Trials Without Truth: Why Our System of Criminal Trials Has Become an Expensive Failure and What We

William T. Pizzi here argues that what they perceive is in fact exactly what Americans have: a trial system that places far too much emphasis on winning and not nearly enough on truth, one in which the abilities of a lawyer or the composition of a jury may be far more important to the outcome of a case than any evidence. Acting as an informal tour guide and bringing to bear his experiences as both insider and outsider, prosecutor and academic, Pizzi here exposes the structural fault lines of our trial system and its paralyzing obsession with procedure, specifically the ways in which lawyers are permitted to dominate trials, the system's preference for weak judges, and the absurdities of plea bargaining. By comparing and contrasting the U.S. system with that of a host of other countries, Trials without Truth provides a clear-headed, wide-ranging critique of what ails the criminal justice system - and a prescription for how it can be fixed.