William Peoples, a 2023 NPEP graduate and current Teaching Fellow, celebrates Dr. Jennifer Lackey’s book “Criminal Testimonial Injustice,” which recently won the North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) 2024 book award.
In the winter of 2019, while in the grip of one of the most deadly pandemics in history, NPEP Director Dr. Jennifer Lackey asked me to read the first draft of her book, Criminal Testimonial Injustice, which recently won the North American Society for Social Philosophy (NASSP) 2024 Book Award. At the time, I was grieving the loss of four family members, and it was a welcome distraction.
For the next several weeks, I would receive completed chapters in my correspondence packet – weekly deliveries of letters and resources that connected me to the NPEP community – and send responsive notes back to her. In a short time, I realized that I, too, would benefit from reading and engaging with the text.
What struck me most in the introduction was how Dr. Lackey seemed to be talking about my personal experience with “false confessions” almost literally: “manipulation, deception, and coercion” of eyewitnesses and victims, as well as the harm inherent in “plea deals, coercion, and systemic testimonial injustice.”
William Peoples speaking at NPEP’s Epistemic Reparations and Carceral Injustice Workshop in May. (photo credit: Micol Bez)
Being beaten, forced to sign a typed confession, and then coerced into accepting a plea deal for the crime of attempted rape scarred me permanently and factored significantly into the brutal murder I did commit.
The shame and anger of having to plead guilty to a crime I considered so despicable – along with the belief that the alleged victim, a white teenage girl, was complicit in my wrongful conviction – fed into my fear, distrust, and hatred of all white people.
The chapter “Eyewitness Testimony and Epistemic Agency” was instrumental in my realizing how both my alleged victim and I were harmed as a result of epistemic injustice. Although I am not her assailant, I nevertheless feel a kinship with her as a fellow sufferer since she, too, was manipulated into serving the State’s goal of securing a conviction against me.
That is the power of Dr. Lackey’s book: her ability to use this knowledge to bridge a seemingly impossible gulf between a survivor of a wrongful conviction and a victim who has been doubly harmed, first by a violent crime and second by a criminal legal system fraught with “criminal testimonial injustice” that has become pervasive and ubiquitous.
In the book, Dr. Lackey focuses on my story when analyzing false confessions and coerced plea decisions. She then features NPEP cohort 3 student Demetrius Cunningham in her discussion of false and wrongful confessions.
When I spoke to Demetrius about the book, he said: “For nearly 30 years, I was haunted by the ghost of the innocent 15-year-old boy I once was…Criminal Testimonial Injustice grants the reader a ‘bird’s eye view’ in understanding how a 15-year-old child, separated from his parents, could then have his epistemic agency subverted and weaponized against him, making him complicit in his own wrongful conviction.”
He continues: “Upon reading Professor Lackey’s philosophical masterpiece, all of the components to this complex epistemic puzzle fell into place. Professor Lackey’s passion for shedding light on the machinations employed by police officers and prosecutors seeking a conviction at any cost exposes the epistemic nightmare I and others have endured for decades.”
What’s equally unique about this book is the author’s gift of drawing on literature across philosophy, law, and social psychology, while making said information comprehensive and accessible to laypersons like myself. Others agree, as evidenced by the NASSP’s recognition of the work.
I credit Dr. Lackey with affording me a new vocabulary and theoretical framework through which to see, understand, and begin the healing process from the trauma caused by my own “criminal testimonial injustice.”