Our adversary system of adjudicating criminal guilt or innocence is embedded in the Constitution and Anglo-American legal history. In l989, with the discovery of the uniqueness of everyone’s DNA, we were forced to confront the fact that we were frequently convicting the innocent. Since then, we have exonerated 3500 wrongly convicted defendants. During the 3 ½ decades since then, we have convicted about 35 million people of felonies. All who know anything about the American criminal justice system know that we must have convicted millions of innocents that we could not exonerate with DNA or other scientific proof.Most of the writing about wrongful convictions focuses on the weak spots in the adjudication system, such as lying cooperators, jailhouse snitches, eyewitness errors, false confessions, suppression of exculpatory evidence by police and prosecutors, earwitness errors, erroneous forensic testimony, inadequate defense counsel, insufficient defense funds, etc. What is uniquely valuable about Barred is that it is the only book, so far as I know, that focuses on why those who are wrongly convicted remain convicted and if imprisoned, remain in prison.Barred is divided into four parts: the appeal from conviction, post-appeal collateral attacks, parole and pardons, new approaches to conviction review.The conventional, standardized method of seeking relief from a wrongful conviction is a direct appeal, guaranteed to all, including the right to assistance of counsel. Professor Medwed takes the reader through a myriad of methods appellate courts employ to limit an appellant’s opportunity to obtain meaningful review of his conviction. Successful appeals are rare. Successful appeals based on innocence are virtually unheard of.After losing his appeal, the defendant, who is indigent in most cases, no longer has the right to the assistance of counsel and must proceed on his own or, if he is lucky, with a volunteer. Reviews of criminal convictions in post-appeal proceedings are extremely limited. After a brief period during the Warren Court era in the l960s when habeas corpus seemed to have promise as a review engine, it has been severely circumscribed. Virtually no one’s conviction is set aside on collateral attack these days and innocence is not a sufficient ground.So, how about early parole for the innocent? On the contrary, most parole boards will deny parole to any prisoner who claims innocence. The price of parole is a false confession of guilt.In the fourth part, Professor Medwed discusses Conviction Review Units that have sprung up in many prosecutor’s offices and an innocence review commission, first adopted in England and now in North Carolina.Since most criminal defendants are paupers, at least after they lose their direct appeals, relief for the innocent requires support from innocence projects which have formed throughout the country. If a defendant can persuade one of them to take his case, the prospects for relief are far from hopeless.This book is essential to an understanding of innocence.