Book Review: Making a Case for Innocence: True Stories of a Criminal Defense Investigator by April Higuera

The real horrors lie in True Crime! Shocking, thought-provoking, eye-opening – a five star read!

Book Description:

TRUE CRIME THRILLER with a twist. Written first-hand by the actual investigator in DEFENSE of real people charged with murder.

A criminal justice system that is blind to some while embracing others for unconscious and unconscionable reasons.

Empowering, inspiring, evocative journey of a real-life seasoned criminal defense investigator through guilt, innocence, and the court system.

Entertaining personal stories and gritty details of real murders.

Throughout her true dark and gritty stories and commentary on the legal system, April entertains us with wit and humor while describing her personal and professional journey through the criminal justice system as she helps defend otherwise average citizens who are accused of heinous, violent crimes, and shares her best practices for uncovering and laying out the evidence against the accused.

Her accounts are TRUE!

Read about these cases:
• Max Roybal: A wife’s jawbone is delivered in a Tupperware container to a local TV station with a map to locate her remains.
• Hope Schreiner: A 73-year-old grandmother is convicted of bludgeoning her husband to death in their driveway with a potato hoe.
• Sedley Alley: The infamous rape-murder of a 19-year-old Marine cadet, who is the daughter of a U.S. Ambassador.

My Thoughts:

Making a Case for Innocence is a deep and thought-provoking read, accounts of true crime have always been of great interest to me, especially when it relates to the criminal justice system – how a system meant to be fair and just can fail society so miserably is shocking.

“Justice is about the truth.”

The Foreword [by Dr. Jorey Krawczyn] and the Introduction of this book alone had me hooked and eager to read the account that was to come, it introduced the idea of an unjust justice system – how easily the truth gets lost when determining guilt or innocence, and whether, intentional or not, the justice system fails as a result of the people who manage it.

As you read through Higuera’s experiences, you’ll be shocked at some of the proceedings and how some things went unchallenged. I am not a trained member of staff, employed in this system but even I saw something was amiss, amiss is too weak a word, I saw something WRONG in the way these cases were conducted. Higuera inflects humour in the appropriate places in this read, without taking away from the serious issues.

Interspersed throughout her account are very short descriptions of cases in the news of wrongful convictions, which served as short sharp shock to the reader, shock that these miscarriages of justice were able to happen.

My mind went into over-drive after finishing this book, thinking about the death penalty, as it still exists in certain parts of America, and it’s scary to think people are executed when found guilty of certain crimes. Death – there is no coming back from that and Higuera stresses the importance of the truth as people lives literally rest on it. I want to quickly state, I am firmly against the death penalty, and I believe there are several failing in the running of the criminal justice system both in the UK, America and other parts of the world. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everyone is innocent, those that truly are guilty deserve to be punished (not killed) but the combined years innocence people have spent behind bars shows there is something wrong and it shouldn’t be ignored. When a person’s freedom hangs in the balance, how can the truth be so easily overlooked?

“No system can be just if humans make the decision.”

So how do we solve this problem, can it be solved? I highly recommend this book, I am in awe of Higuera’s compassion to not only the victims and their families but also to those found rightly and wrongly convicted and I applaud the work that she does. If nothing else, this book seeks to open your eyes to what is happening.

This book is available to buy now from: Amazon UK / Book Depository

*I received a digital copy of this book via Netgalley*