The National Registry of Exonerations reports more than 3,499 exonerations since 1989, reflecting more than 31,900 years of wrongful imprisonment.

Any trial judge contributing to a wrongful conviction should be haunted unto the grave by that knowledge. But are they? In Extreme Cruelty, Judge Steven Dankof posits that trial judges are the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions, and examines why this is so. Extreme Cruelty sounds a clarion call for judges to come out from behind hackneyed appellate court platitudes, take a penetrating look at themselves and their work, and breathe life into their Constitutional oaths and an independent judiciary. What remains of a once free people demands nothing less.