Book Report on Roy Black Black's Law (NewY ork Touchtone, 1999) - Essay Example

In the book we read about Miami police officer Luis Alvarez, who lethally shot a twenty year old black man inside a video arcade, instigating three days of rioting that left two people dead. Roy Black got him off. Then there is Fred De La Mata & Steve Hicks. Hicks shot his girlfriend to death, leaving her body in a car in a bank parking lot and then he lied to police four times before claiming it was an accident. Even after all that Roy Black got him off. There is also the case of Thomas Knight, who can aptly be described as our worst nightmare come together.

Roy Black got his death sentence vacated. The Alvarez case is the best one in Black's Law, not every story turns out to be a cliff-hanger, but for the most part the book proves a compelling read and probably just as compelling as he is in the courtroom. Black's definitely a better lawyer than an author, but he's truly not a novice in the literary world, either. Black begins the Alvarez story with a touch of a thriller, as he was driving along Interstate 95 on the night of the shooting, when he zoomed past the area where people were rioting.

"Too close for comfort," he writes. Roy's job as a defense lawyer can most simply put entail offering a plausible scenario, and he does it brilliantly. He manages to get the jury he wants for the Alvarez trial by asking potential jurors if they had ever faced death.Another interesting aspect is Roy's intense grilling of the detective who took Alvarez's statement after the shooting which turns out to be a turning point in the case. Nevertheless the most dramatic moment is when Alvarez himself takes the stand.

The cases of Fred De La Mata and Steve Hicks are less earth-shattering but have their own entertainment value. Black defended De La Mata, a banker accused of money laundering by individually grilling all witnesses against him who as it turns out had ample reason to lie. Hicks on the other hand was a bartender accused of murdering his girlfriend, Betsy Turner. The state thought they had a strong case because after the shooting, Hicks drove the dying Turner to a bank and left her there, then called the police to report her missing.

Black argued that the shooting itself was an accident and that Hicks hade panicked. It is in the case that we realize that one of Roy's many gifts is his ability to explain the unexplainable, to make jurors believe anything.Then finally there is the story of Thomas Knight, who kidnapped his boss and his wife after which he forced them to withdraw $50,000 in cash from their bank, after which he drove them to a field and shot them both in the back of the neck. Knight was on death row a few days from execution when Black took over his case.

Still, the story is worthless not purely because Knight is an unsympathetic character but because the appeals court vacated the death sentence for reasons that had little to do with Black's argument. Black should have found a more interesting story to wrap up his book.The book paints a realistic picture of the life of a criminal defense attorney. Each case starts off with basic info on the client and ends with a review of the defendant's present position. The book is well written but more then once Black portrays his