On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

Little kids, little problems. Big kids ... federal felony charges? Attorney Sasha McCandless-Connelly has her hands full with her six-year-old twins, but she adores her pack of nieces and nephews. So when sixteen-year-old Colin calls and tearfully announces he's been arrested, she flies into action to protect him. Colin’s accused of using the Internet to make threatening statements, a federal felony. Social media posts by Colin threaten his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend with violence—and worse. Colin swears he didn’t make the posts, and Sasha believes him. Then the private messages turn up. As she shines a light on the high school’s dark underbelly, the teenagers close rank, and the whispered secrets multiply. But she’s confident she can clear Colin’s name. Then someone actually tries to make good on the threat to kill the other boy. Colin’s taken into custody on an attempted murder charge, and the prosecutor vows to try him as an adult. Someone’s trying to frame him. But who? And why? Sasha navigates a web of lies and ever-shifting alliances as she scrambles to save a kid whose diapers she once changed ... even as she realizes she doesn’t know him nearly as well as she thought she did. Innocent Mistakes is the fourteenth full-length novel in the USA Today bestselling Sasha McCandless series.

Ritual theorizing has tended to focus on perfect rituals, as prescribed in sacred texts, yet ritual mistakes occur all the time--crucial items can go missing or get broken, incorrect phrases can be said. In this book, Kathryn McClymond examines cases in which rituals have gone wrong, embracing the fact that, in fact, they rarely go as planned. From ancient India to modern Iraq, Ritual Gone Wrong demonstrates that ritual disruptions throughout history reveal the fluid, supple, and dynamic nature of ritual.

The gospel we profess is the most radical power on earth, reaching to the depths of our personal, social, and political existence. It needs a radical people to embody and proclaim it. This book examines the nature of evangelical theology, dealing with areas of persistent disagreement and controversy, such as the status of the Bible, the nature of Christ's achievement on the cross, and the meaning of "hell." It offers a new way forward that remains committed to the fundamentals of faith while retaining a flexible response to the challenges of the future.