Likely Stories - Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, A Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

You should read this book. Not just because it’s a driveway moment in print – it is. Once you pick it up, it’s hard to put down. And not just because of the mountain of facts and troubling cases she presents about America’s justice system, as compelling and thought-provoking as they are. It’s the central story – or rather, two parallel stories - she uses to frame her report.

In 1987, Ben Spencer, a 22-year-old Black man, was found guilty of murdering a white businessman in Dallas. From the beginning, he insisted that his arrest and conviction were an awful mistake. And he continued to assert his innocence, even when offered a lesser sentence if he confessed – even when it meant he would not be released on parole. He continued to assert his innocence as he sat in prison for thirty-four years.

Ben Spencer’s story is woven together with the rise of the innocence movement – the story of Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion, dedicated to the exoneration of innocent people - along with stories of many others who are working to hold the legal system to higher standards.

Ben’s story is by turns heart-wrenching and enraging. When he was arrested, he and his wife were recently married with a baby on the way and high hopes for the future. Those hopes were dashed on a Sunday evening in March, 1987, when Jeffrey Young, a 42-year-old white businessman, was attacked at his office, beaten, placed in the trunk of his BMW, and driven to a neighborhood in West Dallas – Ben Spenser’s neighborhood – where Young was dumped in the street to die.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty documents a broken justice system, with slipshod police work, prosecutorial malfeasance, mistaken – and lying – witnesses, junk science, and societal prejudice. Tracing cases back to the early 19^th century, she writes, “These flaws have not been uprooted; rather, like an invasive species, they have grown with the population, tamed in some places, out of control in others, but the flaws are so deeply rooted because they are so deeply human.”

And she documents the innocence movement, whose work has led to more than thirty-four hundred exonerations in the past 35 years - and has led to reforms in the system.

She writes, “The pioneer in the reform movement is not a blue state, not California or New York or Washington, but deep-red Texas. Over the past quarter century, its courts and its legislature have put in place rules to not only prevent future wrongful convictions, but also to correct their past mistakes and free the innocent.”

Read this book! It’s an eye-opener, thought-provoking and compellingly written.

Bringing Ben Home is available at the Waco McLennan County Library. Check it out – or buy your own copy!

THIS TITLE IS AVAILABLE IN FORMATS FOR THOSE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENT'S - YOU CAN FIND IT HERE VIA THE 'NATIONAL LIBRARY SERVICE FOR THE BLIND AND PRINT DISABLED.’

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