Promotional Information

Akashic Books

About the Author

M. CHRIS FABRICANT is the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation and one of the nation's leading experts on forensic sciences and the criminal justice system. Fabricant is featured in the Netflix documentary The Innocence Files and his public commentary has been published in virtually every major media outlet. A former public defender and clinical law professor, Fabricant brings to his writing over two decades of experience ranging from litigating death penalty cases in the Deep South to misdemeanors in the South Bronx. Born in New York City and raised in Sedona, Arizona, Fabricant has lived in Brooklyn since graduating from George Washington University Law School in 1997.

Reviews

Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System is a captivating, evocative, and disheartening narrative assessment of forensic science in the American judicial system. It is an entertaining, intriguing, and insightful mainstream audience read--not a cathartic exercise . . .-- "Champion Magazine"

Junk Science is a powerful exposé of a broken criminal legal system, deeply researched and moving. A must-read for anyone interested in the role unreliable evidence plays in maintaining the status quo.--Christina Swarns, executive director of the Innocence Project

Fabricant's groundbreaking work for the Innocence Project has exposed the corrosive effect that junk 'science' has in our criminal justice system. He's a brilliant writer and legal mind. A must-read.--Pamela Colloff

Fact by fact, case by case, scandal by scandal, M. Chris Fabricant expertly dissects some of the grossest failures of challenged forensic science techniques, providing a hard-nosed insider's tour of a fifty-year legal war to improve the US criminal justice system. Junk Science is for anyone wanting to go behind the headlines of wrongful convictions, who hungers to probe their root causes, and who is fighting to win criminal justice reform, inside and out of the system. Fabricant writes here like a combatant with a duty to bear witness, burning to teach an adversarial system how to come to terms with scientific truth and to show the monstrous toll of its failures.--Spencer S. Hsu, investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist

Through his book, Junk Scienceand the American Criminal Justice System, Fabricant said he is trying to create a new genre--not true crime, but 'untrue crime'--showcasing misused forensic science and its impact on innocent people.-- "Sun-Sentinel"

We think that science in the courtroom always serves justice--well, think again! This fascinating book by Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant shows how junk science in our criminal justice system is used to convict the innocent. Forget CSI and what you think of science in the courtroom, this eye-opening book from the front line of the battle for true justice could not be more urgent.--Itiel Dror, Senior Cognitive Neuroscience Researcher, University College London

Junk Science is a book that should be on every true-crime reader's shelves. It is an eye-opening and infuriating tour through the failed idealism of forensic science as a discipline, how certain techniques like analyzing fibers and bite marks wilt under scrutiny, and how the criteria for 'experts' in a courtroom can be laughable at best and dangerous at worst, causing scores of innocent people to lose decades behind bars (or, in some heartbreaking instances, their lives.).-- "Slate"

Junk Science is beautifully written, a compilation of stories of trials, appeals, the vagaries of purported science in the courtroom, and the author's personal journey across two landscapes--the many states where he went to challenge bitemark or similar evidence and his own journey of growth as a lawyer and friend to those jailed based on what is at times head-shakingly bad proof . . . Put simply, Junk Science is essential reading . . .-- "ABA Criminal Justice Section Magazine"

I believed in the polygraph test, in an unthinking way, right up until last week when I read a new book by M. Chris Fabricant, Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, which carefully and unarguably explains that almost every forensic science is unreliable, and most are entirely bogus.-- "Spectator (UK)"

Spellbinding . . . Junk Science is a sobering testament to the need for humility--for admitting that our knowledge is limited and fallible--both in science and in the law. Questions of justice are too important to be left to hocus-pocus.-- "Washington Examiner"

This j'accuse provides a broader look at a deeply disturbing aspect of a criminal justice system already considered racist and biased by many . . . The endemic injustices Fabricant lays bare will likely shake even advocates of robust law and order approaches.-- "Publishers Weekly"