show that while this case was particularly egregious, it is also far from uncommon. Indeed, it is almost banal in just how common the abuses at hand truly are, causing one (later disgraced for unrelated reasons) judge to even call it an "epidemic" within the last decade prior to publication of this book!

The problems here are related yet distinct enough to my mind to warrant a two star deduction. The first star is lost due to the small bibliography, something that could potentially be corrected prior to actual publication of this book roughly three months after I sit to write this review of this advanced reader copy. Coming in at just about 15% of the overall text, this is short of the 20% - 33% that is more normal for works such as this one, and well short of the 40% - 50% that I *prefer* to see in such texts.

The second star is lost specifically because the claims herein are not as well documented as they need to be to make these points something that opponents cannot simply dismiss.

Make no mistake - I actually have been following this general issue (though not the specific cases at hand) for quite some time and nearly completely agree with the author's points and recommendations. But as the author points out often, there is quite considerable opposition to these ideas in the minds and actions of the very people who could most correct these injustices - and the only way to really be able to attempt to convince such opposition of our correctness is to more fully document our case. Thus, I always appreciate books such as this one - I simply need it to be much more documented. Still, for the ideas it presents and how it actually presents them, this is still a book that needs to be read by every American. Thus, it is very much recommended.