The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America

A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite--and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.

"A searing, compassionate, and utterly necessary book that pulls back the curtain with the clarity of a lawyer and the heart of someone who's seen the criminal legal system's devastating consequences up close."--Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts--that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system's core?

In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what's really going on behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don't want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.

We'll learn what's working, too: how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood's murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won't change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.

Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.

Author: Emily Galvin Almanza
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Published: 02/17/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780593799116


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2026
Booklist 01/01/2026
Library Journal 11/01/2025 pg. 78

About the Author
Emily Galvin Almanza is the co-founder and executive director of Partners for Justice, a nonprofit creating a new collaborative model of public defense designed to empower defenders nationwide. Prior to founding PFJ, Emily fought for clients inside the L.A. County Public Defender's Office, the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office, and the Bronx Defenders, and with the Stanford Three Strikes Project. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, and Time, among other publications.