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A Colorado crime
lab DNA analyst was recently charged with
manipulating evidence in hundreds of cases — the latest in a
string
of scandals involving mishandled or falsified forensic evidence. These
troubling revelations are raising urgent questions about wrongful
convictions, a topic explored with gripping realism by criminal
defense attorney and author Frank Abrams in his #1-ranked
legal
thriller, The Cockfight.
Attorney’s New Book Raises Urgent Questions About DNA, Injustice and
the Cost of Being Accused
ASHEVILLE, NC, July 28, 2025 — As DNA evidence increasingly comes under
fire and real-world cases of manipulated evidence mount,
attorney and author Frank Abrams is turning his decades in the
courtroom into a call for reform.
Abrams weaves a harrowing narrative about a man falsely accused —
and ultimately undone — by faulty DNA evidence in his
powerful new
book, The Cockfight. Although the story is fictional, the scenarios it
explores are alarmingly real.
“It's more than a story, it's a message,” Abrams said in a recent
interview. “After 38 years of being part of a system that
isn't
getting any better — it's only getting worse — I could not live
with myself if I did not write this book.”
In The Cockfight, DNA evidence becomes the nail in the coffin for a
teacher falsely accused of sexual assault. But as readers will learn,
DNA tests can be contaminated, and results can be wrong — sometimes
intentionally.
“When someone’s life and someone’s freedom are at stake, we
can’t rely solely on DNA test results without thorough investigation
and scrutiny,” Abrams said.
Through a riveting narrative, The Cockfight introduces
readers to
William Bradford, an educator recently named “Teacher of the Year”
who was arrested and charged for the attempted rape of a 14-year-old
student during a class trip to Washington, D.C. Married with two kids,
Bradford would spend time in a hellhole of a jail in South Georgia and
eventually take up residence under a bridge — all because of a lie.
Although fiction, many of the facts concerning the law and its
application are or were authentic at the time the story is set, and
are still factual, Abrams explained.
The Cockfight is the story of the teacher’s fight to clear his name,
of the people around him and how the system impacted all of them, as
stories of actual cockfighting fill the backdrop with the dismal
“kill or be killed” dread that descends on many people
caught up
in an often unjust “justice” system.
“There are many victims of our unjust and unforgiving ‘justice’
system. Once they are caught in its web, it is difficult if not
impossible to extricate oneself,” Abrams said. “Cockfighting is a
system that treats animals in the same brutal way that the justice
system treats people. It makes them mean and angry toward each other
and generates money at the same time.”
Abrams noted that American prisons are filled with more prisoners per
capita than virtually every other country and that the
American prison
population has grown 500 percent in the last 40 years
thanks, in part,
to the operative assumption that once charged, always guilty.
>
“I wrote The Cockfight to emphasize what can happen when things go
wrong,” Abrams added. “It is my hope that the message in this book
leads to both a change in attitude and action, that
injustice will no
longer be tolerated, and that a fair, honest and just system
will take
its place.”
The Cockfight
ISBN-13: 979-8991073509
Paperback: 260 pages Available from
https://www.amazon.com/Cockfight-Frank-Abrams/dp/B0DD5JNFC7
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