The Foreword of this book was written by attorney William R. Gallagher of Cincinnati. Mr. Gallagher won the Robert C. Heeney Award, in 2011, from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington, D.C. That award is given to one criminal defense attorney per year who best exemplifies the motto of the Association as "Liberties Last Champion." In his Foreword, Mr. Gallagher states this book talks about things attorneys will only discuss among themselves in the corner of a cocktail party. Mr. Gallagher is considered to be one of the top three criminal trial attorneys East of the Mississippi River.
"System Failure: A Critique of the Judicial System of the United States," has been included in the Moritz Law Library at the Ohio State University School of Law and in the Schaefer Law Library at Michigan State University. It is also now in the Ohio Public Library system.
This book has been included in the curriculum of Law Professor Lester C. Reams's Business Law class at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles, in the portion of the class discussing Criminal Law and Social Justice. Professor Reams has stated he is assigning the book to his students and asking them how, from a Business Law viewpoint, they would reform the judicial system in light of the information in this book. In Professor Reams's review of "System Failure," he referred to the book as "brilliant."
A former 30 year member of the Central Legal Staff at the United States Military Court of Appeals has called portions of the book "genius."
The book made it to Book Authority's Best New Civil Rights Law Books: https: //bookauthority.org/books/new-civil-rights-law-books?t=t7lbkd&s=award&book=B08H4Q4NN3 BookAuthority collects and ranks the best books in the world.
System Failure is a Critique of the US Judicial System as seen through the eyes of a 25 year practicing jailhouse lawyer, who eventually freed himself from a wrongful conviction.
The book discloses why the average time between a wrongful conviction and exoneration is 9 1/2 years. Using empirical data and publicly known facts, it advances credible numbers of wrongfully imprisoned citizens in the US in excess of 100,000.
The book brings to light a systemic violation of Article III of the Constitution by using data from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, to prove young law clerks are deciding most of the cases in the Federal Courts, and proposes changes to the way in which jurisdictions are created to resolve that problem.
The author was considered to be the best jailhouse lawyer in the Ohio prison system for over 20 years. Although the author did mostly criminal appeals and Habeas Corpus work, he also initiated a lawsuit against Ohio, with the assistance of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center in Cincinnati, against Ohio for refusing to treat prisoners for Hepatitis C, brought on the behalf of two friends of his.That lawsuit, Fussell v. Wilkinson, turned into a major medical/dental Class Action that has cost the State of Ohio $100 million per year since its inception in 2003.
In the pages of this book, you will find a man who taught himself the law from scratch, motivated by having been wrongfully convicted, and fought a 25 year war with the judicial system on the behalf of other Lifers who were his friends. The author spent 4 years at Warren Correctional Institution, under the control of one of the best prison Wardens to ever exist, Anthony Brigano; 2 years at Chillicothe Correctional Institution, before his first reversal; 4 years at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville; 5 years at Lebanon Correctional Institution and 10 years at Allen Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio. Luke and Leb ain't no joke. The above only scratches the surface of this book.
Come walk a mile in my shoes.
James F. Love IV
