The Worst Thing We've Ever Done: One Juror's Reckoning with Racial Injustice

by Carol Menaker

Overview

In May of 1976, twenty-four-year-old Carol Menaker was impaneled with eleven others on a jury in the trial of Freddy Burton, a young Black prison inmate charged with the grisly murders of two white wardens inside Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison. After being sequestered for twenty-one days, the jury voted to convict Mr. Burton, who was then sentenced to life in prison without parole.

For more than forty years, Menaker did what she could to put the intensely emotional experience of the sequestration and trial behind her, rarely speaking of it to others and avoiding jury service when at all possible. But the arrival of a jury summons at her home in Northern California in 2017 set her on a path to unravel the painful experience of sequestration and finally ask the question: What ever happened to Freddy Burton—and is it possible that my youth and white privilege were what led me to convict him of murder?

The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done is Menaker’s inspirational account of journeying back in time to uncover the personal bias that may have led her to judge someone whose shoes she never could have walked in.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647424602
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Carol Menaker is a writer living in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California, where she retired after a forty-plus-year career writing and managing communications for universities and nonprofits. She was raised in a Jewish family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in theatre arts/acting from Pennsylvania State University and an MS in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she enjoys travel, yoga, walking, and bicycling. The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done is her first full-length work. She lives in Grass Valley, CA.

Editorial Reviews

2023 Best Book Awards Finalist in Nonfiction: Creative
2023 North Street Book Prize Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir

“Menaker’s account is a concisely written and deeply personal look into the ways that individuals blinkered by their personal backgrounds may help to perpetuate systemic inequities.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A heartbreaking account of an all-too-familiar story of justice gone wrong. Gripping and superbly written, this is an important book, courageously illuminating the shadow side of our ethos of liberty and equality.”
—Sean Murphy, National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing and author of The Time of New Weather

“Haunting, heartbreaking, and unerringly candid, this story invites us all to look at ourselves, our presumptions, and the impact of the choices we make. This is a brave book, and Menaker is a brave author to take it on.”
—Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, MFT, author of Filling Her Shoes and host of The Morning Glory Project podcast

“Carol Menaker’s book is deeply personal and sharply journalistic—taking us to a moment in time that has haunted her and will haunt you . . . a page-turner that breaks your heart but also gives you hope that each of us may yet summon the courage Carol has to cultivate our own moral compasses and, most importantly, give a damn about equal justice.”
—Mag Dimond, author of Bowing to Elephants: Tales of a Travel Junkie

“It takes rare courage to go back four decades and revisit your part in convicting a young Black man of a murder he likely did not commit. Carol Menaker makes that harrowing journey, and shares her story, and her hard-won wisdom, in clear, compelling prose. Her struggle is a hopeful reminder that change is possible, but it always has a price.”
—Thomas L. Dybdahl, author of When Innocent Isn’t Enough

From the Publisher

03/01/2023

Menaker was 24 years old in 1976 when she served on a sequestered jury in Philadelphia for 21 days. The defendant, a Black man named Freddy Burton, stood trial for the murder of two white prison wardens. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Menaker, a middle-class white woman, had little prior contact with Black people. She writes about her experience of sequestration, with its attendant isolation, hotel living, bad food, and supervised interactions with her fellow jurors. Primarily, she wrestles with her feelings of ambiguity about Burton's conviction, particularly with the benefit of hindsight and research that provides new context. The author examines the backgrounds and political motivations of the major players involved in the trial, including the judge, mayor, and attorneys. She also delves into Burton's background and notes that he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammed while incarcerated at Holmesburg Prison, where he spent an inordinate amount of time in solitary confinement; the prison is described as inhumane, overcrowded, dangerous, and characterized by callous treatment. Menaker's book is a reckoning of sorts, and her quest to find nuance will make readers contemplate how many other convictions should be reassessed. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in criminal-justice reform.—Barrie Olmstead

Library Journal

2023-04-17
A White woman reflects on her role in the questionable conviction of a Black man for murder in this nonfiction debut.

In Pennsylvania alone, more than 1,000 people are serving sentences of life without parole for murder in cases in which they did not directly kill a person but were accomplices in a crime that led to a death. Of those convicted, 70% are Black, including Frederick Muhammed Burton, the central figure of this book. When author Menaker first encountered Burton as a juror in his 1976 murder trial, during which he was charged with acting as an accomplice in the murders of two prison wardens, she was a self-described naïve 24-year-old who grew up “in the 1950s and 1960s isolated in a world of Jewishness and white privilege.” While subsequent jury duty notifications “triggered” uncomfortable memories of the trial, it wasn’t until decades later that she fully came to terms with the ways her background and youth played a role in her support of a guilty verdict. This book covers Menaker’s own personal journey as she confronted systemic racism and America’s flawed criminal justice system. Menaker has spent recent years poring through archival evidence related to Burton’s conviction. She makes some startling discoveries, including claims that his lawyer in the 1976 trial may have been intoxicated during court appearances. In the same case in which she served as a juror, the author notes conflicting testimonies ignored at the time, confusion over the judge’s instructions to the jury, and a psychologically “traumatic” sequestering process that hampered the jury’s ability to productively debate. At times overly focused on tangential details concerning the author’s personal life, Menaker’s account is a concisely written and deeply personal look into the ways that individuals blinkered by their personal backgrounds may help to perpetuate systemic inequities.

A stirring, if occasionally self-indulgent, reexamination of a problematic murder trial.

Kirkus Reviews