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2023 Co-Winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize, given by the Law and Society Association
Illustrates how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges construct
legal reality
Wrongful convictions have been studied primarily through the lenses of law, psychology, and the social sciences. Though scholarship has established canonical factors that help explain why the innocent are convicted, a very simple question has not been answered: How is it possible that prosecutors can convince juries and themselves of the guilt of an innocent defendant, often even against strong exculpatory evidence? Narratives of Guilt and Innocence seeks to address this crucial question by highlighting the narrative blueprint of a given criminal justice system and then how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges construct legal reality and the evidence for it. That law and storytelling are connected is a common trope, but we know surprisingly little about the intricate role storytelling plays in criminal cases and wrongful convictions in particular.
This book questions the effectiveness of the adversarial contest between prosecutor and defense as a means to arrive at the truth and argues that narrative is an important a factor in the construction of legal reality. Wrongful convictions exemplify that narrative and truth have an uncomfortable relationship. Ralph Grunewald provides a retelling and reading of well-known miscarriages of justice, including the best-known wrongful conviction in Germany. Applying a comparative perspective shows that the narrative desire as a human trait has a universal power with a persistence that transcends the regulatory and procedural setup of a given system.
Narratives of Guilt and Innocence puts wrongful convictions into an interdisciplinary and comparative context and vividly demonstrates just how much the process of storytelling affects legal reality.
— Simon Stern, Director, Centre for Innovation Law & Policy, University of Toronto
"An erudite and sophisticated book that displays impressive expertise on both law and narrative theory. . . . Reflects considerable intellectual sophistication on both the literary and legal sides; its analysis of wrongful conviction cases is fascinating and deftly done."
— Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson Jr Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
"This brilliant study brims with penetrating insights, challenging accepted ideas about law and the criminal process. Grunewald asks the innocence movement to see that reducing wrongful convictions requires an understanding of how the narrative imagination of police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and jurors shape perceptions of reality."
— Marvin Zalman, Wayne State University
"‘All a criminal conviction requires is a narrative that conveys a plausible, coherent, and acceptable story,’ writes Ralph Grunewald. Alas, that is true. This important book provides our best analysis of how untrue stories can lead to criminal convictions. This is a study that demands our attention."
— Peter Brooks, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus, Yale University
"A must-read for those involved in criminal law and innocence projects, legal comparatists, and Law and Narrative scholars. By comparing US criminal law procedures to their German equivalents, which are based in a less adversarial system, Grunewald shows how, once convicted, it becomes virtually impossible to prove a person’s innocence. We cannot afford to not engage with this important work."
— Margareta Olson, author of From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect