Criminal Testimonial Injustice

Through a detailed analysis that draws on work across philosophy, the law, and social psychology, Criminal Testimonial Injustice shows that, from the very beginning of the American criminal legal process in interrogation rooms to its final stages in front of parole boards, testimony is extracted from individuals through processes that are coercive, manipulative, or deceptive. This testimony is then unreasonably regarded as representing the testifiers' truest or most reliable selves.

With chapters ranging from false confessions and eyewitness misidentifications to recantations from victims of sexual violence and expressions of remorse from innocent defendants at sentencing hearings, it is argued that there is a distinctive epistemic wrong being perpetrated against suspects, defendants, witnesses, and victims. This wrong involves brute State power targeting the epistemic agency of its citizens, extracting false testimony that is often life-shattering, and rendering the victims in question complicit in their own undoing. It is concluded that it is only through understanding what it means to respect the epistemic agency of each participant in the criminal legal system that we can truly grasp what justice demands and, in so doing, to reimagine what is possible.


Author: Jennifer Lackey
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 07/01/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780192864109

About the Author

Jennifer Lackey, Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law (courtesy), Northwestern University; Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg.

Jennifer Lackey is the Founding Director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program. Lackey is the winner of the Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution, and she has received grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.