Smoke but No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened

by Jessica S. Henry

Overview

2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Winner, Silver (Political and Social Sciences)
Winner of the Montaigne Medal, awarded to "the most thought-provoking books"

The first book to explore a shocking yet all-too-common type of wrongful conviction—one that locks away innocent people for crimes that never actually happened.

Rodricus Crawford was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder by suffocation of his beautiful baby boy. After years on death row, evidence confirmed what Crawford had claimed all along: he was innocent, and his son had died from an undiagnosed illness.  Crawford is not alone. A full one-third of all known exonerations stem from no-crime wrongful convictions.

The first book to explore this common but previously undocumented type of wrongful conviction, Smoke but No Fire tells the heartbreaking stories of innocent people convicted of crimes that simply never happened. A suicide is mislabeled a homicide. An accidental fire is mislabeled an arson. Corrupt police plant drugs on an innocent suspect.  A false allegation of assault is invented to resolve a custody dispute. With this book, former New York City public defender Jessica S. Henry sheds essential light on a deeply flawed criminal justice system that allows—even encourages—these convictions to regularly occur. Smoke but No Fire promises to be eye-opening reading for legal professionals, students, activists, and the general public alike as it grapples with the chilling reality that far too many innocent people spend real years behind bars for fictional crimes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520385801
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	333,785
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jessica S. Henry was a public defender for nearly ten years in New York City before joining the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University, where she is Professor and a frequent commentator on national television, on radio, and in print media.
 

Table of Contents

Preface 
Acknowledgments 

Introduction: Phantom Crimes 
1 • Forensic Error: Misclassified Murders and Mislabeled Crimes 
2 • False Accusations: When Lies Become Courtroom Truths 
3 • Police: Crossing the “Thin Blue Line” 
4 • Prosecutors: Winning, at All Costs 
5 • Defense Lawyers: Drowning in Cases 
6 • Judges: Tilting the Scales of Justice 
7 • Misdemeanors: Not Minor Matters 
Conclusion: Clearing the Smoke 

Notes 
Index 

Editorial Reviews

"The book allows the reader a bit of hope, which is both cautiously optimistic and deliberately realistic. Henry provides a number of recommendations for reform that do not push the bounds of reality but instead focus on incremental and achievable success."

Crime

"Smoke but No Fire is an engaging read that offers a damning indictment of the American criminal justice system and its pervasive indifference to the possibility of innocence."

Wrongful Conviction Law Review

Jessica Henry provides a concise and even-handed account of no-crime convictions and the numerous, interdependent ways in which they are allowed to continue. Her ability to weave personal stories with the matter of (legal) fact writing beautifully illustrates a perfectly ugly scenario. . . . The book is an informative and interesting read that also provides a great starting point for anyone who may want to further investigate this miscarriage of criminal justice.

Law and Social Change Crime

"Smoke but No Fire is groundbreaking and frightening. . . . This book lays bare the deepest and darkest dysfunction within the criminal legal system and helps us understand what we can do about it."

The Champion

2020-05-04
A former New York City public defender turns a spotlight on those wrongly convicted for crimes that were never committed.

It’s bad enough when the wrong suspect is convicted of a crime and the guilty party goes free. But what if there was no crime at all? In a study that will make readers question many of the foundational elements of the American legal system, Henry, now a professor of justice studies, draws from academic research, case studies, anecdotes, and personal experience to show how often the innocent have been punished—e.g., murders that were actually suicides; alleged drug deals in which police planted drugs and there was no other criminal transaction; or even “murder convictions for the deaths of people who never existed.” Why does this happen? As the author demonstrates, cognitive biases lead police, lawyers, and judges to suspect that certain minorities—young black men in particular—are more likely to be guilty, and confirmation bias causes them to lock in on the narrative they are already convinced is true, even when it is obvious from a different perspective—perhaps that of an appellate court—how flimsy the evidence was to begin with. In a series of damning chapters, Henry shifts the focus among the various participants in the process, showing how forensic scientists see themselves as part of the law enforcement team and sometimes testify to proof that isn’t scientifically conclusive; how police must boost arrest numbers to meet quotas; and how prosecutors and judges elected on tough-on-crime platforms rely on convictions to keep score. Henry systematically exposes widespread corruption and lies and also points out the surprisingly frequent instances of innocent suspects pleading guilty because the process of plea bargaining makes it a gamble worth taking. While the prose isn’t riveting, the author’s accumulation of evidence is revelatory.

An eye-opening book that suggests how commonplace are miscarriages of justice in the U.S.

Kirkus Reviews