2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Gold
Medal Winner
American Bookfest 15th Annual Best Book Awards,
Finalist
Foreword INDIES 21st Annual Book of the Year Awards, Finalist
Reader Views 2019 Reviewers’ Choice Literary Awards, Finalist
Anyone
who has ever seen an episode of Law and Order, or almost any
crime drama on American television, can probably recite a suspect's
“Miranda rights” by heart. You know - the right to remain silent,
the right to an attorney, etc. But what most people don’t
know is that these rights had their roots in the compelling case of
a young Chinese man accused of murdering three of his countrymen in
Washington, DC in 1919.
The nation's capital had never seen anything quite like it: three
foreign diplomats with no known enemies assassinated in the city's tony Kalorama neighborhood, and no obvious motive or leads. The
Washington police were baffled. But once they zeroed in
on a suspect, they held him incommunicado without formal arrest for
more than a week until they had browbeaten him into a confession.
Part
murder mystery, part courtroom drama and part landmark legal case,
the
book is the true, but forgotten story of a young man’s abuse by
the police and his arduous, seven-year journey through the legal
system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis and even J. Edgar Hoover. It
culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice
Louis Brandeis that set the stage for Miranda v.
Arizona many years later.
Today, when the treatment of suspects between arrest and trial
remains controversial, when bias against immigrants and minorities
in law enforcement continues to deny them their rights and when
protecting individuals against compulsory self-incrimination is
still an uphill battle, this century-old legal spellbinder contains
important lessons for our time.
BookLaunch
Video
Watch the video of the
launch of The Third Degree at Manhattan's Museum
of Chinese in America, sponsored jointly with the National Committee
on U.S.-China Relations on May 17, 2018.