Book Review: State of Georgia versus Clevon Jamel Jenkins (OT)

State of Georgia versus Clevon Jamel Jenkins, by Robert Kelly (RMK Legal Publishing, 2025, 552pp, $47.95)

Intimidating?

At 552 pages, the State of Georgia versus Clevon Jamel Jenkins' length is intimidating but the story of a possibly wrongly convicted person will keep you on the seat of your pants even when we know how it turns out. 

At first I thought the book might include the transcript (thus explaining the length of the book) of the trial, thereby making it so long, but it does not. Instead it contains background chapters on Jamel the convicted, on the attorney author, on a judge, and if you don't know much about a trial, you will by the time you get to page 552, or sooner. The chapter, "Why Did I Fail?", is especially illuminating.

The legal profession has its own lingo that law students learn in their three years of law school. We may know some of the terms like pro bono, felony, misdemeanor, but that is about the extent of my legal lingo. I can't even defiine habeas corpus although I have heard many many times. I would have preferred each new term defined the first time, perhaps in a footnote.

And even the character's names could get wordy, hard to tell from one another, and add to the confusion of who's who. The five main characters each have a first and a last name and some have middle names as well, each of which is referred to at times.

Parts of the book read like prose but are very detailed, e.g., about the robbery and murder, told twice which helps cement the details in the reader's mind, but other parts of the book remain for legal eagles only to fully understand: they focus on the appeals and the errors made at trial.

Errors?

Reading Jamel's story may cause you to lose faith in our judicial system or it may give you hope in elucidating just what is wrong that can be corrected.