We are all more than the worst thing we've ever done
An exploration of the histories of those who commit violent crimes, including how they may have evolved in prison, that asks us to consider a more humane and just approach
In Cast Out, civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies challenges the belief that those who commit even heinous crimes are not worthy of forgiveness. He explains that American society is often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable and fixating on the question "What did they do?"
Viewing those incarcerated through the lens of the forgiving society, Margulies asks, "What happened?" and what brought a human being to this place. Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life the seven incarcerated men and women he profiles, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim paths that led them there, their subsequent trials and punishments, and their evolution and insights.
Those he interviewed include Eric Matthews, who murdered his fiancé's three-year-old daughter; Lucas Whaley, who tortured a man to death when he was 17, and Lisa Matthews who murdered a pregnant woman and cut her child out of her body.
He asks the reader to imagine, in the words of one of his interviewees, that "there are no sinners or saints, just human beings doing what they need to do to survive" and encourages an attitude of understanding and empathy.
Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away-the so-called "worst of the worst"-and reveals the humanity they still share with all of us. Joseph Margulies is a writer and litigator, and Professor of the Practice of Government at Cornell University. As a civil rights lawyer, he was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush in 2004, which gave Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in federal court, and in Munaf v. Geren in 2008, which gave American citizens the right to challenge their detention by the U.S. government.
