May God Have Mercy : A True Story of Crime and Punishment

Rating:
Summary: Compassionate & Haunting True Crime
Review: I have been a supporter of the death penalty for many years especially where the victims are innocent children but this book clearly demonstrates the need for a review of a system that allows a person such as Roger Coleman to slip through the cracks.

To preclude a person access to natural justice and the due process of law because a brief is filed a day late is bureaucracy at its worst.The allocation of defence councel with no real experience in capital murder, the apparent "botched" investigation, the zealous pursuit to execute Roger Coleman at all cost is a sad indictment of the American Judicial System.

The book did not change my views on the death penalty. I believe that unprovoked murder is a capital crime and the appropriate penalty is death. However I kept hoping as I turned the pages that a miracle was going to occur, sadly it was not to be and it would appear an innocent man was executed.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for death penalty proponents!
Review: This book might well change even the hardest of hearts. If there is ever a reason to abolish the death penalty, the case of Roger Keith Coleman is it! His lawyers missed a filing deadline by one day -- and since that time his claims of poor assistance of counsel and factual innocence were never heard in a court of law. Instead, he was executed over a technicality for a crime he most probably didn't commit. A must read for anyone interested in the state of our criminal justice system.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting account of the Roger Coleman murder case
Review: Unlike the "reader from the land of sky blue waters", I found this book to be an emotionally and intellectually gripping page-turner from start to finish. John C. Tucker has succeeded brilliantly on many levels; his book is all of these: a beautifully written story, superbly clear and well-organized, which vividly brings to life its Appalachian setting and diverse cast of characters; a fascinating real-life whodunit; a first-rate documentary narrative of a heart-pounding search for truth and justice and the apparent failure of our legal system, despite its avowed ideals, to further them in this case; a first-rate journalistic account of a case equally as scandalous as the Simpson trial, but its exact inverse: i.e. poor man, almost certainly innocent, yet wrongly condemned. Though favoring in principle capital punishment for murder, I hope I will never again think or speak lightly of this seemingly necessary evil, having now entered into the heart-breaking story of Roger and his friends. Tucker has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams as a lawyer and writer in making the reader CARE deeply about these people and this still unresolved case. I have been to the Grundy area (my children attended a Christian camp in nearby Pounding Mill VA) and have since been haunted by the stark beauty of that land --- a memory which made the tragedy and "human depravity" which abound in this story resonate all the more poignantly. I thought of a Hardy novel as I read of Roger's doomed life; like a Hardy character, he seemed a "plaything of the Gods", the victim of an impersonal fate mirrored in the austere landscape. I couldn't help but think also of many sad, but achingly beautiful, southern Appalachian traditional ballads. Roger's and Wanda's stories would furnish perfect material for such. I only wish Tucker had thrown more light on Roger's relationship with the sovereign God who in reality supercedes apparent fate; His providential grace was so evident throughout Roger's long struggle for vindication --- specifically, in the wonderful friends and advocates He provided, including Tucker himself. Truly, His grace, though largely unmentioned in this book, was amazing in Roger's life, as celebrated by the bagpipe music played at his memorial service...I hope that in this, as in the Simpson case, the truth will someday be irrefutably established before all the world...I also hope Tucker will soon publish another book of this caliber --- though that may be unrealistic: his material and his accomplishment here seems like the sort that only happen once in a lifetime --- like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.