Legal Blunders (Carroll & Graf ed)

In the siege at Ruby Ridge the FBI erred fatally. Crazily, Colin Ferguson killed at random on the Long Island Railroad and in court acted in his own defense.

For decades the jury has been out on Sacco and Vanzetti.

Cases like these and numerous other instances of incomprehensible judgments, hostile juries, bungled executions, security leaks, and incompetence among felons and police officers alike all figure significantly in this eye-opening compilation of criminal blunders and judicial screw-ups.

The legal horror stories that appear in these often shocking, occasionally unbelievable, and sometimes amusing pages run a gamut of error from the tragic misjudgments at Waco to an absent-minded judge who neglected to sentence a convicted defendant to death, from a disastrous case of mistaken identity that led to the shooting of an innocent man by the London police to police dogs that have protected the felons they were supposed to attack.

This dismaying collection offers cases, too, of criminals who have made some fairly major mistakes like failing to put gas in the tank of the getaway car or heisting a van supposedly stashed with gambling chips (they made off with a high-calorie cache of potato chips). And of course Son of Sam was nabbed by a parking violation.

The law may or may not be an ass, but its breakers and upholders are often without doubt asinine, as this volume abundantly shows.