DALLAS, May 22, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just released, "Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice" (Brown Books Publishing Group) by "Super Lawyer" Sidney Powell, is a bold new tell-all book that is garnering worldwide attention . As Powell notes, "This is a book I had hoped I would never have to write."
Sidney Powell's "Licensed to Lie" is a disturbing, enlightening, superbly presented exploration of one of the most dramatic and chilling accounts of injustice in American judicial history. Written with the skill of a novelist, the keen eye of a memoirist, the passion of an early American pamphleteer, Powell takes us on a journey through an institutional landscape created to protect the innocent and punish the guilty transformed into a house of legal horrors, the framing of an innocent man, the concealing and altering of evidence, the blatant disregard of the law, the flouting of political power, the constant display of an ego-driven desire to win at all costs even by means of lying, which resulted in the devastation of a good family who was stunned by the despotic evilness of a government suddenly and completely in charge of their lives.
" The best legal nonfiction I've ever read ," says Bill Shields, Washington, DC. "It should be required reading for every criminal lawyer, defense and prosecution, and for anyone interested in learning about the harsh realities of our federal criminal justice system."
As dark and disheartening as it is, there is a lesson here that should be taught in every civics class—that the greatest human ideal of Justice is only as good as the character of those who administer it, existing only if its guardians are devotees to integrity and humaneness.
"Licensed to Lie" becomes the unintentional profile of a courageous and strong woman determined to fight through the corruption, cronyism, vindictiveness, amoral egos, and the repeated miscarriages of justice in order to free the light of truth from the dark place in which it had been deliberately hidden—and then let that light purify the wrongness of an inquisitional institution once imagined as the one absolute certainty on which all Americans could rely, a certainty that's supposed to reflect the national conscience of America.
In her personal sacrifice during this battle for Right, Powell demonstrates Gandhi's truism that "There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience." Driven by what is right and what is wrong, she does what she must do to respond to the calling of her conscience.
In this sense, the book is a testament to the human will to struggle against overwhelming odds to right a wrong , and a cautionary tale to all—that true justice doesn't just exist as an abstraction apart from us. True justice IS us, making it real through our own actions and our own vigilance against the powerful who cavalierly threaten to take it away.
"The stories in this book are a warning to all who are not part of the Eric Holder crowd : We cannot trust our government, we cannot trust many of those who wield power in the courts. But the existence of this book is proof we still have freedom of speech and press. That means there is reason to hope." ––Gloria Wolk, Raleigh, NC.
Powell, through her words and acts, resurrects the wisdom of the past. It was Edmund Burke who said more than once that "Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all."
While Charles de Montesquieu reminded us that "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice"—to which we might add Powell's lesson: that justice remains a mere abstraction unless men of conscience practice it religiously every day.
To learn more, visit: www.LicensedToLie.com
Books are available online and in bookstores.
About the Author
Sidney Powell served in the Department of Justice for ten years in Texas and Virginia and has devoted her private practice to federal appeals for the past twenty years. She was the youngest Assistant United States Attorney in the country and the youngest elected Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, for which she also served as president. Recognized by her peers as a "Super Lawyer" and named as one of the "Best Lawyers in America" for years, she has been lead counsel in more than 500 appeals in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, resulting in more than 180 published opinions, and was president of the Bar Association of the Fifth Federal Circuit. Powell's briefs have long been used as samples for practitioners.
*A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit The Constitution Project, The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Texas Equal Access to Justice Campaign.
A photo accompanying this release is available at:
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=25525
Cindy Birne Director of Public Relations Brown Books Publishing Group 972-381-0009
