Doing Life

By Stephen Bello

A breathtaking excursion into an astonishing, violent, often hilarious, always intensely human world - inhabited by the dean of America's jailhouse lawyers, Jerry Rosenberg: present address: Sing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312216173
• ISBN13: 9780312216177
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Doing Life

An outstanding work by the author, Steve Bello. The facts presented here are provokings & disturbing truths to the point that I asked to myself, how something like this could happen in the land of freedom & justice for all? This book and therefore, Mr. Jerome Rosenberg case, should be mandatory reading in all law school criminal courses. It's a shocking fletch & blood narrative & a true story of an innocent man (no doubt in my mind), who's serving a life prison sentence. Mr. Rosenberg heroic efforts & law sagacity provides a magnificent insights on criminal law proceedings. This is the type of book you won't stop reading till the end & it will certainly make you cry of rage. Mr. Rosenberg survived death many times miraculously, not only from Death Row but for negligent medical care, brutal beatings, & an incredible heroic act from a fellow inmate who saved his life during the 1971 Attica prison riot. Since 1981 this man has been constantly denied parole release and as inconceivable as it may be, Mr. Rosenberg still an inmate in the maximum security facility at Wende Correctional Facility in west Buffalo, N.Y..with next parole hearing scheduled for March 2008. This book definitely change the way we take for granted our rights under the almighty criminal justice system. Mind-blowing questions like where are the true criminals of the two cops? Where is the American Civil Rights Association? How many of the 1 million lawyers in this country showed solidarity & protested against such an outrageous institutional framed crime that's still happening today on a case that in the words of Harvard Law School Prof. & author, Alan Dershowitz, was described as "the most remarkable in the annals of american law"? Even more surprised was I when read just a couple of reviews here on a book like this when even a cook book may score dozen critics.

Amazing true story of prisoner who became a lawyer

As a lawyer myself, I was stunned to read this book about Jerry Rosenberg, a prisoner who became a lawyer while he was in prison. (At that time you could become a lawyer through a correspondence course program - and it was tough!) A high school dropout, a small-time hood for the Mob, you'd think he'd be the last person to pursue a profession in prison. But Rosenberg explained that studying law books was "something to keep your sanity", and that it gave him hope to "get even" with the system by representing other prisoners, and it gave him the hope he needed that one day he could represent himself so that he could ultimately win his own freedom. (He has always denied that he was guilty of the crime for which he was convicted - the murder of two police officers in New York). The whole book was remarkable, but I was especially amazed to read his account of the riot at Attica. (He was sent there after he won one of his own cases, which resulted in his sentence being changed from death to life in prison). His details of the hellhole Attica had been prior to the riot was utterly shocking, and his blow-by-blow description of the riot itself was nothing short of riveting. It is NOTHING like the newspaper accounts of Attica! If you read this book be warned - you cannot put this book down once you get to this part! As far as I know - Rosenberg is still in prison(?). Also - this story was made into a movie: "Doing Life" with Tony Danza. Next time a would-be lawyer whines to me that he or she cannot go to law school because of 'whatever', I will tell them the story of Jerry Rosenberg.

Doing Life is wonderful

Wonderful book, a great read. This book will make you one with the main character.