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The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America
A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite—and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.
“Galvin-Almanza takes readers inside the system with crystalline insight, heart, and writerly skill. Anyone who cares about justice should read this urgently-needed book.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is being purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?
In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.
We’ll learn what’s working, how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won’t change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.
Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.
“Galvin-Almanza takes readers inside the system with crystalline insight, heart, and writerly skill. Anyone who cares about justice should read this urgently-needed book.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is being purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?
In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.
We’ll learn what’s working, how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won’t change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.
Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published February 17, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 22, 2026
I have watched Emily Galvin Almanza speak many times throughout these last few years, more often recently during troubled times in the USA, and thus very much anticipated her new book, The Price of Mercy - Unfair Trials, A Violent System, and a Public Defender’s Search for Justice in America.
From the very first paragraph I had tears in my eyes, imagining a 16 year old Emily’s very first appearance in front of a judge, one whom thankfully saw all of her intelligence, humanity and raw potential. Allowing her to carry on her way, and perhaps in that one small but important act of kindness, helping inspire the brilliant and important lawyer, commentator and author she is today.
Obviously impacted and empowered by this early act of mercy, and applying her strong intellect with an innate sense of empathy and expression of justice, this book is a wonderful and accessible account of Emily’s extraordinary career, experiences and perspectives as a public defender. Powerfully backed by research and specific cases and clients, Emily recounts learnings and insight from many years on the front lines, in court and giving a strong “side-eye” to an often flawed justice system.
Because I also listened to the author reading the audio version of her book, the very personal and often hysterically funny vocal expressions of a passionate and dedicated lawyer recounting the stories was quite endearing.
Reminiscent of one extraordinary professor I remember from law school a lifetime ago, Emily is at once an inspirational lawyer, a well humoured and easily readable author, a great and relatable storyteller, and I expect a rather decent human being. My professor may be analogous to her Judge Harris.
The Price of Mercy will be equally the most important and enjoyable book I’ve read in a long time. A return to empathy, morality and intellect being so desperately needed in 2026, Emily’s book is all the human nourishment and inspiration that I knew it would be. I would highly recommend for any law student, lawyer, leader, anyone with an interest in decency and justice, and anyone struggling to believe that justice and empathy still exist.
From the very first paragraph I had tears in my eyes, imagining a 16 year old Emily’s very first appearance in front of a judge, one whom thankfully saw all of her intelligence, humanity and raw potential. Allowing her to carry on her way, and perhaps in that one small but important act of kindness, helping inspire the brilliant and important lawyer, commentator and author she is today.
Obviously impacted and empowered by this early act of mercy, and applying her strong intellect with an innate sense of empathy and expression of justice, this book is a wonderful and accessible account of Emily’s extraordinary career, experiences and perspectives as a public defender. Powerfully backed by research and specific cases and clients, Emily recounts learnings and insight from many years on the front lines, in court and giving a strong “side-eye” to an often flawed justice system.
Because I also listened to the author reading the audio version of her book, the very personal and often hysterically funny vocal expressions of a passionate and dedicated lawyer recounting the stories was quite endearing.
Reminiscent of one extraordinary professor I remember from law school a lifetime ago, Emily is at once an inspirational lawyer, a well humoured and easily readable author, a great and relatable storyteller, and I expect a rather decent human being. My professor may be analogous to her Judge Harris.
The Price of Mercy will be equally the most important and enjoyable book I’ve read in a long time. A return to empathy, morality and intellect being so desperately needed in 2026, Emily’s book is all the human nourishment and inspiration that I knew it would be. I would highly recommend for any law student, lawyer, leader, anyone with an interest in decency and justice, and anyone struggling to believe that justice and empathy still exist.
February 21, 2026
Very insightful and in-depth account of how the US judicial system is flawed. While not a very upbeat topic, the author goes into a lot of ways that it could improve, and how non-for-profits are trying to help. You can tell just by the author's impassioned voice while narrating this book just how much she cares about the people that have been used and abused by the system, and how adamant she is to help.
November 20, 2025
Emily Galvin Almanza, who is my friend, has written the definitive nonfiction book on the criminal justice system. She shows that our opinions on that system are based on narratives from personal experiences and media news reports, but these narratives are not data. She exhaustively documents the data that shows that many of these narratives are just not true. This is beautifully written, with stories but mostly data, that everyone should read to be informed about the criminal justice system. This is a riveting, captivating, compelling read.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Leftist Language Will Annoy Some Readers. Read This Anyway. Straight up, Galvin Almanza is absolutely a product of her time - in this case, "her time" being 2010s Harvard and Stanford and then abolitionist activism. So the words she chooses - "latinx", apologizing for being white, etc - are going to annoy at least some readers.
From my view (see postscript for a brief bio relevant to this discussion)... this book is right up there among the ones those new to the field should consider. Those in and around criminal justice will likely know most everything Galvin Almanza presents here - or at bare minimum have largely similar stories of people they did know more directly. Her writing style is engaging - far from the academic speak one might expect from a Stanford Law lecturer and much closer to the dynamism one would expect from a tenacious advocate of the accused during a trial. While this is far from a John Grisham or Randy Singer courtroom drama, Galvin Almanza's overall style bends more in that direction than a desert dry academic treatise.
One weakness here was her framing of the "racist" origins of policing, but again, that's the culture Galvin Almanza comes from. It is unclear at this time if she's ever even heard of Radley Balko's excellent history of policing The Rise Of The Warrior Cop, released between The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (who blurbed this book, in case you, the reader of my review, missed that) and the 2013 execution of Michael Brown. Balko has a much more even handed look at the rise of policing in the American tradition, tracing it back even beyond the first "Shire Reefs" in feudal England and up through 2010 or so (with a 2020s update I've yet to go back and read). Even here, however, Galvin Almanza's incorrect history of policing comes across more as a cultural/ worldview thing than an attempt to mislead the reader - she appears to genuinely not know the actual history at hand and genuinely (and uncritically) believes the constant leftist refrain.
That particular weakness aside, however, this is a particularly well documented book, clocking in at about 28% documentation on even the Advance Review Copy edition of the text I've had for several weeks before finally reading roughly a month before release. It is quite clear that on most of her points, Galvin Almanza both knows exactly what she's arguing and is more than willing to show you her work - which is always appreciated (and, yes, frankly expected) in any nonfiction work.
Ultimately Galvin Almanza's proposals - because all books of this type must end with proposals in nearly as ironclad a genre rule as RWA/ RNA types try to insist that any romance novel end in a happily ever after - all come down to variations on "more funding" and for the most part are things most that are familiar with the field have already heard of before, but Galvin Almanza does put at least enough of her own specific vision in here that the text is still worth reading to see exactly what her own brand of reasoning comes out as.
Overall this was a strong book of its type, just not an overly novel one other than in Galvin Almanza's own particular experiences.
Very much recommended.
Brief bio of me: Hi, I'm Jeff, and I used to work for a District Attorney for a bit as their office tech guy. Even got sworn in as a witness in one particular trial, in addition to helping my bosses with an "everyman" look at the case he had in a couple of cases. Even then, I was *also* a Libertarian Party official and an anti-police-brutality activist working with an org that has long went by the wayside (at least relative to what it was) and which particularly after Michael Brown's execution in 2013 was rarely heard from again as more prominent orgs rose up. I even, at some of the very times Galvin Almanza was being recognized as one of the most promising young lawyers in America, had a database that virtually no one knew of, but which made me *the* world's leading expert in mass shooting, school shooting, and killed by police events - at least in terms of the data I had and was actively both collecting and analyzing.
Which is a particularly long winded way of saying that I've been around the block more than a few times as it relates to the subject of this book. Frequently around it, rarely directly in it, but very much close enough to know much of what was happening... from most every side.
From my view (see postscript for a brief bio relevant to this discussion)... this book is right up there among the ones those new to the field should consider. Those in and around criminal justice will likely know most everything Galvin Almanza presents here - or at bare minimum have largely similar stories of people they did know more directly. Her writing style is engaging - far from the academic speak one might expect from a Stanford Law lecturer and much closer to the dynamism one would expect from a tenacious advocate of the accused during a trial. While this is far from a John Grisham or Randy Singer courtroom drama, Galvin Almanza's overall style bends more in that direction than a desert dry academic treatise.
One weakness here was her framing of the "racist" origins of policing, but again, that's the culture Galvin Almanza comes from. It is unclear at this time if she's ever even heard of Radley Balko's excellent history of policing The Rise Of The Warrior Cop, released between The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (who blurbed this book, in case you, the reader of my review, missed that) and the 2013 execution of Michael Brown. Balko has a much more even handed look at the rise of policing in the American tradition, tracing it back even beyond the first "Shire Reefs" in feudal England and up through 2010 or so (with a 2020s update I've yet to go back and read). Even here, however, Galvin Almanza's incorrect history of policing comes across more as a cultural/ worldview thing than an attempt to mislead the reader - she appears to genuinely not know the actual history at hand and genuinely (and uncritically) believes the constant leftist refrain.
That particular weakness aside, however, this is a particularly well documented book, clocking in at about 28% documentation on even the Advance Review Copy edition of the text I've had for several weeks before finally reading roughly a month before release. It is quite clear that on most of her points, Galvin Almanza both knows exactly what she's arguing and is more than willing to show you her work - which is always appreciated (and, yes, frankly expected) in any nonfiction work.
Ultimately Galvin Almanza's proposals - because all books of this type must end with proposals in nearly as ironclad a genre rule as RWA/ RNA types try to insist that any romance novel end in a happily ever after - all come down to variations on "more funding" and for the most part are things most that are familiar with the field have already heard of before, but Galvin Almanza does put at least enough of her own specific vision in here that the text is still worth reading to see exactly what her own brand of reasoning comes out as.
Overall this was a strong book of its type, just not an overly novel one other than in Galvin Almanza's own particular experiences.
Very much recommended.
Brief bio of me: Hi, I'm Jeff, and I used to work for a District Attorney for a bit as their office tech guy. Even got sworn in as a witness in one particular trial, in addition to helping my bosses with an "everyman" look at the case he had in a couple of cases. Even then, I was *also* a Libertarian Party official and an anti-police-brutality activist working with an org that has long went by the wayside (at least relative to what it was) and which particularly after Michael Brown's execution in 2013 was rarely heard from again as more prominent orgs rose up. I even, at some of the very times Galvin Almanza was being recognized as one of the most promising young lawyers in America, had a database that virtually no one knew of, but which made me *the* world's leading expert in mass shooting, school shooting, and killed by police events - at least in terms of the data I had and was actively both collecting and analyzing.
Which is a particularly long winded way of saying that I've been around the block more than a few times as it relates to the subject of this book. Frequently around it, rarely directly in it, but very much close enough to know much of what was happening... from most every side.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
My son has wanted to be a public defender or civil rights attorney since his freshman year of high school when they read Just Mercy. Now he's in college and still pursuing that goal. So when I saw The Price of Mercy, I knew this was going to end up in his hands eventually. But first, I needed to read it myself—social justice has always been something I'm passionate about.
Emily Galvan Almanza didn't just write a book. She wrote a blueprint. The research is top-tier, the case stories are gut-wrenching, and she makes you understand exactly why her nonprofit, Partners for Justice, exists. But what really got me was the second half—the solutions. Not just "here's what's broken" (though trust me, she lays that out with receipts), but "here's how we fix it."
My key takeaway: We need to make our justice system human-scaled. Focused on our shared humanity and committed to people's well-being.
That's it. That's the whole point. And somehow it feels both incredibly simple and absolutely daunting.
Am I inspired? Yes. Do I feel a bit overwhelmed by how much needs to change? Also yes. But I'm committed to doing my part, whatever that looks like.
This one's going straight to my son, along with a note that says "this is the work." And if you've got someone in your life who's passionate about justice reform—or if YOU are—grab this one.
🔗 partnersforjustice.org
Emily Galvan Almanza didn't just write a book. She wrote a blueprint. The research is top-tier, the case stories are gut-wrenching, and she makes you understand exactly why her nonprofit, Partners for Justice, exists. But what really got me was the second half—the solutions. Not just "here's what's broken" (though trust me, she lays that out with receipts), but "here's how we fix it."
My key takeaway: We need to make our justice system human-scaled. Focused on our shared humanity and committed to people's well-being.
That's it. That's the whole point. And somehow it feels both incredibly simple and absolutely daunting.
Am I inspired? Yes. Do I feel a bit overwhelmed by how much needs to change? Also yes. But I'm committed to doing my part, whatever that looks like.
This one's going straight to my son, along with a note that says "this is the work." And if you've got someone in your life who's passionate about justice reform—or if YOU are—grab this one.
🔗 partnersforjustice.org
September 16, 2025
This book really opened my eyes to the true damage the justice system is doing to all involved. People arrested and/or jailed or imprisoned are experiencing the worst harm, through delaying of trials, wrongful or unnecessary charging, and jail time incurred for the most petty of crimes. But even lawyers (especially public defenders), police, judges, and jurors are experiencing the inefficiency and tumult of the system. Almanza is a public defender and works to make change in the system, and her suggestions for change are eye-opening.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews