Finckenauer, James O. and Elin J. Waring

Russian Mafia in America
Immigration, Culture, and Crime

Boston, Northeastern University. 303 pp. No price stated.

The aim of this investigation is to examine Russian organized crime in the United States. The authors drew on the Tri-State (NY, NJ & PA) Soviet Emigre Organized Crime Project and utilized an analytical tool called network analysis. Network analysis was considered a useful tool as Russian criminals were supposedly associated through networks.

This is a very many-sided book. There is plenty of raw data, but also an attempt to look at criminal activities in their Russian historical context, through native American eyes as well as through the eyes of ordinary Russian emigres in America. Two Russian phenomena are examined: the members of the Russian state apparatus who reinvented themselves as politicos of this or that persuasion but are still at the center of organized crime, and "vory v zakone" ("thieves in law"), the criminal fraternity, smart, self-educated (often after a spell in prison), living according to the rules of the fraternity.

Back in the old Soviet Union the most highly organized form of crime was white-collar corruption. In fact, this has continued in the US. The newly arrived are not involved in gambling, drugs and prostitution but mostly fraud and laundering money (just imagine all that loot from the breaking up of the Soviet Union that has to be exported and laundered!)

Despite its provocative title, the authors have come to the conclusion that there is not an organized crime threat from the emigres who came from what is generally known as Russia. In fact, they say, the sort of crimes these emigres are involved in are unlikely to require an organized crime structure such as La Cosa Nostra. So not even a mafia. Not even entirely Russian.

Professor James O. Finckenauer is Director of the International Center of the National Institute of Justice. Professor Elin J. Waring is at CUNY.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury
Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law

Michael S. Lief, H. Mitchell Caldwell and Ben Bycel

London (A Lisa Drew Book) Simon & Schuster UK. 400 pp. £20.00.

Ten landmark trials. In every case a short introduction to put the reader in the picture, a short and always interesting biography of the lawyer, a few words about the closing argument and then the closing argument itself: Nuremberg ("just following orders"), Clarence Darrow (on his own behalf), the Chicago Seven, Karen Silkwood's death (and the Plutonium Industry on trial), Leopold and Loeb, Clara Shortridge (the first woman to do battle in California's Courts), the Mansons, Medgar Evers's Assassin, the DeLorean defence convincing jurors the Feds cannot be trusted, and, finally, America's home-grown war criminals ("just following orders").

You could, of course, construct a book of quotations from the closing arguments in this book. "The laws of this country are only as effective as they are enforced. Without enforcement they have no meaning, for justice, like discipline, requires that the innocent be recognized and the guilty condemned. Discipline is the backbone of the military. The government and the law also recognize that when the law is disobeyed, it must be exposed and it must be condemned without remorse, without hesitation. It must be quick and it must be sure. The accused was a commissioned officer of the armed forces of this United States when he slaughtered his innocent victims in My Lai ... It has been said that the soldier, be he friendly or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak". (Aubrey M. Daniel)

The lawyers are fascinating (we are told of their earlier and later careers). Take William Moses Kunstler, one of America's great "cause" lawyers defending "radicals". He viewed his clients (yippies, hippies, Black panthers, assassins, terrorists, the Chicago Seven, the poor, the persecuted, the radicals, the militants) not as defendants in criminal cases, but instead as courageous figures, battling an unjust system. This is his own statement regarding his motives: "I enjoy the spotlight, as most humans do, but it's not my whole raison. My purpose is to keep the state from becoming all-domineering, all powerful."

Of course, engraved on the wall before every lawyer pleading that his client was ordered to do so should be the words of Robert H. Jackson, "I admit that Hitler was the chief villain. But for the defendants to put all blame on him is neither manly nor true. We know that even the head of a state has the same limits to his senses and to the hours of his day as do lesser men. He must rely on others to be his eyes and ears as to most that goes on in a great empire. Other legs must run his errands; other hands must execute his plans. On whom did Hitler rely for such things more than upon these men in the dock? ... Who would Hitler say deceived him about conditions in concentration camps if not Kaltenbrunner, even as he would deceive us? ... They were the Praetorian Guard and while they were under Caesar's orders, Caesar was always in their hands."

Robert H. Jackson concluded, "If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime."

This is, of course, the only available collection of the greatest closing arguments in modern history.

Wright, Steven

Jack the Ripper
An American View

New York, Mystery Notebook Editions. 166 pp. US $25.00. £20.00.

The question of who was Jack the Ripper haunts and intrigues us to this very day. Books and articles are still being written, archives are still being researched. Will we ever discover who he was and what were his motives? Was he a maniac? (Yes, says everyone, undoubtedly!) The interest may very well stem from the increasing number of such killers.

In this concise but well-researched work, which includes a gem from George Bernard Shaw on the Ripper, with excellent notes, bibliography and index, Stephen Wright, a recent devotee, takes up the subject and offers (as the sub-title promises) an American perspective. He discusses the nature of serial murderers, quoting Krafft-Ebing's entry on Jack the Ripper in Psychopathia Sexualis, and ending with the profiling of serial murderers by the FBI. (Weak father, domineering mother, setting fires, torturing animals, poor self-esteem, delusions of being dominated and manipulated, but extraordinary ability at avoiding detection.)

The author gives us the social setting, discusses other serial killers, and as a crime novelist himself, goes into the issue of how Jack the Ripper avoided capture. He then proffers his own solution and reasons why the identity of this serial killer was never established. The man Wright thinks did it was never "grilled", says Wright, as any savvy detective would have done.

Finally, he proffers the history of the American rival, whose surname ironically is Holmes. Holmes, unlike our Ripper, did it for money.

This is a very unusual book. If you know little or nothing about Jack the Ripper, it is a good place to start, but if you know a lot, you will still gain from having such a fresh, transatlantic perspective.

Stephen Wright is the editor of The Whitechapel Journal. He lives and works in New York.