The Guardians: The True Story of The Saints of Dannemora
by Joseph M. Sauter, Sheldon Abend and Isidore Zimmerman is a true story story about jailhouse lawyers, wrongful conviction and the effects of a life sentence on a human being. I read this a long time ago so I don't remember a lot of the details, and my copy is back home in Canada. This book is also extremely rare and there are no reviews or synopses anywhere on the web (well, after about 30 minutes I stopped trying, I *do* have a dayjob), so if I get a few things wrong, deal with it.
Izzy Zimmerman was convicted in the 1930s of having supplied weapons to a gang of men who later used them to kill a police officer. The single man who accused Zimmerman of this, did so as a way to hide his own involvement. He was sentenced to die by electrocution. A lot of people believe Izzy was innocent and as such, two hours before he was set to be executed, the call came in that his sentence had been commuted to life in prison.
24 years later, the appeals court overturned his conviction after finding that one of the prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence. 21 years after that, Izzy was given a million dollars as compensation and he died 4 months later. His wife died soon after him and with no next of kin, the money went back to the State of New York.
In this book, Izzy spoke about how much he would have rather been executed than spend life in prison. It is an excellent argument against people who claim that the death penalty is the worst possible punishment. Here is an excerpt:
Eventually Izzy found peace in acting as one of the best jailhouse lawyers in history, helping many people with their cases.
To suggest a book to be featured on Genpop, please email me: vlu777@gmail.com
Click here for the archive of all prison books.
Technorati Tags: izzy zimmerman, prison book, books, prison, crime, law, wrongful conviction, wrongfully convicted, innocent, death penalty, execution, capital punishment
by Joseph M. Sauter, Sheldon Abend and Isidore Zimmerman is a true story story about jailhouse lawyers, wrongful conviction and the effects of a life sentence on a human being. I read this a long time ago so I don't remember a lot of the details, and my copy is back home in Canada. This book is also extremely rare and there are no reviews or synopses anywhere on the web (well, after about 30 minutes I stopped trying, I *do* have a dayjob), so if I get a few things wrong, deal with it.Izzy Zimmerman was convicted in the 1930s of having supplied weapons to a gang of men who later used them to kill a police officer. The single man who accused Zimmerman of this, did so as a way to hide his own involvement. He was sentenced to die by electrocution. A lot of people believe Izzy was innocent and as such, two hours before he was set to be executed, the call came in that his sentence had been commuted to life in prison.
24 years later, the appeals court overturned his conviction after finding that one of the prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence. 21 years after that, Izzy was given a million dollars as compensation and he died 4 months later. His wife died soon after him and with no next of kin, the money went back to the State of New York.
In this book, Izzy spoke about how much he would have rather been executed than spend life in prison. It is an excellent argument against people who claim that the death penalty is the worst possible punishment. Here is an excerpt:
"They couldn't understand. To them, death was the most horrible thing that could happen to a person. "But," Peewee muttered to himself, "Everybody is going to die. Nobody beats death. These 'Guardians' don't really know what it is to do twenty-five or thirty years, forty-five or fifty years in the can until you die."Once Izzy received his commuted sentence of life in prison, he lost the will to live altogether. He didn't care what he did, or what the outcomes were. He made life a living hell for Corrections Officers and inmates feared him because he did not care about anything. He figured he was going to rot away in his cell until he died.
Eventually Izzy found peace in acting as one of the best jailhouse lawyers in history, helping many people with their cases.
To suggest a book to be featured on Genpop, please email me: vlu777@gmail.com
Click here for the archive of all prison books.
Technorati Tags: izzy zimmerman, prison book, books, prison, crime, law, wrongful conviction, wrongfully convicted, innocent, death penalty, execution, capital punishment
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