The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America by Emily Galvin Almanza

A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite—and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.

“Galvin-Almanza takes readers inside the system with crystalline insight, heart, and writerly skill. Anyone who cares about justice should read this urgently-needed book.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money

As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is being purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?

In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.

We’ll learn what’s working, how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defend