Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Convicting the Innocent
WORK NOTES: also author of Man in the Crowd
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1934
WEBSITE:
CITY: Tomkins Cove
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
Wife’s name Betty; two children * http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/cohen-stanley/78949/ * http://skyhorsepublishing.com/titles/96-9781632206466-convicting-the-innocent * http://thoughtgallery.org/events/stanley-cohen-author-convicting-innocent/#.WCzC3eYrJPY * http://quanki.com/person.php?person=06VPB8SM9X9
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1934. Married; wife’s name: Betty; children: two.
EDUCATION:Hunter College, B.A.; New York University, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and educator. Hunter College, New York, NY, instructor.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Stanley Cohen is a journalist and educator. He was born in 1934 in New York City and attended Hunter College, where he earned a B.A. in journalism. He went on to obtain an M.A. in philosophy from New York University. He has written and edited for magazines and newspapers, as well as an international news service. Cohen has also worked at Hunter College as an instructor of courses in philosophy, journalism, and writing. He has written books on sports and wrongful convictions and has served as a co-author on autobiographies of sports figures, including Brandon Lang and Willie Mosconi.
The Wrong Men
In his 2003 volume, The Wrong Men: America’s Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, Cohen argues that the justice system in the United States is producing too high a number of wrongful convictions, especially in cases in which the accused are sent to death row. He comments on the history of wrongful convictions, highlighting the first time that DNA evidence was used to exonerate a prisoner. That prisoner was Gary Dotson, who had been convicted for raping a woman. Cohen discusses the many factors that could lead to a wrongful conviction, including problems with scientific evidence, corruption, eyewitness errors, connections to current prisoners, and false confessions.
A critic in Publishers Weekly remarked: “This volume is a convincing argument for the unreliability of capital convictions.” “This book is a must-read for those concerned with the inequities of our criminal justice system,” asserted Vernon Ford in Booklist.
The Execution of Officer Becker and Beating the Odds
Cohen discusses a scandalous 1912 case in The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime. Becker was tried and convicted of murdering Beansie Rosenthal, a gambler and brother operator. Becker regularly requested that Rosenthal pay him off or face a police investigation of his activities. Becker would give a cut of the money he received from Rosenthal and others like him to Tim Sullivan, a state senator based out of the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall. Sullivan was Becker’s real boss. He did not take final orders from his superiors in the New York Police Department. Rosenthal became so frustrated with Becker’s behavior toward him that he approached Charles S. Whitman, a district attorney, for help. Becker revealed evidence of police corruption to Whitman, who passed that information along to a newspaper reporter right away. The reporter ran an article about the corruption, and the police were able to determine that Rosenthal was the informant. Within days, Rosenthal was killed. Fellow police officers and others implicated Becker in the murder. Becker was ultimately executed by electrocution at the Sing Sing prison in upstate New York. David Pitt, reviewer in Booklist, suggested: “The book reads like a novel, with rough-and-tumble dialogue and sharply drawn characters.” A Kirkus Reviews critic described it as a “meticulous, squalidly atmospheric reconstruction of a landmark case.”
Cohen collaborated with Brandon Lang to write Lang’s autobiography, Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper. A movie called Two for the Money was written about Lang, and the stars were Matthew McConaughey and Al Pacino. In the book, Lang discusses his troubled childhood. His father was abusive toward his mother and was eventually jailed for her attempted murder. Lang overcame the pain of his younger years by finding religion and by joining the U.S. navy. Later, he discovered that he was a talented sports bettor. Lang went on to become a sports handicapper. He fell from grace but eventually became successful again. Pitt, the same contributor to Booklist, called Beating the Odds “a very good autobiography.”
Convicting the Innocent
Cohen returns to the subject of wrongful conviction in his 2016 book, Convicting the Innocent: Death Row and America’s Broken System of Justice. In this volume, he suggests that the U.S. justice system is responsible for the deaths of numerous innocent people. Cohen traces the history of wrongful convictions back to the early 1800s. He notes that wrongful convictions were at an all-time high during the 1970s and 1980s, when crime in the nation was high in general. The first cases of wrongful conviction highlighted in the book are those of Dennis Stockton and Cameron Todd Willingham. Stockton was tried in North Carolina, while Willingham was tried in Texas. Cohen goes on to discuss other cases of wrongful conviction throughout the history of the United States, including the multiple false confessions that were elicited by a ring of Chicago police officers who tortured suspects. The cases Cohen examines reveal that those most likely to become wrongfully convicted are black males who are poor and/or mentally disabled.
Frances Sandiford, contributor to Library Journal, described Convicting the Innocent as “a must for students and workers in … criminal justice, and a solid read for anyone interested in true crime literature.” A Kirkus Reviews writer called it “a valuable accounting of a hidden societal plague, likelier to appeal to attorneys, students, and activists than to the police officers, prosecutors, and ‘tough on crime’ types who should read it.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 15, 2003, Vernon Ford, review of The Wrong Men: America’s Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, p. 362; October 1, 2006, David Pitt, review of The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime, p. 9; November 15, 2009, David Pitt, review of Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper, p. 7.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2006, review of The Execution of Officer Becker, p. 936; March 1, 2016, review of Convicting the Innocent: Death Row and America’s Broken System of Justice.
Library Journal, February 1, 2004, Frances Sandiford, review of The Wrong Men, p. 107; April 1, 2016, Frances Sandiford, review of Convicting the Innocent, p. 106.
Publishers Weekly, August 18, 2003, review of The Wrong Men, p. 70.
ONLINE
Coast to Coast, http://www.coasttocoastam.com/ (March 14, 2017), author profile.
LC control no.: n 81035458
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Cohen, Stanley, 1934-
Birth date: 1934
Found in: His More than a game, 1977.
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
Stanley Cohen is a veteran award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist. For more than fifty years, he has worked as an editor, writer, and reporter for newspapers, magazines, and an international news service. He also has taught writing, journalism, and philosophy at Hunter College. He lives in Tomkins Cove, New York.
Stanley Cohen is a veteran award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist. For more than fifty years, he has worked as an editor, writer, and reporter for newspapers, magazines, and an international news service. He also has taught writing, journalism, and philosophy at Hunter College.
QUOTED: "The book reads like a novel, with rough-and-tumble dialogue and sharply drawn characters."
Cohen, Stanley. The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime
David Pitt
103.3 (Oct. 1, 2006): p9.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Cohen, Stanley. The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime. Nov. 2006. 336p. Carroll & Graf, $27.95 (0-78671-757-2). 364.106.
In the summer of 1912, Beansie Rosenthal, a small-time hood, was murdered in New York's Times Square. Three years and two trials later, Charles Becker, an NYPD cop, was executed for arranging the assassination. Along the way Becker was exposed as the mastermind of a corruption ring so intricate and so well organized that it even had a name: the System. And when the System was brought down, professional criminals stepped in, and organized crime was born. The author relates this little-known but historically important story with gusto. Although it's nonfiction (complete with extensive bibliography and detailed source notes), the book reads like a novel, with rough-and-tumble dialogue and sharply drawn characters who feel as if they walked out of a Howard Hawks gangster flick. There are also tantalizing clues that Becker may not have been involved in Beansie's murder, leaving us to wonder what the criminal landscape of North America might look like today if Becker's System had not been dismantled.--David Pitt
Pitt, David
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Cohen, Stanley. The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2006, p. 9. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA152935483&it=r&asid=e7bf7e6a9e9e57f0b5f58e0e401c6ff7. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "meticulous, squalidly atmospheric reconstruction of a landmark case."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A152935483
The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime
74.18 (Sept. 15, 2006): p936.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Cohen, Stanley THE EXECUTION OF OFFICER BECKER: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime Carroll & Graf/Avalon (336 pp.) $27.95 Nov. 7, 2006 ISBN: 0-7867-1757-2
A sensational 1912 murder dissected as a watershed event in the history of organized crime in New York City.
Seasoned magazine and newspaper journalist Cohen joins a number of writers who have taken on the intrigue and lingering doubts surrounding the trial of the only New York police officer ever executed for murder. Becker's actual guilt or innocence in ordaining a hit on smalltime gambler Beansie Rosenthal may remain forever moot, the author allows. In the steamy summer of 1912, Rosenthal, one of countless numbers of brothel and "casino" operators--all strictly illegal--in New York's Tenderloin District (now the Times Square area) got fed up with Lieutenant Becket's constantly shaking him down. The process was, Cohen avers, so regular and perfunctory it was known simply as The System. Becker, one of the dirtiest cops on a dirty force, answered only to state senator Tim Sullivan in Tammany Hall; "between them," Cohen states, "they had begun to give shape to ... the incipient structure of organized crime." But Rosenthal found an eager young District Attorney, Charles S. Whitman, ready to listen to revelations on police corruption, and then to massively leak them to a friendly newspaper reporter. Result: Two days after talking to the DA, Rosenthal was called out of a late-night cafe in midtown and gunned down by four men. Three years later, implicated by "friends" on the force as well as his criminal enemies, Becker was electrocuted at Sing Sing after two trials that blew NYPD corruption into a public frenzy. Later, when the advent of Prohibition vastly fattened the pot, payoffs went directly to the crime bosses and crooked politicians. "[Cops] would get their cut," writes Cohen, "but they were now on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder."
Meticulous, squalidly atmospheric reconstruction of a landmark case. (Agent. Peter Sawyer/Fifi Oscard Agency)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2006, p. 936. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA152575264&it=r&asid=60391e96dce9e23fc0abc729f284c45d. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A152575264
Cohen, Stanley. The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions
Frances Sandiford
129.2 (Feb. 1, 2004): p107.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Carrol & Graf. 2003. c.320p. ISBN 0-7867-1258-9. pap. $14. CRIME
In this expose, Cohen (The Man in the Crowd) presents over 100 accounts about men and women wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, including the stories featured in the stage play "The Exonerated" and the case of the Central Park jogger. Throughout, the stories not only reveal an inefficient and uncaring justice system that convicts on eyewitness errors, jailhouse snitches, racism, and incompetent counsel but also show that the justice system "allows for exoneration. The problem is that the initiative must come from the outside. The men and women Cohen writes about were cleared of their charges by the efforts of journalism students, grassroots organizations, the families, and pro bono lawyers. In the end, the message is both dismal and upbeat: wrongful convictions happen startlingly often, but they can by overturned by the efforts of a concerned populace. This book is similar in scope to Taryn Simon's The Innocents but offers a more extensive text. On the other hand, Cohen's features some striking photography. Both titles are highly recommended, but either one is enough for a general collection.--Frances Sandiford, formerly with Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Sandiford, Frances
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sandiford, Frances. "Cohen, Stanley. The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions." Library Journal, 1 Feb. 2004, p. 107+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA112986144&it=r&asid=e10dc32e41fc194595ac13c116ce0374. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "This volume is a convincing argument for the unreliability of capital convictions."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A112986144
The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death-Row Convictions
250.33 (Aug. 18, 2003): p70.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
STANLEY COHEN. Carroll & Graf, $14 paper (320p) ISBN 0-7867-1258-9
As the title suggests, Cohen (The Man in the Crowd) examines some 100 instances where people sentenced to death were later exonerated, most of them ultimately proven innocent of the crimes for which they were condemned. The capsule profiles of the exonerated are often too sketchy to be fully satisfactory. Still, Cohen makes his case that innocent people regularly receive death sentences merely through the cumulative effect of the stories. Cohen also analyzes the chief reasons why wrongful convictions occur so frequently. Eyewitness error is a prime factor, whether because of simple mistake or pressure from law enforcement officials. Again, prosecutors avid for convictions distort trials by inducing or winking at perjury or by suppressing evidence favorable to the accused. Other wrongful convictions are attributed to junk science, such as having witnesses' memories stimulated by amateur hypnotists. The author's explanations of these sources of capital error are straightforward and clarified by well-chosen examples. DNA analysis, as the book also explains, has become the main vehicle for exonerating the innocent, but in many cases no DNA evidence is available. Cohen believes the death penalty will soon be relegated to the "dark and distant past," and this volume is a convincing argument for the unreliability of capital convictions. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death-Row Convictions." Publishers Weekly, 18 Aug. 2003, p. 70. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA107491101&it=r&asid=bd27e78cb3a9fc7c53bb25cf9d425247. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "a must for students and workers in ... criminal justice, and a solid read for anyone interested in true crime literature."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A107491101
Cohen, Stanley. Convicting the Innocent: Death Row and America's Broken System of Justice
Frances O. Sandiford
141.6 (Apr. 1, 2016): p106.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Cohen, Stanley. Convicting the Innocent: Death Row and America's Broken System of Justice. Skyhorse. Apr. 2016.312p. bibliog. ISBN 9781632206466. $24.99; ebk. ISBN 9781632208132. CRIME
Journalist Cohen (The Game They Played) opens his latest book with a graphic description of an execution of a prisoner on death row, citing its supporters. Among them, he points out, the recently deceased Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia who "appeared to view the death penalty as a recreational activity." But here's the catch-22: innocent people can be put to death owing to our flawed justice system. Cohen goes on to tell the stories of a number of people who sidestepped the death penalty, sometimes by the skin of their teeth, via a thorough investigation of their cases. Among the reasons for their wrongful convictions: eyewitness error, jailhouse snitches, racism, prosecutorial misconduct, and incompetent counsel. If the nation will not abolish the death penalty, Cohen argues that it should at the very least work not to execute the blameless. The accounts are often repetitive as the author pounds away at his message and may require the labor of love to read, but they are overall informative. VERDICT A must for students and workers in the field of criminal justice, and a solid read for anyone interested in true crime literature.--Frances O. Sandiford, formerly with Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, NY
Sandiford, Frances O.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sandiford, Frances O. "Cohen, Stanley. Convicting the Innocent: Death Row and America's Broken System of Justice." Library Journal, 1 Apr. 2016, p. 106+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA447931729&it=r&asid=6a8a3a61328439052c804447c1326240. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "a valuable accounting of a hidden societal plague, likelier to appeal to attorneys, students, and activists than to the police officers, prosecutors, and "tough on crime" types who should read it."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A447931729
Cohen, Stanley: CONVICTING THE INNOCENT
(Mar. 1, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Cohen, Stanley CONVICTING THE INNOCENT Skyhorse Publishing (Adult Nonfiction) $24.99 4, 5 ISBN: 978-1-63220-646-6
A disturbing compendium of wrongful convictions resulting in death sentences, focusing on individual stories and patterns of institutional failure. Veteran journalist Cohen (The Execution of Officer Becker: The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime, 2006, etc.) brings moral outrage to this complex subject. "The execution of the innocent is not a chimera that troubles the imagination of the faint of heart," he writes. "It is part of a broken system of justice." Hardly rare, such occurrences have been documented since the early 1800s, but they seemingly spiked during the high-crime 1970s and '80s. In reading through the many cases of death row exoneration since 2002 alone, as well as earlier ones, it becomes clear that those who suffer wrongful convictions tend to be poor, black, mentally challenged, or a combination; generally, their initial counsel is inadequate, and only the intervention of appellate attorneys and nonprofits reveals appalling instances of prosecutorial malfeasance or investigatory incompetence. All this gives weight to Cohen's concern that the innocent have been executed. He begins by documenting two well-known cases where this almost certainly happened: Dennis Stockton of North Carolina and Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas. These set the grim tone for the case histories to follow, efficiently organized according to certain commonalities. Of these sections, the one dealing with official misconduct seems most ominous, focusing on stories like Chicago's notorious police torture ring, which ginned up death penalty cases against at least 10 men. Yet, eyewitness misidentification, forensic errors, flawed science, and an overreliance on compromised criminal informants have proven nearly as problematic. The litany of depressing, detailed case histories can become numbing, but Cohen's urgency doesn't flag as he returns to researchers' consensus that "about ten percent of the inhabitants of death row or inmates serving life sentences are innocent." A valuable accounting of a hidden societal plague, likelier to appeal to attorneys, students, and activists than to the police officers, prosecutors, and "tough on crime" types who should read it.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Cohen, Stanley: CONVICTING THE INNOCENT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444420734&it=r&asid=f0dcd4b304edbe5f766e3598fef9cde1. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "a very good autobiography."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A444420734
Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper
David Pitt
106.6 (Nov. 15, 2009): p7.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper.
By Brandon Lang and Stanley Cohen.
Jan. 2010. 288p. Skyhorse/Herman Graf, $24.95 (9781602396807). 796.
Two for the Money, the 2005 movie starring Matthew McConaughey, chronicled the rise, fall, and rise again of sports handicapper Brandon Lang and his tumultuous relationship with his mentor and friend, Walter Abrams (played in the movie by Al Pacino). Here, Lang tells the same story, but in his own words. It's a story of a young man from a wildly dysfunctional family--Lang's father went to prison for the attempted murder of Lang's mother--who found inspiration in religion, discipline in the U.S. Navy, and his own talents in the world of sports betting. Often it feels like the movie, fast paced and suspenseful, but there's also an element of introspection that is missing from the bigscreen story of Lang's life. In addition to talking about himself, Lang also talks about the nature and future of sports handicapping and the way the Internet has nearly killed the industry. An excellent companion to the popular movie and a very good autobiography in its own right.--David Pitt
Pitt, David
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "Beating the Odds: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Sports Handicapper." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2009, p. 7. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA225315614&it=r&asid=434b0a1abfe6197180cd5646b74ba963. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
QUOTED: "This book is a must-read for those concerned with the inequities of our criminal justice system."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A225315614
Cohen, Stanley. The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions
Vernon Ford
100.4 (Oct. 15, 2003): p362.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Oct. 2003. 320p. Carroll & Graf, paper, $14 (0-7867-1258-9). 364.66
Cohen's criticism of the U.S. criminal Justice system is harsh and specifically grounded in the wrongful convictions of so many death-row prisoners. From the initial use of DNA to free convicted rapist Gary Dotson after his victim recanted her story to the death-row reprieve of Anthony Porter as a consequence of an investigation by a Northwestern University professor and his students, our criminal justice system has failed on a number of levels. Cohen details the weak areas, including false confessions, eyewitness errors, jailhouse informants, corrupt practices, lack of evidence, and flawed science. Although some may argue that the recent surge in the release of death-row prisoners reflects a justice system that works, Cohen successfully argues the opposite. The story of the death-row victims of our criminal justice system are horrific and, by all indications, not as unique as we would hope. Cohen reports that there are hundreds of such cases. This book is a must-read for those concerned with the inequities of our criminal justice system.
Ford, Vernon
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ford, Vernon. "Cohen, Stanley. The Wrong Men: America's Epidemic of Wrongful Death Row Convictions." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2003, p. 362. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA110404600&it=r&asid=69db2401f813f6b2908f6c0892f01040. Accessed 25 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A110404600