A TRUE DELIVERANCE The Joan Little Case

Hardback. The 1975 murder trial of Joan Little in North Carolina seemed an almost classic dramatisation of American social issues, bringing into the spotlight questions of racism, women's rights, civil rights, prison reform, capital punishment, Southern justice. A black woman, a convicted felon, was being tried for murdering a white jailer who had allegedly attempted to rape her in her cell in Washington, N.C. The author, raised in the same part of North Carolina as Joan Little, sees the case in a far different context. He gives a sharp and perceptive portrayal of the forces involved: a stolid prosecution that viewed the trial as a contest to be won by traditional legal techniques; a flamboyant defence led by a maverick attorney, Jerry Paul, artfully manipulating the media, introducing exotic courtroom innovations (hypnotism, jury profiling), and projecting the state judiciary as the instrument of social and political oppression; a worried criminal justice establishment trying to dispose expediently of an embarrassisng case with the least possible damage to the state, and a court and jury facing momentous and still unresolved social and political issues that were confused with the basic matter of the defendant's innocence or guilt. The 5-week trial was more "show biz" extravanganza than law, and the question as to whether the killing followed seduction or rape had not really been decided when Joan Little was acquitted by the jury. The story of a trial whose tragic human circumstances were overwhelmed by the political and social moods and pressures of the 1970s. With Epilogue and Index. 298pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned edges, o/w Vg+ in sl. sunned vg+ pcdw.