Book Review: Criminal Pretrial Advocacy, Henning,
Feller and Henning, West Academic
Publishing, 2013, c 170 pages, including an index and detailed contents.
What’s a foreigner doing, reviewing a book on US Federal
criminal pretrial essentials? And the answer is that this foreigner, being as
ignorant as the typical law student, is the ideal reviewer. If it works for this reviewer, and it does,
then it will work for your students.
This is a step by step journey, combining relevant statute,
rules, key cases and guidelines with documentary illustrations, starting from
the issue of a complaint through bail or detention, thence preliminary hearing,
grand jury, and discovery, moving onto the range of pretrial motions, and
ending with the outcome most likely by far – plea agreement and sentencing. I’m
told that the formalism of the Federal criminal work is a good platform for
students who will be working with a State based system.
