Former prosecutor Bennett Gershman is the author of two major books on the criminal justice system, Trial Error and Misconduct and Prosecutorial Misconduct. In this article, he presents his analysis of some of the telling moments in FRONTLINE's documentary report which, in his opinion, reveal how the criminal justice system broke down, "through both carelessness and malevolence," in the handling of the Garner case.

Larry C. Marshall, law professor at Northwestern University School of Law, summarizes the pervasive problems in our criminal justice system which are so evident in the Terence Garner story--most prominently, perhaps, the fact that eyewitness identification can frequently be wrong.

Also, see the Readings and Links section of this site for recent and noteworthy journalistic investigations into America's criminal justice system, including multi-part investigative series by the Chicago Tribune and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and an in-depth 1999 Atlantic Monthly article that examines the many factors to blame in miscarriages of justice in the U.S.