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Brief Against Death
by Edgar Smith; William F. Buckley Jr. (intro)
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good+/Very Good-
- Seller
-
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
First Edition, stated.
364 p; ill. (map). Black cloth hardcover with gilt lettering to spine and blindstamped covers exhibits some minor shelfwear, including bumping to tip and heel of spine, and is slightly shaken, but sports illustrated endpapers and a lovely deckled foredge, with a light eraser abrasion to ffep, and a faint impression of what may have been a loose staple sandwiched between the preliminary pages (please see listing images), but is otherwise in Near Fine condition: clean, bright, and tightly bound. The dust jacket has some shelfwear, creases, and some minor chipping to edges, but is otherwise Very Good.
From the dust jacket (also see note at bottom of listing):
On June 6, 1957, the author of this book was convicted of the brutal murder of a fifteen-year-old girl. For more than eleven years he has lived in the shadow of the electric chair in the Death House of the New Jersey State Prison.
Brief Against Death is Edgar Smith's firsthand account of his arrest, interrogation, trial, imprisonment, and 4,000-day battle, through fourteen appeals and thirteen stays of execution, to set aside the verdict and establish his innocence. It is the story of a man without status, with no money, with little formal education, who was connected circumstantially to a horrifying crime, interrogated without counsel by the police for nearly twenty consecutive hours, prosecuted on the basis of an unsigned statement in which he confessed to no crime whatsoever, tried in an atmosphere of inflammatory press coverage and public furor, convicted in the face of strikingly contradictory evidence—and who has found within himself the resources of mind and courage to fight his case through the labyrinthine machinery of the courts.
Edgar Smith was twenty-three years old when, on the morning of March 5, 1957, the body of Victoria Zielinski of Mahwah, New Jersey, was found in a sandpit, her skull crushed by a rock, her clothes torn and disheveled in a fashion to suggest sexual assault. That same day Smith was picked up by the police. Strong circumstantial evidence linked him to the crime. But at the trial the coroner's testimony for the prosecution indicated that the time of the murder was at least two hours after Smith had arrived in another town, with his wife and baby, to spend the night with his in-laws. Incredibly, this and other glaring inconsistencies in the prosecution's case failed to save him from conviction. Once the police and the prosecutor's office had settled on Smith as the likely murderer, no legal, logical, or human considerations could halt the seemingly inexorable train of events that closed the doors of the State Prison behind him three months later.
In the eleven years of solitary confinement he has undergone since then—nine of them spent in an eight-foot-square windowless cell—Edgar Smith, learning the mazes of law, fighting for his life, has managed almost miraculously to widen his horizons, to educate himself, to initiate and direct the series of legal appeals that have again and again postponed his sentence of electrocution, and to complete, on the eve of his fifteenth appeal, the handwritten manuscript of Brief Against Death.
The man himself is remarkable, and he tells his story with a remarkable objectivity that intensifies the reader's response to his ordeal. His book is a unique human document—and one of utmost importance to all who are concerned with the workings of criminal justice in America.
[NOTE FROM SELLER: Edgar Smith eventually won his freedom, only to kidnap and attempt to murder another woman. She testified against him and he later died in prison. Evidently, his 'remarkable objectivity' was simply a product of sociopathy.]
364 p; ill. (map). Black cloth hardcover with gilt lettering to spine and blindstamped covers exhibits some minor shelfwear, including bumping to tip and heel of spine, and is slightly shaken, but sports illustrated endpapers and a lovely deckled foredge, with a light eraser abrasion to ffep, and a faint impression of what may have been a loose staple sandwiched between the preliminary pages (please see listing images), but is otherwise in Near Fine condition: clean, bright, and tightly bound. The dust jacket has some shelfwear, creases, and some minor chipping to edges, but is otherwise Very Good.
From the dust jacket (also see note at bottom of listing):
On June 6, 1957, the author of this book was convicted of the brutal murder of a fifteen-year-old girl. For more than eleven years he has lived in the shadow of the electric chair in the Death House of the New Jersey State Prison.
Brief Against Death is Edgar Smith's firsthand account of his arrest, interrogation, trial, imprisonment, and 4,000-day battle, through fourteen appeals and thirteen stays of execution, to set aside the verdict and establish his innocence. It is the story of a man without status, with no money, with little formal education, who was connected circumstantially to a horrifying crime, interrogated without counsel by the police for nearly twenty consecutive hours, prosecuted on the basis of an unsigned statement in which he confessed to no crime whatsoever, tried in an atmosphere of inflammatory press coverage and public furor, convicted in the face of strikingly contradictory evidence—and who has found within himself the resources of mind and courage to fight his case through the labyrinthine machinery of the courts.
Edgar Smith was twenty-three years old when, on the morning of March 5, 1957, the body of Victoria Zielinski of Mahwah, New Jersey, was found in a sandpit, her skull crushed by a rock, her clothes torn and disheveled in a fashion to suggest sexual assault. That same day Smith was picked up by the police. Strong circumstantial evidence linked him to the crime. But at the trial the coroner's testimony for the prosecution indicated that the time of the murder was at least two hours after Smith had arrived in another town, with his wife and baby, to spend the night with his in-laws. Incredibly, this and other glaring inconsistencies in the prosecution's case failed to save him from conviction. Once the police and the prosecutor's office had settled on Smith as the likely murderer, no legal, logical, or human considerations could halt the seemingly inexorable train of events that closed the doors of the State Prison behind him three months later.
In the eleven years of solitary confinement he has undergone since then—nine of them spent in an eight-foot-square windowless cell—Edgar Smith, learning the mazes of law, fighting for his life, has managed almost miraculously to widen his horizons, to educate himself, to initiate and direct the series of legal appeals that have again and again postponed his sentence of electrocution, and to complete, on the eve of his fifteenth appeal, the handwritten manuscript of Brief Against Death.
The man himself is remarkable, and he tells his story with a remarkable objectivity that intensifies the reader's response to his ordeal. His book is a unique human document—and one of utmost importance to all who are concerned with the workings of criminal justice in America.
[NOTE FROM SELLER: Edgar Smith eventually won his freedom, only to kidnap and attempt to murder another woman. She testified against him and he later died in prison. Evidently, his 'remarkable objectivity' was simply a product of sociopathy.]
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Details
- Bookseller
- The Mortuary Korps
(CA)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 000194
- Title
- Brief Against Death
- Author
- Edgar Smith; William F. Buckley Jr. (intro)
- Format/Binding
- Cloth hardcover with smyth-sewn binding
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good+
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good-
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition, stated
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Alfred A. Knopf
- Place of Publication
- New York, NY, U.S.A.
- Date Published
- 1968
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- Edgar Smith (1934-2017); Biography; Autobiographies; Prisoners; New Jersey; United States; penal system; court of law; murder trials; death penalty; death row; electric chair; court appeals; murderers; psychopaths; sociopaths; lying
- Bookseller catalogs
- True Crime; Biography / Autobiography; Philosophy & Ethics; Politics, Government, & Law; History;
- Size
- 22
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About the Seller
The Mortuary Korps
Biblio member since 2018
Winnipeg, Manitoba
About The Mortuary Korps
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A dark edifice standing only on this digital plane of existence, the Mortuary is devoted to all that is curious in the world: from medical oddities and the criminal mind to supernatural realms and dark fantasy.
All listings include multiple images. If you require more photographs in order to make a decision, do not hesitate to send a note. All images are included simply to exhibit overall condition of specific items and are removed from display as soon as item is sold; should there be a copyright-based objection to any image, simply contact The Mortuary Korps and we will happily removed the offending images immediately.
Offers are accepted on items that qualify for OA with Biblio, but you are also welcome to contact us directly with any offer and your reasons (be they personal circumstance or business) and we may offer the discount you desire (be it dollars or cents).
Ask about local delivery or pickup!
Feel free to send us your special interests if you wish to be contacted directly when we find an item that may specifically interest you.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Shelfwear
- Minor wear resulting from a book being place on, and taken from a bookshelf, especially along the bottom edge.
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
- FFEP
- A common abbreviation for Front Free End Paper. Generally, it is the first page of a book and is part of a single sheet that...
- Heel
- The lower most portion of the spine when the book is standing vertically.
- Chipping
- A defect in which small pieces are missing from the edges; fraying or small pieces of paper missing the edge of a paperback, or...
- Shaken
- A hardcover in which the text block is loose, but still attached to the binding.
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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