When Trump sits in the White House dispensing pardons to other convicted felons – and an ambassadorship or two, when he was able to run out the clock on justice with his political donors paying most of his legal bills, when so many actions this administration has taken in the first month serve to eliminate or disable accountability or oversight… Here’s my 2009 conversation with Amy Bach about how the legal system systematically fails regular people every day. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. Her book ORDINARY INJUSTICE shows how – in the name of expedience – legal professionals collaborate rather than face off, sacrificing defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving.

  Aired 12/12/09 Attorney AMY BACH spent eight years investigating the chronic lapses in courts across America. Lawyers sleep through trials. False confessions and mistaken eye-witness identifications convict the innocent. The rich walk, the poor go to prison. ORDINARY INJUSTICE goes beyond one particular injustice, one specific court, or one aspect of the legal system. Bach rejects the easy explanations of bad apples and meager funding to show how in the name of expedience legal professionals routinely choose to collaborate rather than face off as adversaries. Her investigation -- from small-town Georgia to upstate New York, from Chicago to Mississippi --reveals a culture of complicity among prosecutors, defenders, and judges that rewards shoddiness and sacrifices defendants and victims to keep the court calendar moving. http://www.slate.com/id/2234594/ http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Sullivan_v._Florida