For 21 days in 1976, Carol Menaker served with eleven others on a sequestered jury in the trial of Frederick Burton, a young Black Revolutionary charged with the grisly murders of two white prison wardens. She was 24 years old. 

Forty-seven years later, she is publishing a memoir in which she unravels the trauma of that experience and comes to the unsettling conclusion that her youth, naïveté, and white privilege may have led her to convict a man whose shoes she never could have walked in. Mr. Burton, now 77 years old, remains incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison.

Today, Carol has become an advocate for criminal justice reform and looks forward to the way her story will influence others with the political and legislative willpower to consider “second chance” laws for the thousands like Mr. Burton serving excessive sentences with no hope through the courts of earning their freedom. 

Carol chronicles her experience in her new memoir, The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done: One Juror’s Reckoning with Racial Injustice.

Website/Social Media Links

• Website: CarolMenaker.com