Prosecution Never Rests : Strange but True Stories of Courtroom Drama

Drawing on a career spanning four decades, retired prosecutor Albert Charles Bender gives a rare glimpse into the mysterious and often unknown world of the District Attorney's office. Each chapter is very readable and recounts a distinct episode from that career, an episode in which the author was an actual participant or an observer. Early chapters entertain with true stories which reveal much about how the criminal justice system was conducted beginning way back when Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States and young men were being drafted to fight a war in a distant country that most people had never heard of. A traffic offender is admonished that he should just "pick a number" and that would be his fine. A judge suggests that a criminal defendant, who plead not guilty and wants a jury trial, should tell his story now to his "peers" (his fellow inmates waiting to be arraigned). Later chapters shed valuable insight into controversies such as "the twinkie defense" used by Dan White, who murdered Mayor Mosconi and Harvey Milk; the fiasco which resulted when Rose Bird became Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court; and awkward situations facing the prosecuting attorney when a witness becomes confused while testifying. The final chapters provide insight into serious felony cases, such as rapes, domestic violence, and homicides, in which the author was the trial attorney for the prosecution. And, scattered throughout the book are many fascinating and even bizarre episodes that would be unbelievable but for the fact that the author claims to have observed it all from his front row seat in the criminal justice arena.