Journey to justice

by Johnnie L. Cochran

In Journey to Justice, Johnnie Cochran illuminates the odyssey that led him from a small, rented home shared with his extended family in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Judge Lance Ito's courtroom. In 1954, Brown vs. the Board of Education galvanized the young Cochran. Taking Thurgood Marshall as his role model, Cochran embarked on a legal career in which he won landmark decisions against official misconduct within the criminal justice system. From Leonard Deadwyler, a black motorist stopped for speeding to the hospital with his pregnant wife, then shot dead by the police; to Ron Settles, a black college football star whose death at the hands of police was made to look like suicide; to the record 9.4-million-dollar jury verdict he won for a thirteen-year-old Latina girl molested by a uniformed LAPD officer, Cochran fought to change police procedures responsible for some of the most blatant abuse committed by those sworn to "protect and serve.". It was the sobering experience of these earlier