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Name: Doing Justice
Rating: 4.7 (23 reviews)
Author: Preet Bharara

Preet Bharara

A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law

4.7 (23 ratings)

29 mins

Brief summary

Doing Justice by Preet Bharara is a riveting memoir that explores the complexities of the justice system. It offers valuable insights into the legal process and encourages readers to strive for fairness and integrity in their daily lives.

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Memoirs

Table of Contents

Doing Justice
Summary of 11 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 11

What’s in it for me? Learn about law and order from an esteemed New York prosecutor.

These days, there’s a lot of talk about what democracy means and what it means to live in a society that adheres to the rule of law instead of the rule of a dictator or an autocrat. Author Preet Bharara is in an ideal position to speak to these subjects, as he spent many years supervising the federal prosecutors of the Southern District of New York. During his career, he’s curbed corruption in some of the highest political offices in the US and held people in power accountable, while helping the powerless find justice.

Working with the huge population of New York City, he’s come across some amazing cases. Perhaps most intriguing, his work has shed light on some of the worst human impulses, as well as some of the greatest. Ultimately, he believes that good will prevail as long as we continue to fight for truth and justice.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why fingerprint evidence isn’t as infallible as you might think;
why a prosecutor might file charges before a case is completely ready; and
how a kidnapping case can challenge our notions of justice.

Good inquiry requires a committed investigator who withholds judgment and has a strong work ethic.

Finding the truth is rarely as simple as expressions like “connect the dots” or “follow the money” suggest. When it comes to criminal law, the pursuit of justice is about discovering the truth and holding someone accountable for a crime.

For a criminal case, this process starts with the inquiry phase. During this phase, an investigator must be committed to the truth. This may seem obvious, but a lazy investigator can set a low bar for satisfactory evidence, and jump at the first chance to close a case. However, even a committed investigator can fall short as a result of their biases or presumptions about guilt and innocence. The author learned this lesson decades ago.

In 1989, he received a call from Jessica, a friend who was shocked to learn that two people she knew, a married couple by the name of Jose and Kitty Menendez, had been brutally murdered in their living room. When the police eventually arrested Jose and Kitty’s children, Lyle and Erik, for the crime, Jessica couldn’t believe it. She wondered how the police could get things so wrong.

Despite Jessica’s firm belief that the sons couldn’t have murdered their parents, they had. In 1996, the brothers were finally convicted after confessing to the crime. This was the first time the author understood that one can never be completely sure of what someone else is capable of, and should always withhold one’s presumptions of guilt and innocence.

Another hallmark of a committed investigator is their work ethic. One of the most esteemed investigators in this regard is Kenny McCabe. Before he passed away in 2006, Kenny McCabe was a living legend for working on cases involving the five mafia families: Gambino, Bonnano, Genovese, Lucchese and Columbo. Yes, McCabe was a real-life “mob buster,” and he was famous for his meticulous and detailed work. Not only did he have files and photos on just about everyone, but he could also tell you how high or low a mobster’s ranking was just by observing their behavior.

McCabe never cut corners. He put in the work of collecting one piece of evidence at a time and building a case. In fact, he was so good at his job, that even the mobsters had respect for him. If they got busted by McCabe, they knew they’d been caught fair and square.

The 3/11 bombing in Madrid illustrates the importance of reappraisal.

Anyone can make a mistake – even experts are wrong sometimes. However, there are ways to reduce the chances of being led astray during the inquiry process.

Commitment to the truth requires an awareness of the human faults that can prevent you from seeing a situation clearly, including biases. This means you must be willing to reconsider the evidence, even if that means admitting to mistakes. This issue came up during the investigation of the March 11, 2004 bombing of four passenger trains in Madrid, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000 more.

Processes need to be routinely questioned, and humane questioning is key to gaining cooperative witnesses.

Asking the right questions can make all the difference in an investigation. This includes the basic ones, such as, “Why are we doing it this way?” If the answer is, “Because we’ve always done it this way,” it’s probably time to reconsider your procedures.

A similar question came up when the author was dealing with insider trading and fraud cases. This time, the question was, “Why aren’t we using wiretaps?” They’d been used for a long time in narcotics and organized crime investigation, but never for insider trading cases. However, these cases hinge on knowing precisely what and when one person communicated non-public information to another. A simple but important question thus transformed the way insider trading cases are investigated.

Accusations can change lives, so they should be made in the name of justice and not under pressure.

Criminal investigations have different outcomes, from exonerating a suspect to revealing that the transgression is minor. But if your evidence suggests that someone should be charged with a crime, the second phase of an investigation begins – accusation.

It’s good to ask if there is any other possible explanation or any shadow of a doubt in this accusation. This stage of further deliberation is essential, given the impact an accusation has on the lives of the accused. As the saying goes, you can’t unring a bell, and this is certainly true of charging someone with a crime. Therefore, a prosecutor must deliberate without any predetermined notion of an outcome. This isn’t always easy, especially if there’s pressure on a team to deliver and serve justice.

Prosecutors must balance evidence and public threat.

Aside from high-profile cases and the public clamoring for justice, prosecutors can also feel pressure when there’s a threat to public safety. The author faced this issue in the unusual and disturbing case of Gilberto Valle.

Valle was married to Kathleen Mangan, who contacted the police after she’d found disturbing content on her husband’s computer. She had been looking for evidence that he was cheating on her, but instead found his activity on a website called the Dark Fetish Network, where he discussed plots to kidnap, torture, kill and eat real women Valle knew, including Mangan herself!

Crime often goes unpunished in corrupt cultures, and prosecutors should be prepared for criticism from all sides.

Sometimes, justice is also about knowing when to walk away. One important aspect of the rule of law in the US is discretion – law enforcement’s ability to decide whether or not to enforce a law. If the government decided to prosecute every violation to its fullest extent, there wouldn’t be much room for considerations of truth and justice.

And yet, in some cases, the leadership in the US does just that. One example of this is punishing every trespassing immigrant at the Southern border to the full extent of the law. As a result of this policy, children have regularly been separated from their parents, sparking a lot of controversy.

Justice can be about giving someone their day in court.

After the inquiry and determining the accusation comes the next stage of the process – judgment. Now it’s time to prepare and present the case to the court. In this phase, it’s important to maintain your commitment to truth and justice, even if this doesn’t support your chances of a win.

In the case of SueAnn, justice meant giving a disenfranchised woman her day in court, regardless of what courtroom strategy may suggest. SueAnn was a little over 30 years old and living in the Bronx when she was robbed, knocked unconscious and likely sexually assaulted by masked attackers. Incidentally, SueAnn is also self-employed as a sex-worker, and the attackers made off with the $11,000 she had stashed in her apartment.

Some judges can tip the scales of justice, and a good trial lawyer prepares both sides of the case.

The last thing a prosecutor wants to encounter in court is a surprise. So, they always read up on the judge that’s been assigned the case. Like everyone else, judges have their own personalities, predilections and temperaments. Of course, judges are supposed to be completely impartial, but sometimes they put their thumb on the scales of justice, and it falls upon the lawyer to even those scales when necessary.

Consider Judge T.S. Ellis III, who presided over the 2018 federal criminal trial of Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager of Donald Trump, who was charged with 18 crimes ranging including embezzlement and fraud. Ellis was 78 years old at the time, and even the newspapers reported on how often he spoke up during the questioning, showing his lack of patience.

The issue of fair punishment is often unclear.

After a guilty verdict is delivered, it’s time for sentencing. In many cases, this is out of the prosecutor’s hands. They can recommend a certain punishment, but the decision ultimately falls to the judge.

The guidelines suggest punishment should be “sufficient but not greater than necessary.” However, many judges will tell you that deciding what is sufficient is perhaps the most difficult part of their job. In seeking justice, they have to consider what’s fair for the victim, as well as what’s fair for the defendant.

The issue of prison reform should be important to anyone who believes in justice.

Most prosecutors will likely confess that they’re not experts on the prison system, but this is nonetheless a critical part of the justice system. Any fair and just society should care about how prisoners are treated. A humane society needs to account for every human being within it.

There are considerable problems with the prison system in general. People are stripped of their liberties, given identification numbers and often treated like cattle, herded from one area to the next. When people have to suffer a dehumanizing environment like this, they frequently slip into cruel, inhumane behavior. The prison system also raises the question of whether the inmates or the guards are more affected by these inhumane conditions.

The law can only do so much; real change needs to come from the people.

In 2011, the New York Times ran an article about a string of hate crimes following the attacks of September 11, 2001. One of the tragic effects of the September 11 attacks was a surge in hate crimes against people from the Middle East in the US. Mark Anthony Stroman, a 31-year-old white supremacist living in Texas, felt it was his duty to kill some “ragheads,” as he put it.

On September 15, he shot and killed Waqar Hasan in the convenience store he ran. On October 4, he shot and killed Vasudev Patel, an immigrant from India, at a gas station. Stroman was convicted of murder and given the death penalty. However, one of Stroman’s victims didn’t die. Despite taking 38 shotgun pellets to his face, Rais Bhuiyan, an immigrant from Bangladesh, survived after emergency surgery.

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What is Doing Justice about?

Doing Justice (2019) is a window into the remarkable career of former federal attorney, Preet Bharara. It shares the wisdom that Bharara gained over the years, from tips that every trial lawyer should know to his thoughts on prison reform. Also included are thrilling stories of the formative criminal cases Bharara was involved in, and those that continue to linger in his mind.

Best quote from Doing Justice

Justice is never assured, but if each person in the process remembers to be vigilant, rigorous and open-minded to changing a view, justice is at least more likely.

—Preet Bharara

Who should read Doing Justice?

Lawyers and law students
Social justice advocates
Anyone interested in the American justice system

About the Author

Preet Bharara is the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (2009 - 2017). As the supervisor of over 200 Assistant US Attorneys, he oversaw cases ranging from cybercrime to gang violence. He’s been featured as among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” and included on Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment” list. He’s currently a faculty member at the NYU School of Law and can be heard on the popular podcast Stay Tuned with Preet.

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