Bøger af Ronald L Ruiz

Ronald L. Ruiz's memoir spans over 36 years of practicing law in California, focusing on five memorable cases. One of only six Mexican-American lawyers practicing law in Northern California during his early years, he saw a transformation in the criminal justice system that will leave the reader wondering whether this was "progress."

Happy Birthday Jesús is an insightful and spell-binding novel of and about our times, when the relationship between race and violence dominates the news and threatens not only our personal security but our confidence in our social processes. This novel recreates the making of a sociopath. It is written by a criminal defense lawyer whose extensive experience has been representing individuals such as the protagonist Jesús Olivas. Whether Jesús is a victim or the bane of society is left to the reader's judgment in this novel which details the painful recollections of Jesús himself. What is clear, however, is that the boiling pot of Jesús' emotions that finally erupts in senseless violence has ben cooking for years on the flames of religious fanaticism, poverty and race hatred. All of the social institutions that should have nurtured and protected Jesús - family, school, church, the court - ultimately failed him, leading him to strike back uncontrollably, irrationally.