Incredibly interesting book on the judgement of different cases - the judge revisits sentences and says whether he would still give these prisoners the same sentence or would change it based on new laws that were published.

Thank you, The New Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished A Second Chance: A Federal Judge Decides Who Deserves It by Frederic Block.

The author is a federal court judge who wrote about six individuals who petitioned him to be released from from federal prison. In the first part of the book, there was a chapter on each person’s crimes, followed by a chapter on the federal statute that he asked for release under and then another chapter on each one telling how Judge Block decided.

The six cases were a New York police officer who was guilty of an infamous attack on an innocent man, a man convicted of murder under RICO, someone who downloaded thousands of images of child pornography and several Mafia cases.

In addition to discussing the individual cases, the author gave a history of US drug laws and how they’ve been used to target minorities, discussion of US gun laws and a discussion of threats and violence against federal judges, along with how the situation has gotten much worse thanks to Trump.

This was a fascinating look at the cases, how the judge performed his decision making as well as other aspects of the legal system. I give this book an A. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I originally finished reading this on July 16, 2024.