“This year’s absolute must-see doc"
– Kelly Vance, East Bay Express
(Trailer & more at JUSTICEMOVIE.COM)
2017 FINALIST: US HISTORY
"THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON THE NEWTON TRIAL"
- D. LOWELL JENSEN, NEWTON PROSECUTOR
AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: People v. Newton [Regent Press 2016]
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On the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, Pearlman’s new book AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL: PEOPLE V. NEWTON
compares the explosive state of American race relations in 1968 to race relations today with insights from key participants and observers of the internationally-watched Oakland, California death-penalty trial that launched the Black Panther Party and transformed the American jury “of one’s peers” to the diverse cross-section we often take for granted today.
The book includes comments from Newton prosecutor LOWELL JENSEN, pioneering black jury foreman DAVID HARPER and TV journalist BELVA DAVIS, as well as from Huey Newton’s older brother MELVIN NEWTON, former Panthers KATHLEEN CLEAVER, DAVID HILLIARD and EMORY DOUGLAS. It also includes comments from civil rights experts including BRYAN STEVENSON, BARRY SCHECK and JOHN BURRIS.
This book inspired the 2022 documentary of the same name for which Judge Pearlman is co-producer.
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Visit JUSTICEMOVIE.COM for more about the documentary.
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Lise Pearlman’s mother, artist Mali Pearlman, created this painting commemorating the protests on Yale’s campus in the spring of 1970 of the then pending murder trial of Black Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins. Lise was among the student volunteers for the defense polling members of the New Haven community on their views about the presumption of innocence. Yale’s President Kingman Brewster was famously quoted at the time saying that he doubted the ability of a black militant to obtain a fair trial anywhere in the country. You can read about the context in both The Sky’s the Limit: People v. Newton, the REAL Trial of the 20th Century? and American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton. Lise donated the painting to Yale University in 2012, and it now hangs in the Yale Afro-American Cultural Center.
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