Examples abound of successful literary works using courtroom drama as their organizing framework, both in fiction (The Crucible, Twelve Angry Men, The Verdict) and nonfiction (In Cold Blood, Fatal Vision, The Trial of Jack Ruby). Author and lawyer Samuel Damren brings an auspicious entry into the latter category with his recent book, What Justice Looks Like. The success of Damren’s tight volume owes not only to the gripping facts he draws from the litigation record, but also to the story-telling advantage of his having been at the very center of the two celebrated legal battles his book describes. The first was a 1977 murder trial of a remorseless killer named Arthur Burgess. A vicious hit man whose cold-bloodedness had terrorized Detroit, Burgess had earned a reputation in law enforcement circles as “the worst of the worst.” As a recently minted assistant in the local prosecutor’s office, then 26-year old Damren tried the case against Burgess. Damren’s account of that experience gives the reader a rare insider’s view of a high- stakes, high-profile trial. Burgess’s earlier history of slipping the law’s reach by offing some witnesses and intimidating others raised plausible fears on Damren’s prosecution team that he would do so again. Damren takes the reader on a harrowing ride through the tortuous twists and turns of the trial. In the end, Damren chalked up a big win. Justice worked, but it was a near thing. For the second case in his narrative, Damren fast-forwards almost four decades to a challenge that called for legal skills much different from those he deployed as a much younger trial lawyer in the Burgess case. This time he was on the defense side, having accepted a pro bono assignment in 2016 for a wrongfully convicted prisoner named Davontae Sanford. As a confused and guileless 14-year old, Sanford had confessed eight years earlier to a crime he hadn’t committed. Evidence had surfaced while Sanford was in prison that overzealous and manipulative police officers had extracted a false confession from the bewildered boy after a particularly grueling interrogation. To achieve justice this time required prodding the legal system to overcome powerful institutional inclinations against reversing the result of a fully adjudicated criminal case. Stakeholders throughout the system – police, prosecutors, and judges – looked askance at efforts to upend earlier outcomes, even in the face of new evidence. Overcoming that resistance required not trial court wizardry of the sort young Damren deployed against Burgess, but skills of diplomacy and negotiation, which the seasoned Damren offered in abundance. By now in the twilight of a successful litigation career, not just as a prosecutor but also in high-end private practice for corporate clients, Damren by 2016 was a widely respected statesman in the profession. Leveraging the trust he enjoyed among judges and prosecutors at every choke point in the system, Damren served as “the closer” in the difficult negotiations that led to Sanford’s exoneration. This book is not a memoir, though the reader will wish Damren gets around to producing one eventually. Instead, it is an insider’s examination of two front-page cases that improbably bookend the author’s legal career and illustrate starkly contrasting pathways to justice in the criminal justice system. It’s a very good read.

Samuel Damren, recognized as a “lawyer’s lawyer,” began his storied career as an Assistant Wayne County, Michigan Prosecutor, then focused on commercial litigation representing prominent entrepreneurs and companies, never forgetting the lessons he learned early on while prosecuting a vicious hit man, Art Burgess, and bringing him to justice. Forty years later, when asked to represent Davontae Sanford, who was seeking exoneration from a quadruple homicide that he pled guilty to in 2008, he accepted the pro bono case after being convinced that he was “the only one that everyone – the prosecutor’s office, the judge and the defense team – could trust.” In successfully negotiating the release of Davontae Sanford, Damren put to use maxims he learned over three decades of commercial litigation. Among them, "For a deal to work, there has to be something in it for everyone...Deals don't have to button down every point all at once; they can be accomplished in stages … Negotiators - just like litigators - must understand the strength of their position and never stand anywhere other than on that firm foundation. If you don't, the strong headwinds of a negotiation or trial can push you off balance." Damren originally conceived What Justice Looks Like for a narrow audience of lawyers, jurists and those with an interest in exoneration cases and the prosecution of violent offenders, but the resulting book, telling the true stories of these two high stakes cases at opposite ends of the spectrum, is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand lawyering and how the criminal justice system can and does serve both ends – prosecuting the guilty and protecting the innocent. Damren tells the stories of the two cases based on his speculations about how the crimes occurred, vividly setting the scenes and giving voice to the characters. Then he weaves his insights and practical how-to’s throughout the book – lessons that help us be better lawyers, jurists, and potential jurors, and build our trust in the criminal justice system that it will bring “the worst of the worst” to justice while protecting the innocent when the system’s safeguards fail.

This is part true crime, part reflections on a life in the law by a prominent Detroit lawyer who has handled high profile cases. Well written and thoughtful.