Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

$75 000

Slow Reading Club

Murder In Mississippi by John Safran

Paperback:  When filming his TV series Race Relations (2009), John Safran spent an uneasy couple of days with one of Mississippi's most notorious white supremacists.

A year later, he heard that the man had been murdered and what was more, the killer was black.

At first, the murder seemed a twist on the old Deep South race crimes.  But then more news rolled in.

Maybe it was a dispute over money, or most intriguingly, over sex.  Could the infamous racist actually have been secretly gay, with a thing for black men?

Did Safran have the last footage of him alive?  Could this be the story of a lifetime?

Seizing his Truman Capote moment, he jumped on a plane to cover the trial.

Over six months, Safran got deeper and deeper into the South, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder - white separatists, black campaigners, lawyers, investigators, neighbours, even the killer himself.

And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime, and the world, seemed.

Murder in Mississippi (2013) is a brilliantly innovative true-crime story.  It is about how Safran "met a white supremacist, befriended his black killer and wrote this book".

Taking us places only he can, Safran paints an engrossing, revealing portrait of a dead man, his murderer, the place they lived and the process of trying to find out the truth about anything.

About the author:  John Safran is an award-winning documentary-maker of provocative and hilarious takes on race, the media, religion and other issues.  John first hit TV screens in 1997 on Race Around The World.  Both John Safran's Music Jamboree and John Safran vs God won Australian Film Industry awards for Best Comedy Series and Most Original Concept.  Other shows include John Safran's Race Relations, which was nominated for two awards at the international Rose d'Or Festival.  John currently co-hosts Sunday Night Safran, a radio talk show on Triple J with cranky but beloved Catholic priest, Father Bob Maguire.

Conscience

Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story Of Justice In The Medgar Evers Case by Bobby DeLaughter

Paperback:  "If it was for the good of mankind, for the good of our state, and for what was right twenty-five years ago, if the courts allow it, and if I ever get enough evidence, a similar stand would still be right today.  Does that which is right and just wane with the passage of time?"

A single blast from a 1917 Enfield .30-06 rifle, fired shortly after midnight in the early-morning hours of 12 June 1963, from a thicket of sweet gum and honeysuckle in Jackson, Mississippi, had, and is still having, such an effect.

It ended the life of Medgar Evers, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in Mississippi, and it followed his white assassin, Byron De La Beckwith VI, who was tried unsuccessfully twice in 1964 by all-white juries for murdering the man he later described as "Mississippi's mightiest nigger."

A quarter century later, the ripples emanating from that shot tore through the heart and soul of a third person - an unsuspecting and rather unlikely one - a white prosecuting attorney who tried to free himself of the shackles of his past and assumed the challenge of rebuilding the case against Beckwith.

When the district attorney's office in Jackson, Mississippi, decided to reopen the case, the obstacles in its way were overwhelming: missing court records; transcripts that were more than thirty years old; original evidence that had been lost; new testimony that had to be taken regarding long-ago events; and the perception throughout the state that a reprosecution was a futile endeavor.  But step by painstaking step, DeLaughter and his team overcame the obstacles and built their case.

"But I felt that Mississippi and I were being put to the test.  We say that no man is above the law;  but what if he is seventy years old?  We claim that we value all human life;  but what if the life is that of a civil rights activist in 1963 Mississippi?  There is no statute limitations for murder;  but what if it's been a quarter century?  In pursuing justice and maintaining freedom, how much taxpayer money is too much?  Finally, if justice has never been finalized in such a despicable and immoral atrocity and pursuing it will open an old wound, is it not then a wound that needs to be reopened and cleansed, instead of continuing to fester over the years, spreading its poison to future generations?"

On 5 February 1994, thirty-one years later, he played an instrumental role in securing for the Evers family those long-elusive words, "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty, as charged."  For the Everses, those words brought some degree of closure.  For Mississippi, it was an exorcism of sorts.

With the world watching, the state cast out many demons of racism that had possessed it for so many years.  (from the Prologue)

Never Too Late (2001) is the true and complete story of one of the most important and unusual cases of criminal prosecution in American history.  "It tells a story that stays with you - a story about conscience.  Bobby DeLaughter and Myrlie Evers:  two who grew in conscience, courage, and trust."  As a book lives or dies on its inherent life-giving truth and passion, this story, I believe, will endure." (from the Author's Note and Introduction)

About the author:  Bobby DeLaughter was a judge in the Hinds CountyCourt, Jackson, Mississippi.  He graduated from Ole Miss Law School in 1977 and is a former assistant district attorney and a past president of the Mississippi Proseutor's Association.  He is a graduate of the FBI's National Law Institute and has served as lawyer-in-residence at the Pepperdine University Law School.

Over a career spanning three decades, Bobby was a criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and trial judge.  His career in law ended in 2009, with a federal conviction of obstruction of justice, for giving a false statement to FBI agents.  After serving his federal sentence, Bobby and Peggy, his wife of over twenty years, adopted New Orleans, Louisiana as their home.  They live in the famous (or infamous) French Quarter, the setting of Bobby’s new series of Bo Landry thrillers.

Echoes Of My Soul by Robert K Tanenbaum

Paperback:  "That's what I thought you'd say.  So go forth and do justice, Mel.  Do justice."

It was a muggy summer day on 28 August 1963 when Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert were murdered in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Months passed as their families grieved the unthinkable and a shaken city awaited answers.

Finally, Brooklyn police arrested George Whitmore, Jr, a nineteen-year-old with an IQ of less than 70.  But his incarceration would ultimately entail a host of shocking law enforcement missteps and cover-ups.

Whitmore had confessed.  Yet Mel Glass, a young Manhattan Assistant D.A. not even assigned to the Homicide Bureau, was troubled by the investigation.  With the blessing of legendary District Attorney Frank Hogan, Glass tirelessly immersed himself in the case.

So began an epic quest for justice, culminating in a courtroom showdown in which the Brooklyn arresting cops refused to admit their flagrant errors, providing a complete defense to a vicious predator.  The outcome would reach far beyond the individuals involved.

Including trial transcripts and never before published crime scene photos, here is a captivating depiction of one of the most intense manhunts of our time.  Echoes of My Soul (2013) is also a testament to the power of individuals like Glass and Hogan, without whom the real killer would never have been convicted and an unjustly accused man would have been jailed for life.  And we may never have gained the legal safeguards that protect us today.

In this first insider's account, New York Times bestselling author Robert K Tanenbaum delivers a page-turning real-life thriller about this historic case - that led the US Supreme Court to issue guidelines known as the Miranda rights in June 1966 - which forever reformed the American justice system.

About the author:  Robert K Tanenbaum is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five legal thrillers and has an accomplished legal career of his own.  Before his first book was published, Tanenbaum had already been the Bureau Chief of the Criminal Courts, had run the Homicide Bureau, and had been in charge of the training program for the legal staff for the New York County District Attorney’s Office.  He also served as Deputy Chief Counsel to the Congressional Committee investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  The blockbuster novel Corruption of Blood (1994), is a fictionalized account of his experience in Washington, D.C.In his professional career, Tanenbaum has never lost a felony case.

His courtroom experiences bring his books to life, especially in his bestselling series featuring prosecutor Roger “Butch” Karp and his wife, Marlene Ciampi.

Tanenbaum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and remained at Cal, where he earned his law degree from the prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law.  After graduating from Berkeley Law, Tanenbaum moved back to New York to work as an assistant district attorney under the legendary New York County DA Frank Hogan.

Tanenbaum returned to the West Coast and began to serve in public office.  He was elected to the Beverly Hills City Council in 1986 and twice served as the mayor of Beverly Hills.  It was during this time that Tanenbaum began his career as a novelist, drawing from the many fascinating stories of his time as a New York ADA.  His successful debut novel, No Lesser Plea (1987), introduces Butch Karp, an assistant district attorney who is battling for justice, and Marlene Ciampi, his associate and love interest.  Tanenbaum’s subsequent twenty-two novels portrayed Karp and his crime fighting family and eclectic colleagues facing off against drug lords, corrupt politicians, international assassins, the mafia, and hard-core violent felons.

He had published two nonfiction titles:  The Piano Teacher (1987), exploring his investigation and prosecution of a recidivist psychosexual killer, and Badge of the Assassin (1979), about his prosecution of cop killers, which was made into a movie starring James Woods as Tanenbaum.  His latest nonfiction book is Echoes of my Soul (2013) providing a first insider's account of the historic Wylie-Hoffert case, that led to the Miranda Rights, and of the courageous stand that forever reformed the American justice system.

Tanenbaum and his wife of forty-three years have three children. He currently resides in California where he has taught Advanced Criminal Procedure at the Boalt Hall School of Law and maintains a private law practice.

Murder

The Study Of Questions

A Real Book

Peter Pan

Listen

Change

Because Stories Are More Important Than Things