The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O.J. Simpson

Kadri's history of the criminal trial in the Western legal tradition presents representative cases, many famous, some little known, to illustrate the approaches, both rational and not, that organized societies have used to deal with law-breaking. One theme is the role of evidence in criminal prosecutions. Medieval trial by ordeal, for example, relied on the direct intervention of God to reveal guilt or innocence. In later epochs, confessions were accorded decisive weight, even if they were extracted by torture, as in the Inquisition and Stalin's show trials. Today, of course, we apply an intricate code of evidence, but, the author says, we still have verdicts based on ignorance and hysteria, and we have celebrity trials where evidence is subordinated to publicity. Much more serious is Kadri's summary of war crimes prosecutions stemming from atrocities in WWII and in Vietnam. Not many of the trials discussed reached objectively just conclusions, but these judicial failures tend to illuminate the dynamics (secrecy vs. transparency, hatred of crime vs. fear of mistaken verdicts) underlying criminal prosecutions. This thoughtful survey by Kadri, a prize-winning travel writer and criminal lawyer in England, helps us understand how far our system has advanced and how far we still have to go. B&w illus. Agent, Derek Johns, A.P. Watt (U.K.) . (Aug. 30)